Content manager Interwoven touts apps

Interwoven--one of the leading makers of software that lets companies manage their documents, software code and other text assets--announced new products Tuesday intended to broaden the market for such software.

Gartner analyst Mark Gilbert says Interwoven's new offerings make it more viable in a market demanding broader functions. see commentary

Interwoven primarily competes with Documentum in the market for content management software (CMS), programs that allow businesses to create a central place for workers to share, manipulate and store documents. For example, using a CMS program, people from different departments working on a sales report could check out the document, make changes, and save the changed document, without having to juggle multiple versions.

To date, CMS products have been broad software "platforms"--or general specifications that allow for the creation of applications that address specific needs. As such, they've required extensive customization by corporate users. Interwoven hopes to make CMS functions more accessible with new applications such as TeamDoc, which offers basic CMS functions in a focused form that most businesses can implement quickly without rejiggering.

Kevin Cochrane, vice president of product management for Interwoven, said the goal with TeamDoc is to replace messy public folders on corporate networks with collaboration tools that make it easy to locate and alter documents.

"It's bringing the benefits of content management to a group of (rank and file) users that haven't been addressed yet," Cochrane said. "It helps make them more productive."

Jeanette Sing, an analyst for investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort, said the document search and approval features in TeamDoc will save workers enough time that Interwoven can make a good return-on-investment (ROI) argument to potential customers.

"It did make a lot of sense to me that if you use this product, it can save you a lot of money," Sing said. "I think they're going to pitch the ROI argument and faster time to implementation."

The other new Interwoven products are TeamCode, a collaboration tool aimed at software developers who need to share the code they're working on, and TeamPortal, an application for adding collaborative content to corporate portals.

TeamDoc is available now for $49,000. TeamPortal is also available now at prices ranging from $150,000 to $300,000. TeamCode will be released next quarter at a price to be announced.