Perforce Software Unveils Commons, Bringing the Power of Enterprise Version Management to Business Teams

Key Points:

• An affordable and easy-to-use product from Perforce, Commons extends the power of the renowned Perforce versioning engine to business teams, enabling employees across the enterprise to more productively collaborate on any type of file.
• Document-related collaboration issues are pervasive, costly and are often the result of systems and processes that do not have adequate version management
• Available from www.perforce.com, Perforce Commons is completely free for up to 20 users and for all existing users of Perforce Software Version Management products.

ALAMEDA, Calif. (March 26, 2013) – Perforce Software today announced Perforce Commons^TM, an easy-to-use but powerful document collaboration tool that ensures business professionals can more productively work together on files. Commons supports all types of files—from the largest binary objects to the smallest image files—and has powerful merge capabilities for the most common document types, including Microsoft Word and PowerPoint. Because it keeps track of the complete history of any file, it saves business teams significant time and trouble in finding, revising and collaborating on documents.

Document collaboration issues, such as merging multiple edits into a single document or confusion over the most current version of a file, occur as documents pass through many workers and many versions. These issues occur frequently and take a sizeable toll on productivity. In related news, Perforce today announced the results of a study on the impact of document collaboration issues (See “Perforce Study Reveals That 83% of Knowledge Workers Lose Time to Document Versioning Issues Each Day”).

“We've entrusted Perforce with our most valuable IP, and over the years we've put it to every test of scalability and performance by having it manage the versioning for teams distributed around the world," said Bruce Painter, software engineering manager for Amdocs, a global leader of customer experience systems and services. "With the addition of Commons, we're now extending Perforce across our organization to include our business teams and less technical staff. Commons ensures that everyone has access to the right file when they need it, whether it’s our source code or a PowerPoint presentation.”

The Commons Good

• Ease of Use – Drag-and-drop files and follow clear prompts to collaborate without conflict. The simplicity of Commons ensures user adoption.
• Conflict-free Collaboration – Colleagues can work in parallel without writing over each other’s contributions.
• An End to Content Chaos – Files are easy to find and share, enabling users to always have the most up-to-date version.
• Project Management – Commons makes it easy to create, share and manage team workspaces.
• Industrial-Strength – Commons give administrators and operations teams the security, auditability and compliance they need for their valuable IP.
• Sharing – Sharing work is easy—generate links to content that can be embedded in email, wikis or other applications.
• Extend the Power of Perforce – Commons makes it easy for business teams to access and version files alongside the contributions of technical staff. Perforce customers now have a single source of truth for all files and documents enterprise-wide.

"When employees turn to file sharing and document collaboration systems outside their secure application infrastructure, alarms go off increasingly for IT and operations teams," said Melinda Ballou, program director for application lifecycle management & executive strategies, IDC. "Their concerns for security and compliance grow every time they read about a data leak on a hosted application. Management strategies must evolve commensurate to this flow of information and business and technical risks raised."

Powerful New Features

• File Valet – The File Valet ensures work is never wasted or lost. It tracks if a file has been edited, moved, deleted or altered; who made the change; what version that person was working on; when the change was made and why. Users can drop files anywhere in Commons and the File Valet will guide them to the right outcome.
• Manage Versions – See the differences between any two versions of a document at a glance. Commons alerts users to any conflicts and helps them through the resolution process.
• Microsoft Word and PowerPoint Merge – Commons can automatically merge different versions of a Word or PowerPoint file into a single clean document or presentation. There’s no need to manually review the changes made by multiple contributors.
• Communication – Commons incorporates activity streams throughout the user experience. Users can make comments and add notes which are permanently stored in the file history and visible to other members of the workspace.
• Follow the Things That are Most Important – Commons allows users to follow a file or folder and notifies them whenever something changes.
• Get Other People’s Attention – @mentions enable users to call another person’s attention to their work. Simply add @username to a comment and colleagues receive an alert that directs them to the file and comment thread.
• Mobile- and Tablet-Friendly Client – Its responsive design lets users use Commons on any screen size.

"We've found that version management issues are the cause of most collaboration problems,” said Christopher Seiwald, CEO and founder of Perforce. “And yet none of the existing approaches for document collaboration put enough emphasis on doing versioning the right way. Having solved these sort of problems for developers working in the world's most complex collaboration environments, we're now glad to extend our expertise to business users working on everyday documents. Commons gives them an easy way to take the conflict out of collaborating on any type of file."

Free for 20 Users

Commons is available today from www.perforce.com. Teams of up to 20 users can use Commons completely free of charge. It is also free to for all existing users of Perforce Software Version Management products. Commons pricing starts at $12 per month for new users with quantity discounts available. For more information about Commons, visit www.perforce.com/product/commons.