PBworks Launches App Store for Collaboration Templates

SAN MATEO, Calif., Jan. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- PBworks, the leading provider of hosted collaboration solutions for business and education, today announced the launch of the PBworks Template Store. Now users can instantly adopt pre-built apps to meet specific business needs. PBworks templates are workspace templates that anyone, even non-developers, can create and distribute, and they take less than a minute to install. The PBworks Template Store is launching with over 25 different apps, and includes both officially-approved and community-generated templates.

"PBworks focuses on delivering solutions to specific business problems," said PBworks CEO Jim Groff. "Our new Template Store lets us address many more problems by leveraging the best practices and experiences of the industry's largest user base of over 1 million projects hosted, over 3 million active users, and over 85,000 businesses. Unlike generic Enterprise 2.0 tools, these templates bring immediate utility to enterprise collaboration and social software."

The Template Store allows users to create, share, and apply workspace templates to solve specific business problems or manage specific processes for specific industries. This kind of vertical focus and flexibility taps into some powerful underlying trends.

"IDC observes that many of the collaborative platforms on the market today lack industry-specific expertise out-of-box which prohibits the immediate integration of these newer web 2.0 solutions into the existing work flow of business customers," said Caroline Dangson, research analyst with market research firm IDC. "This creates longer lag times for worker productivity and proof of return on investment which has been a problem for both buyers and sellers of this technology. By creating a Template Store, PBworks recognizes a need in the marketplace for custom business applications that are quick and easy to build and deploy by just about anyone, which will dramatically increase the speed of innovation and eliminate the development and integration burden for both PBworks and IT departments."

Unlike traditional developer platforms, which allow programmers and IT personnel to create custom apps for business units, PBworks is the business platform that allows ordinary businesspeople to build and configure their own custom applications.

Templates include industry and usage-specific examples such as:

• Advertising Campaign
• PR Client
• Product Launch
• Management Team
• Departmental
• Branch Office
• Handbook/Manual/FAQ
• Competitive Analysis

The Template Store also lets consultants engage with their customers. Consultants can create templates to reflect their best practices and processes, then reach out to PBworks customers via the Template Store.

Pricing and Availability

The PBworks Template Store is available immediately to all PBworks users, as well as anyone interested in adopting the platform. Currently, all template apps are free, but in the future, template contributors will be able to price and sell premium templates.

About PBworks

PBworks (http://pbworks.com) is the world's leading provider of hosted collaboration solutions for businesses and education. Leading companies and organizations like FedEx, DePaul University, and the FDA choose PBworks to collaborate across geographic and organizational boundaries with employees, customers, partners, and vendors. We host over 1,000,000 workspaces, serve millions of users per month, and 96% of users would recommend PBworks to a friend. Over 85,000 businesses have chosen PBworks to implement knowledge management, extranets, project management, and a host of other business processes and workflows. PBworks investors include Mohr Davidow Ventures, Seraph Group, Sippl Investments, and Ron Conway.

PBworks is a trademark of PBwiki, Inc. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE PBworks