Corechange Introduces New Multi-mode Collaboration Services for Coreport Enterprise Portal Framework.

Business/Technology Editors

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 24, 2002

New Functionality Provides Portal Users with Multiple Options for Collaboration and Communication, Including Integration with Groove Networks 

Corechange, Inc., a global provider of enterprise portal framework software, today announced a new suite of collaboration components designed to give communities, work groups and teams an extensive set of capabilities with which to communicate and work interactively from within a portal. Corechange's new offering, called Multi-mode Collaboration Services, will be an intrinsic part of Corechange's enterprise portal framework, Coreport.

As part of this new functionality, Corechange provides integration with Groove Networks, the leading provider of decentralized collaboration software, into its Coreport product. (See related release: "Corechange Forms Alliance With Groove Networks to Enhance Collaboration Capabilities of its Portal Software," June 24, 2002.)

"Our clients are looking for ways to share information, mine organizational knowledge, and gain competitiveness through worker collaboration," said Andrew Campbell, senior vice president and chief knowledge officer of Reston, Virginia-based Applied Knowledge Group. "Corechange is incorporating a host of collaboration features into the portal which will give companies a way to serve the needs of virtual work teams, allowing them to communicate quickly, make decisions, and take action on various projects and problems."

Corechange's offering will provide customers with a broader and more flexible collaboration solution than is otherwise available from portal vendors today. The Corechange approach addresses the need for teams and communities to work together in various modalities, going beyond a strictly document-centered approach. Not only will Corechange customers be able to search and share team documents, but will be able to form ad-hoc work groups quickly, innovate with other team members, and work together on projects in real-time.

The heart of Corechange's Multi-mode Collaboration Services is the Coreport Community Administration Wizard which allows community leaders to set up specialized community portal pages, invite members, and manage the content, applications and collaboration services each community will use. The result is a rich, highly contextual user experience that gives community members immediate access to the information, messages and documents they require to work productively with one another. The Community Administration Wizard shields community leaders - who are most often non-technical business users - from the technical complexities of portal administration.

"Increasingly, we're seeing that companies want the flexibility to create cascading portals, or portals within portals," said Gene Phifer, Gartner vice president and research director. "The advantage of creating community-specific portals is that sub-segments of the organization - geographic locations, user groups, or project teams, for example - can share the same context, content and applications with colleagues and business partners, both inside and outside the firewall."

Corechange's Multi-mode Collaboration Services include the following capabilities:

    --  Coreport Community Administration Wizard - enables team and
        community leaders to easily manage community membership and
        content;
    --  Coreport Threaded Discussion - allows users to engage in group
        dialogue and decision-making;
    --  Coreport Document Library - provides the ability for teams to
        search and share documents;
    --  Coreport Chat - enables groups to share ideas in real-time;
    --  Coreport People Finder - gives users look-up access to
        colleagues with particular expertise;
    --  Pre-built integration with selected partner products,
        including:

        -   Groove Networks' peer-to-peer collaboration platform
        -   Microsoft's Exchange-based Instant Messaging
        -   Microsoft's SharePoint Team Services
        -   Ideal Bulletin Board

"Our goal is to empower business people, making them more self-sufficient and productive by virtue of their day-to-day use of the enterprise portal. We believe that the introduction of Multi-mode Collaboration Services will increase the utility and pervasiveness of the portal in the everyday work of an organization's employees, customers and partners," said Charles Kane, president and CEO, Corechange.

Corechange's Multi-mode Collaboration Services, included with the company's Coreport enterprise portal software at no additional cost, are available now through the company's early availability program and are planned to be generally available in the third quarter, 2002.

About Corechange

Corechange, Inc. delivers infrastructure software to develop, deploy and manage enterprise portals on a global scale. The company's Coreport product provides a "no-compromise" approach to integrating existing documents, content, applications, components, and services to deliver a best-of-breed portal solution. Coreport, the secure, scalable Microsoft-powered enterprise portal framework, provides a rich, highly personalized, role-based user experience. Corechange has a worldwide customer base, including American Electric Power (AEP), Credit Suisse First Boston, UnumProvident Corporation, EMC, Ericsson, Philips, Hitachi, Krispy Kreme, and Royal & SunAlliance. The company's strategic partners include Microsoft, Nortel Networks, GE Medical Systems Information Technologies, and Aether Systems. Corechange is headquartered in Boston, with offices throughout North America, Europe and Asia.