Multimedia collaboration

Centra has unveiled CentraOne 6.0, which it says is the first integrated enterprise multimedia collaboration and knowledge delivery platform capable of meeting the full range of data conferencing and knowledge delivery needs of any organization.

The company says its new platform allows users to easily capture, manage and deliver knowledge to large audiences in a variety of highly structured or unstructured formats. The offering is available through either an ASP subscription service or licensed for on-site deployment at a single price.

CentraOne offers users single-point access to all live online events, self-paced knowledge resources, says the company, and “one click” content authoring capabilities from any Web browser. This enables business users to share knowledge and acquire the skills they need to reach their business goals faster, and at a lower risk and expense to the organization. Centra believes the integration of such capabilities on one platform enables customers to realize the business benefits of e-learning and collaboration more quickly, while retaining the flexibility to leverage third-party tools.

Centra says its new software supports an array of compatible applications that accelerate the creation, management and sharing of knowledge across the organization. It cites as examples software tools for content composition, a centralized repository for managing corporate and personal knowledge assets, engines for search and personalization, features for measurement of individual and organizational competency and user interfaces for the delivery of content in live, interactive or self-service formats.

New features include:

• dynamic support for up to 13 languages on a single system, allowing users to log in and participate in live sessions in their preferred language;

• Satellite Server facility creating a distributed global network of Centra servers to minimize bandwidth impact on an enterprise's network infrastructure;

• full encryption of content, communication and system management data to protect corporate information assets delivered over the Internet;

• dynamic integration of enterprise directory services, such as Windows 2000 Active Directory, providing organizations with single-point user management; and

• integration with Microsoft Outlook, enabling users to scheduleCentra meetings, invite participants, and send-receive meeting and training session notices from within their calendar system.