Lava Systems Africa, an affinity partner of Canadian-based for Open Text, today announced that the latter had released FirstClass 8.0, a major evolution of the company`s award-winning suite of integrated communication and messaging capabilities. The release includes both the FirstClass Business Edition and the FirstClass Education Edition, which are tailored to meet the requirements of FirstClass` large education customer base around the world.
FirstClass 8.0 provides a wealth of new features created in response to changing customer requirements, including advances in system security and manageability, in performance and scalability, and in collaboration and customisation capabilities. In addition, the release continues FirstClass` industry-leading support for a wide range of computing platforms to provide customers with flexibility and choice as they deploy FirstClass in diverse computing environments.
Open Text`s vision for Enterprise Content Management is focused on leadership in collaboration and content management software. Customers moving to FirstClass 8.0 are gaining tremendous benefits from this drive by Open Text as illustrated by the broad suite of enhancements built into the latest version of FirstClass.
The School District of Hillsborough County in Tampa, Florida, one of the largest school districts in the US, has been using FirstClass as the foundation for its internal and external communications.
"Over the years, FirstClass has become an essential element in our communications between teachers and administrators across the district, and with the larger community of students and parents," commented Superintendent Earl Lennard. The district has been using FirstClass 8.0 for some time and will be introducing a wide range of new features such as IM, Web publishing and directory services.
"These features will provide a wealth of new tools that will greatly enhance our teacher-to-teacher, teacher-to-student and teacher-to-parent communications," added Lennard.
"Our customers continue to tell us they value FirstClass most for its highly integrated communications features, its broad range of supported systems, and its very low operational costs," continued John Myers, Vice-President and General Manager of the FirstClass Division of Open Text. "With FirstClass 8.0, we`ve extended our leadership in these areas over traditional, expensive and feature-limited groupware solutions."
FirstClass 8.0: New Features
* Instant messaging and presence management: New IM capabilities provide secure, real-time communication between users. FirstClass IM supports a rich array of media types including text, images, voice and attachments as well as transcript saving and forwarding. Enhanced presence management in FirstClass 8.0 indicates online status for every user automatically, turning e-mail messages, collaborative postings, calendar events, and contact entries into context-sensitive "buddy lists" with no user effort required. Support through external authentication.
* FirstClass Directory Services: The new FirstClass Directory Services (FCDS) module facilitates the integration of FirstClass into corporate meta-directory environments including LDAP and Microsoft Active Directory. FCDS enables bi-directional user administration between FirstClass and meta-directories, as well as providing access to FirstClass directories from end-user client applications. FCDS also provides single sign-in.
* Security enhancements: New security improvements in FirstClass 8.0 continue to keep FirstClass at the forefront of trusted and safe computing. Features include always-on CAST-128 encryption between the client and server, as well as additional support for user authentication and automated detection and prevention of denial-of-service attacks. E-mail security improvements include S/MIME support for secure server-to-server e-mail transmission and integration with third-party virus scanning engines. FirstClass 8.0 also adds expanded spam management capabilities.
* FirstClass Explorer: The new FirstClass Explorer provides the full benefits of the FirstClass client as an ActiveX plug-in for Microsoft Internet Explorer. Users may take advantage of the rich FirstClass client experience, including performance and security, right inside their Web browser. The simple, single-click, Web-based install characteristic of ActiveX frees administrators and users from the time-consuming task of installing and maintaining software on end-user machines.
* Support for multiple computing platforms: FirstClass 8.0 will be available on a wide variety of computing platforms, including Microsoft Windows (95, 98, NT, 2000, and XP versions), Apple Macintosh (OS 8, OS 9 and OS X versions), HTML/Web, and Linux. This cross-platform support gives customers greater flexibility in deploying FirstClass.
* Increased scalability: With many larger FirstClass sites approaching or exceeding 100 000 users on a single server, FirstClass 8.0 includes a number of performance optimisations, tuning enhancements and system statistics for increased performance and even higher reliability. This extends the tremendous operational cost advantage of FirstClass and enables even larger online communities to scale efficiently on a single server.
For further information, please contact Iain McMurray, Lava Systems Africa: telephone 011 675-3704, fax 011 675-1021, e-mail ianm@lavasystems.co.za
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Open Text is the market leader in providing Enterprise Content management (ECM) solutions that bring together people, processes and information in global organisations. Since launching the world`s first Internet search engine and the first Web-based enterprise collaboration and knowledge management software, Open Text continued its leadership in providing global enterprises with innovative and effective solutions.
Throughout its history Open Text has matched its tradition of innovation with a track record of financial strength and growth. Today, the Canadian-based company supports 15 million end-users across deployments in 31 countries and 12 languages worldwide and includes among its client base governments departments in Australia, Canada and Japan; the UK Metropolitan Police; British telecommunications, UNHCR and the USA Department of Defence.
Open Text`s flagship product, Livelink seamlessly combines collaboration with content management, helping organisations transform information into knowledge in order to provide the foundation for innovation, compliance and accelerated growth. Open Text acquired Germany`s Ixos Software AG in February this year to become the largest ECM software vendor in Europe and the largest pure-play ECM software vendor in the world, according to Bradley West, an analyst with Southwest Securities Inc.
Lava Systems
The Lava Systems Africa (Pty) Ltd team originated in the late 1990s with the objective of becoming a premier supplier of enterprise systems based around knowledge management, document management, records management, image management, collaboration and workflow solutions. The emerging demands that were identified included government process re-engineering, supply chain co-ordination, customer relationship management, e-government and B2B processing.
In support of these business aims, the technology platforms chosen had to enjoy a proven global track record and adhere to open Internet architecture standards and developments. Lava Systems Africa is a South African-based BEE company dedicated to the sales, marketing, support and consultancy founded upon the Livelink product suite from Open Text, a product that the staff have been involved with since 1998.
Lava Systems Africa user base embraces customers from both the private and public sector and includes organisations such as Bateman Projects Limited, Alexander Forbes, the Gauteng Provincial Government and the National Social Security Fund of Uganda.
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