Inmagic has introduced Inmagic Presto 3.1, the latest version of the company’s Social Knowledge Management platform with new Microsoft SharePoint interoperability capabilities. The compatibility allows users to augment and leverage existing infrastructure and technology investments—extracting additional value from systems already in place, without compromising access to content or straining time, budget, or human resources. Other new benefits in Presto 3.1 include improved collaboration, information discovery, and content management functionalities driven by customer and market demand.

"At MRA—The Management Association—we are focused on delivering outstanding and cost-effective services to our members," says George Blomgren, Director of Business Systems for MRA. "We chose Presto as the platform on which to make available tools, templates, and information to our members because of its robustness and ease-of-use. The Inmagic team is as attuned to customer service as we are, and truly served as a partner in this project. Members indicate that the tool is providing the value we had envisioned, thus helping us to fulfill our mission of member success."

As organizations increasingly turn to SharePoint for content management infrastructure needs, they are faced with the question of how to extract the most value from their investments. The new interoperability capabilities of Presto 3.1, which include SharePoint-compatible Web Parts and a new Web Services API, allow Presto 3.1 to easily integrate into an existing SharePoint environment or other ASP.NET infrastructure.

“Customers are looking for synergies between widespread infrastructural technology and solutions focused on solving specific business problems, without large internal development costs,” says Phil Green, CTO of Inmagic. “With Inmagic Presto 3.1, companies can enhance their SharePoint environment with a cost-effective, off-the-shelf solution suited to their needs. They can create internal, secure knowledge communities around enterprise content, with sophisticated social, search, security, and library workflow capabilities not found in SharePoint. The use of Web Parts, Presto, and SharePoint together can deliver tremendous value to an organization’s bottom line.”

Presto 3.1 uses Web Parts technology that allows the search parts on the Presto homepage to be embedded and used in a SharePoint deployment. A new Web Services API lets SharePoint communicate with Presto to create, replace, update, and delete records seamlessly. SharePoint often contributes to the creation of disconnected information silos. Now, Presto can be used to bring these silos together, in one location, with a single access portal and search. Presto also complements SharePoint’s social functionality with “content centric” social capabilities that are fully searchable and indexable, with built-in controls that can both enable and disable social features for specific user groups.

“We are looking forward to Presto 3.1 with great anticipation,” says Michael Payne, City Archivist at the City of Edmonton. “Its enhanced search capabilities; simplified log-on; and advanced authentication, security, and networking features will make it simpler to post new material to the Web, interact with our archives users, and manage our catalog database and Web site even more effectively.”