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MindTouch has something in common with other corporate wiki vendors we've looked at: It doesn't like to use the word "wiki." (A wiki is a collaborative technology that gives everyone a place to share thoughts on projects.)

As representatives explained to us in a demo, people have preconceptions about what wikis are and what they do, and especially about how difficult they are to use. When users think of popular wikis, like wikipedia, they decide that that's not right for their company. But MindTouch's solution is anything but the typical wiki.

Founded two years ago and based in San Diego, MindTouch is mostly made up of former Microsoft employees who early on saw the corporate possibilities of wikis. The company launched its first product, the Managed Office Server (MOS), a software and hardware combination, in early January of this year, and has about 20 regular customers.

The MOS offers a collaboration system in a box for intranet professionals looking to bring easy and complete knowledge sharing to their sites. Users purchase either the tower or rack mount file server, which come preloaded with all the software you'll need to add MindTouch to your intranet.

MindTouch pages offer a simple toolbar across the top that lets users quickly call up editing controls, as well as other options like creating a sub-page or seeing who last edited the page. After calling up the editing controls, users see an additional toolbar with standard text editing options. Adding or deleting text, or even adding a picture, is simple enough for anyone who's ever used Microsoft Word.

But MindTouch goes beyond just page creation. Users can easily attach files to pages, creating an instant file library. All attached documents are indexed along with the page information, so the site search can track down information no matter where it's buried.

Even though MindTouch pages live on your network, remote workers can access them without any special configuration on your part. You don't need to open a port or even configure a VPN. MindTouch automatically works over a secure channel, even through corporate firewalls.

The company's impressive backup and data recovery plan is another reason to look to MindTouch. While the file server is installed on your network, data is backed up regularly to the MindTouch servers. Plus, your own server is regularly monitored for damage, and service calls are created automatically as needed. If your server should fail or become lost or stolen, MindTouch will overnight a new server to you with all your existing data. And should a stolen server ever connect to the MindTouch network, the main computer would issue a kill command so all the stolen server's data would be destroyed. Now that's data integrity.

MindTouch's permissions are intentionally open, to encourage everyone in an organization to contribute. Administrators can restrict users or pages, but restrictions need to be done on a case-by-case basis, not on a group level. We suspect some potential customers will have a problem with that rosy view of permissions. And while we're making a wish list, MindTouch doesn't currently offer the ability to customize its page template to match your intranet's own look. Hopefully we'll see that changed in the next release.

The company might not call it a wiki, but MindTouch offers all the benefits of group editing with the robust security of enterprise.

Pricing and availability

Sales are handled through resellers and pricing starts at $1,995. The most popular plan offers 20 user licenses, 40GB of storage, and one year of service for $4,490.

MindTouch's editing controls, displayed in a menu at the top of the browser page, will be familiar to anyone who's used Microsoft Word.

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