| Centra announced that it has shipped CentraOne™ 6.0, 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, from Web meetings and broadcasts to training and content creation and management. With the CentraOne platform, users can easily capture, manage and deliver knowledge to large audiences in a variety of highly structured or unstructured formats. Tightly integrated and available through an ASP subscription service or licensed for on-site deployment at a single price, the combination of these capabilities in one platform is unique in helping enterprises increase communication and knowledge transfer become more agile and responsive, while simultaneously lowering total cost of ownership.
While the past year has witnessed the heightened use of Web meeting services in business – as a way to achieve immediate travel cost savings and facilitate communication with customers and field locations – the ability to attain long-term competitive advantage lies in an organization’s capacity to share its ubiquitous knowledge assets over the Web more broadly and securely. Tactical buying of “Web meetings” at the department level is rapidly giving way to a strategic view of collaboration and knowledge delivery in which a growing number of business executives and IT departments today are looking to standardize on integrated platforms for digital collaboration that align corporate business objectives and maximize total return.
“As companies move to align their corporate collaboration strategies with definitive business objectives, there is critical pressure to deploy a solution quickly and widely. Yet, the use of stand-alone Web meeting, virtual classroom, or online conferences technologies simply isn’t enough to compete in today’s knowledge intensive business environment,” said Leon Navickas, Centra Chairman and CEO. “The ability to address a wide range of live and self-paced experiences, such as those provided by the CentraOne platform, gives an organization choices on how best to accelerate the delivery and management of knowledge for maximum business advantage, empowering customers, partners and employees with the information and skills they need – when and how they need it – to respond and adapt quickly to changing business environments.”
According to the Gartner Group, two events of 2001 dramatically illustrated the cost of not having an integrated strategy for effectively managing and delivering knowledge assets digitally: the collapse of new economy business models and the terrorist attacks on the United States. The study shows that both events share in common the failure to effectively exploit information that would have provided better decision-making. “Enlightened enterprises, no longer able to take for granted the intellectual assets on which they rely, are examining more closely how to operate productively in a distributed and interconnected world.”
Comprehensive Platform for Data Conferencing and Knowledge Management
The CentraOne 6.0 platform is the culmination of over seven years of engineering, in-market experience, and continual innovation based on customer requirements. More than a real-time collaboration platform, CentraOne offers users single-point access to all live online events, self-paced knowledge resources, 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. By integrating a rich set of capabilities on one platform, customers realize the business benefits of eLearning and collaboration more quickly, while retaining the flexibility to leverage third-party tools of choice through integration of CentraOne with existing business systems and IT platforms.
Only CentraOne supports an array of compatible applications that accelerate the creation, management, and sharing of knowledge across the organization, including easy-to-use 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.
By making these tools and applications widely accessible to any user, CentraOne allows business professionals across the organization to collaborate in the knowledge delivery process as subject matter experts, teachers, and contributors. Using CentraOne’s content creation tools, for example, anyone can quickly author and publish interactive content and knowledge objects through an easy-to-use extension to Microsoft® PowerPoint®. Users can then access CentraOne’s searchable online catalog to quickly browse content and recordings by category, title, and type, making knowledge and information centrally available to everyone 24x7.
“The CentraOne platform represents the next step in bridging live collaboration experiences with knowledge management,” said David Blattenberger, Senior Technologist for Tyco Safety Products Training & Development Department, one of more than a dozen participants in the CentraOne international beta program. “Tyco’s commitment to building a powerful knowledge exchange that can support both the eLearning and collaboration needs of more than 75,000 employees worldwide, regardless of location or time, makes CentraOne an especially great fit for us. Centra’s desire to meet the needs of its customers is very evident, with initiatives like release 6.0. I am looking forward to implementing this new version on our servers.”
Architected for the Global Enterprise
CentraOne 6.0 is the only eLearning and business collaboration platform able to meet the scalability, integration, security, and globalization requirements of major corporations today. Architected for the global enterprise, CentraOne provides a seamless extension to existing infrastructure with significant new features including:
- 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 Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Active Directory™, providing organizations with single-point user management;
- Integration with Microsoft® Outlook®, enabling users to schedule Centra meetings, invite participants, and send-receive meeting and training session notices from within their calendar system.
CentraOne Pricing
Available immediately, elements of the CentraOne 6.0 platform, add-on modules, and applications can be licensed separately, or together as a complete eLearning and collaboration environment that can be installed on-site or accessed through Centra’s secure ASP. Pricing starts at $6,000 (U.S.) per year for an individual eMeeting room ASP subscription to $77,500 (U.S.) for purchased 100-seat license configurations of the full CentraOne platform. Volume discounts are available. Customers avoid additional teleconference charges by using Centra’s high-quality voice over the Internet audio.
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