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The path from Web content management vendor to full-blown enterprise content management outfit seems to travel through collaboration. Interwoven, which has assembled its content management assets through acquisitions, snatched its collaboration expertise from iManage, and the fruits of that marriage have arrived in WorkSite MP 4.0.

In addition to iManage, Interwoven scooped up OpenDeploy for content distribution and Mediabin for digital asset management, and has since set about casting each technology as part of an enterprise content management package.

The release of WorkSite MP 4.0 is important to Interwoven for two reasons, said Jim Petty, director CDM solutions and products for Interwoven: first, it gives Interwoven a flexible, robust product in the collaboration space beside Documentum's eRoom and Vignette's Business Workspaces (snatched in Vignette's Intraspect acquisition); secondly, the release shows that the merger of Interwoven and iManage is working.

On the surface, little about WorkSite MP 4.0 seems groundbreaking. If you're familiar with eRoom, Intraspect, SiteScape, or even hosted applications like Intranets.com, then you know there is little room left for something truly revolutionary when it comes to collaboration spaces. WorkSite's collaborative document management workspaces include checklists, contacts, pending reviews, delivered documents, and calendars. What is actually shown on the workspace is completely customizable. Interwoven has also integrated with DeltaView for document comparison capability — a nice, useful feature when collaborating around documents.

A deal workspace in Interwoven's WorkSite MP 4.0 includes include checklists, contacts, pending reviews, delivered documents, and calendars.

Interwoven followed four guiding principles when planning improvements to WorkSite MP 4.0. The company wanted to improve WorkSite's usability; improve business unit-level configuration to make the product easy for end users; it wanted a highly secure, globally deployable solution; and it wanted to facilitate better management of people, content, and assets with the goal of making corporate compliance and governance easier.

Interwoven markets solutions to specific business units and either brings knowledge of that particular domain or partners with a company that does. WorkSite MP 4.0 is marketed as a solution for marketing, sales, service, finance, legal, or IT business units. "Document management applies across the enterprise," Petty told Intranet Journal. "It's important for us as a vendor to have a product that serves IT horizontally."

Right now, Petty said Interwoven is seeing the best traction in finance departments where WorkSite MP 4.0 is used for collaboration around deal management and in corporate legal departments. Early-stage traction is evident in engagement management for consulting services and research management in finance departments.

Page 2: If It's Flexibility You Want...