Ektron Launches eIntranet, Brookstone Employees Benefit From Integrated Social Enterprise Collaboration

BOSTON, June 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Ektron Inc. today, at Enterprise 2.0 in Boston, announced the release of eIntranet™, a "total solution" for intranets, that integrates elements of Ektron's core technology and gives businesses a powerful and trusted intranet solution.  Combining social software and web content management in one enterprise application, the familiar interface and Ektron's advanced web content management functionality raises the daily value of the intranet for businesses.  Activity streams, a gallery of widgets, mobile engagement and in-context analytic tools ensure that eIntranet is easy to deploy, use and extend – on-premise, hosted or in the cloud.  

To view the multimedia assets associated with this release, please click:  http://multivu.prnewswire.com/mnr/ektron/44525/

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20100614/MM19483 )

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20100614/MM19483 )

"Approximately 400 million people use Facebook for personal collaboration everyday without having been taught how to do so, but other similar business collaboration offerings have failed – Facebook for the enterprise isn’t enough," said Bill Rogers, Ektron's CEO and Founder. "The new eIntranet is built on Ektron's best practices from more than 12 years of web content management research and development. Our software has proven to increase adoption for many Fortune 500 and big-brand public-facing web sites. Today's intranet needs to keep pace with the digital world and become a mashup of internal and external content and applications that employees will adopt and trust for years to come."  

Research shows that 36% of a company's overall performance is driven by its ability to collaborate (Source: Meetings Around the World: The Impact of Collaboration on Business Performance by Frost & Sullivan). eIntranet is designed to break down the silos between departments and geographic locations.  Because eIntranet is built on both social and .NET best practices, this collaborative application scales to the size and needs of every company.

Seeking to implement an intranet for better communication and collaboration with over 3,000 employees across nearly 310 stores nationwide, Brookstone chose Ektron’s eIntranet because of the customization and the immediate return on investment.  “At Brookstone, we place a priority on cohesive communication and consistent branding,” said Bill Wood, CIO of Brookstone.  “Ektron’s eIntranet enables easier sharing of  training materials with corporate and regional locations, to ensure that permanent and seasonal employees are always on the same page.  A best-in-class collaboration and communication tool like eIntranet is a great addition to our software portfolio.”

Top ten cool features of Ektron's eIntranet application include:

1. Activity streams and timeline navigation – With eIntranet, the most useful information finds the employees who need it most.  Like ratings, status and activity updates on social networking sites, eIntranet gives employees a real-time picture of what’s happening in a company at the moment and what information has been the most effective for their peers.
2. Collaboration – Using personal profiles, groupspaces, forums, blogs, calendars and wikis, internal teams can collaborate on documents before sharing them with the entire organization.  eIntranet ensures that everyone is informed instantly of status updates and has access to the most recent versions of documents.
3. Micro-messaging – Notification and filtering engines provide only relevant information.
4. Mobile engagement – Critical information is delivered to employees via SMS alerts, e-mail or the eIntranet Mobile App anywhere, anytime.
5. Analytics – The Ektron Open Analytics provider gives in-context information about eIntranet usage and adoption by tracking activity, trends and popular areas.
6. Findability – Ektron's Search and Tag Clouds are built on search and navigation best practices. Taxonomy enhances how information and documents are organized, going beyond folder structure to make collateral more findable.
7. Widget-based functionality – IT departments can use Ektron's customizable widgets to integrate with business-critical systems. Ektron widgets also extend the functionality of eIntranet. Developers and marketers can create their own widgets or download the latest widgets from the Ektron Exchange.  Drag-and-drop widgets may be added or removed based on preference or advanced technical intranet demands.
8. Combination of social software and web content management – Social software by itself does not make an effective intranet. Intranets require a content management platform to provide the workflow, document and content management and organization capabilities that are essential to productive and secure collaboration.
9. Integration – The eIntranet can become a portal for other enterprise applications such as Sharepoint, CRM, HR and ERP systems.  
10. Easy to deploy, customize and extend – eIntranet gives authors the power to create, edit and manage web and document content without technical resources.  Corporate branding, content and "look-and-feel" are easy to deploy, so eIntranet is ready to use.

Pricing and Availability

eIntranet is available immediately starting at $5,000 for a 25-seat user license.  eIntranet integrates technology elements from Ektron's core content management system, but does not require a separate purchase of Ektron's CMS400.NET platform.  Ektron Partners can create innovative new joint solutions that extend and maximize existing IT investments for their clients. Full system requirements, online tutorials and more information on eIntranet may be found at http://www.ektron.com/eIntranet.

About Ektron

Ektron Inc. has innovated web technology since 1998. By combining web content management (WCM), marketing optimization and social software, Ektron has a single web platform that improves operational efficiency, drives revenue growth and builds customer loyalty. Ektron empowers marketers to create, publish and optimize web content that engages, converts and retains customers. Developers benefit from Ektron's extensibility and commitment to the Microsoft .NET framework. Headquartered in Nashua, New Hampshire, with offices in Australia, Canada, Singapore and the United Kingdom, Ektron has more than 8,000 customers worldwide including Carnegie Hall, Home Depot, Kodak, Microsoft, NASDAQ, Texas Children's Hospital and the University of Notre Dame.  For more information, please visit www.ektron.com.

Ektron, the Ektron logo and eIntranet, are trademarks of Ektron Inc. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

SOURCE Ektron Inc.