NewsGator Drives Business Agility Through Improved Group Communications With New Glassboard Integration and Spheres Capability

ANAHEIM, Calif., Oct. 5, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- NewsGator today unveiled integration with Glassboard and Spheres for Social Sites 2010 – each enabling employees to easily conduct internal and external conversations without the need to create a full-fledged Community, Site, or Site Collection for Microsoft SharePoint 2010. Whereas Spheres fuels your internal collaboration on Social Sites, Glassboard bridges your external and internal networks using Windows Azure-based services.

Glassboard – a free social mobile application from NewsGator spin-off Sepia Labs – enables individuals anywhere to convene for private group sharing. Glassboard's entire backend runs on Windows Azure and uses Microsoft SQL Azure, Windows Azure Blobs, and Windows Azure Tables. Designed as a private social networking solution, unlike Facebook, Google+, and Twitter, with Glassboard you can be assured your confidential business data and personal information are secure.

Glassboard is optimized to be accessed through myriad native mobile clients including iPhone, iPad, Android, and Windows Phone 7. Glassboard has also been formally accepted into the Office 365 Marketplace, currently going through Microsoft's provisioning process. In addition, private Glassboard groups can be accessed through this new integration with NewsGator Social Sites – aggregating and centralizing Glassboard group conversations in the Social Sites activity stream.

"Glassboard, an important free social computing offering, makes good use of the Windows Azure development and operating environment to provide a wide range of mobile clients and Social Sites," said Kim Akers, general manager for ISV partners for Microsoft. "Glassboard's integration with Microsoft Office 365 along with a wide range of mobile clients and Social Sites, gives it great promise to become a serious tool for social computing."

Spheres for Social Sites 2010 allow you to converse with colleagues through user-generated, light-weight public and private groups. Within seconds of creating a Sphere, members can share messages, links, and questions and answers with the new group. Spheres greatly improve business communications and, ultimately, business agility.

"We're giving people behind firewalls the powerful, nimble tools they've come to expect from their experiences in the consumer world," said JB Holston, NewsGator's president and CEO. "These create an easy way for colleagues and their important connections to converse and communicate on topics, projects, client needs, common roles, events, interests, opportunities or fun things at work. Unlike communications hosted by consumer social networking sites, the information generated stays protected and is retained for compliance and reporting."

For more information on the Glassboard integration or Spheres for Social Sites 2010, contact NewsGator or visit us at Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2011 (booth #364).

About NewsGator

As a Microsoft Gold Certified and Depth Managed Partner, NewsGator is helping nearly three million paid users in industries across the globe propel the future of productivity. NewsGator Social Sites delivers robust social technology to the enterprise with proven scalability and security to flagship clients like Accenture, Adidas, Deloitte, Ericsson, General Mills, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Kraft Foods, Merck & Co., Unisys Corporation, and the US Army. No other social software vendor can rival our deep integration with the entire Microsoft stack – reducing your total cost of ownership while increasing adoption, collaboration, and innovation. And for all that, Microsoft honored us as its 2011 US Partner of the Year. We're making SharePoint and Office 365 social. Follow us @newsgator and www.newsgator.com.

SOURCE NewsGator Technologies, Inc.