There have been a number of new releases this week, not least of which is the release of Office 2011 for Mac operating systems. SpringCM has also been busy simplifying multiple deployments of its document management capabilities, Microsoft and Google are still slugging it out over the email market and Doculex has added workflow to its capabilities.

SpringCM Simplifies DM Deployment

SpringCM (news, site) has just upgraded its cloud enterprise content management system which, amongst many other things, makes user adoption quicker and simpler for document management and workflow applications.

The company says that the new SpringCM 2010 was designed to make it easier for customers to perform a broader range and multiple deployments of applications including case management, contract management, resume management and invoice automation.

Based on user-on-user feedback and usage of current versions, SpringCM has also introduced a new user interface that makes the whole system easier and quicker to roll-out. Highlights of the release include:

  • Enhanced identity management with LDAP synchronization
  • New pinpoint navigation for faster collaboration on large, hundred-page documents
  • Scanned or faxed documents can also be auto-split into multiple documents based on unique document content.

SringCM has been busy this year with its cloud platform and managed to capture an extra US$ 15 million in capital funding in September, which it said would go into developing its sales channels and cloud services.

It also managed to pick up a CODiE award because of the new records management abilities that it added in v5.4 released last November. The latest version is available now, so check it out here.

Office 2011 for Mac is Released

Today, finally, those of you that were looking for Office 2011 for Mac can finally get your hands on it with the general release.

There’s already been some discussion across the web about it, but the general feedback is quite positive.

The Mac Blog tells us that, visually, the feature with the most impact is Dynamic Reorder, which gives users the ability to interactively re-order all of the layers in a document or presentation –- one of the ways to solve a very real customer need with a fun experience.

So what are the reviews saying? There’s too many to even mention them here, but we will cite AppleInsider, which has generally got it right on these kinds of releases to date.

The new Office 2011 is a no-brainer upgrade, AppleInsider says. It’s faster, looks and feels much better, and delivers strong advancements in every app, particularly the vastly improved experience of the new Outlook over the pitiful Entourage.

If you’re shopping around for a productivity suite on the Mac, the new Office 2011 delivers an improved experience to the rather quirky but free OpenOffice and offers the advantages of a real desktop app over a web based suite like Google Docs.

The full Home and Business edition of Office 2011 (which includes Outlook) is available to education users in a single install version for US$ 99, while other users will pay US$ 199 for a single install, or US$ 279 for a multi-user pack that includes two installs on separate machines.

If you want to know more, have a look at the video here, a kind of Microsoft meets reality TV infomercial!

Microsoft, Google Fight For Email Market

More from Microsoft (news, site), this time on the email front, where it has been battling Google for the hearts –- and pockets –- of users across the globe.

The latest salvo is the announcement that Microsoft has agreed to combine dozens of separate licences with the city of New York into a single license giving 100,000 city workers access to its hosted email and collaboration services as they become available.

The deal will save the city US$ 50 million over five years, according to reports, which is probably small change to Microsoft. The point here however, is that this is the latest in a number of significant victories for Microsoft that will see its hosted email adopted by public workers in three states so far.

While Google recently got a contract for LA, Microsoft went and took the rest of California, signing 200,000 state workers with BPOS, which will ultimately become Office365 next year, when it is finally released.

Microsoft also won the state of Minnesota at the beginning of the month in a competition for a market, estimated to be worth US$ 20 billion. The deal provided e-mail and office software to governments, businesses and consumers. 

SharePoint and DM

We’ve written much over the past year about SharePoint 2010 and it's capabilities, not least of which were a number of pieces about document management and collaboration. 

This week, we featured a contribution from Shawn Shell, the founder and Principal consultant at Consejo, Inc., a firm specializing in the development of information worker solutions, where he looks at how SharePoint 2010 can help your enterprise information management. In it, he looks at document IDs, document sets and collaboration while showing how the new features can really help achieve enterprise objectives. Want to know more?

Douclex Adds Workflow to Document Management

DocuLex (news, site) has just announced updates to the DocuLex workflow decision engine. This enhances the automated business process workflow capabilities in Archive Studio. The addition extends Archive Studio's document management ability to use a company's existing customer data to establish new workflow tasks, monitor the progress of the business process, alert supervision of bottle necks and automatically reroute workflow assignments that have exceeded a deadline.


The new workflow decision engine accommodates the electronic gathering of documents that are related to the same business transaction or customer engagement, then bundles them together for reference or performs an automated process that may include an automatic email output to customers and other parties. The end result is a fully automated business process with time and cost conservation.

This is not the first time we’ve come across Archive Studio's WebSearch, a browser-based document management software for business process workflow and email archiving. You can access a demo version here.