M-Files Inc., the developer of M-Files flexible cloud and on-premise enterprise content management (ECM) solutions, announced that M-Files 9.0 supports file sharing and collaboration with Microsoft SkyDrive. M-Files users can now use SkyDrive to share and collaborate on content with others that do not have direct access to M-Files, such as customers, partners, and contractors. Files shared via SkyDrive are accessible through essentially any device, including PCs, smart phones, tablets, and Macs, eliminating the need to share content via large email attachments.
Co-authoring, or the ability for two or more parties to edit the same document simultaneously, is a key feature of SkyDrive that is fully supported in M-Files 9.0. Co-authoring is possible using Office applications such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint installed locally on users’ PCs or with Office Web Apps if Office is not installed locally. In addition to allowing multiple users to make simultaneous changes to the same document, M-Files users can now easily invite external parties to collaborate, enabling them to review, comment on and edit documents even if they are not M-Files users. For example, this allows M-Files users to let customers or partners review, mark-up and edit a project plan, contract or proposal, without having to export the file from the system, thus maintaining security and version history. Consequently, all stakeholders work with the same copy of a document instead of attempting to manage the review process by email or with separate and less secure third-party file sharing tools such as Dropbox and Box.
“With the emergence of SkyDrive as a leading file sharing and collaboration platform, we realized the value our customers and partners would gain by supporting it in M-Files,” said Greg Milliken, president of M-Files Inc. “As a Gold ISV partner, M-Files works closely with Microsoft to ensure support for all Windows applications, and now with the addition of SkyDrive, businesses using M-Files can make the most of their investments in Windows while also taking advantage of easy cloud-based file sharing and collaboration that is tightly coupled with secure document and information management, whether on-premise or in the cloud using the Windows Azure platform.”
“We have been working with M-Files for nearly five years and we see M-Files 9.0 as another milestone for M-Files ECM software,” said Gökhan Erdoğdu, Sales and Marketing Director at MechSoft. “The integration with Microsoft SkyDrive and hit highlighting in search results are very impressive new features in M-Files 9.0.”
In addition to easy collaboration, file sharing and co-authoring with Windows SkyDrive, M-Files 9.0 ECM offers a variety of new features and enhancements related to mobile access, search, cloud and hybrid cloud deployments, long-term archiving, ease of use and more. The beta version of M-Files 9.0 is currently available, with the official launch scheduled for late September 2012.
M-Files Inc. develops the award-winning M-Files ECM (enterprise content management) system and cloud-based service M-Files Cloud Vault that runs on the Windows Azure platform and is available in 24 languages. Visit the M-Files website or view the complete press release.
