by CIO Staff

Six Apart Intros Enterprise Blogging Tool

News
Jul 12, 20062 mins
Enterprise Applications

Software developer Six Apart introduced a blogging product in the United States designed for enterprise use, the company announced on Wednesday.

Six Apart expects Movable Type Enterprise to offer an attractive way for companies to improve internal communications and knowledge sharing. Its low cost means the offering could replace other software tools designed to deliver similar collaboration and content-management benefits, Six Apart said.

At the low end, a license costs $4,000 with the option of an additional $2,000 yearly fee for customer support. The support fee includes product updates and a two-hour response time to questions.

The software includes support for lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP) authentication, Oracle 10g database support, user interface customization, and feeds that notify administrators and authors of blog activity.

Movable Type Enterprise also includes new features that Six Apart introduced on Wednesday as part of Movable Type 3.3, the latest version of the software for bloggers. The new capabilities include tag support, a widget manager, activity logs for administrators and customizable search results pages. Administrators can also choose from hundreds of page designs.

Six Apart announced in March that it would begin more aggressively targeting business customers. At the time, it introduced TypePad Business Class, a hosted service for companies that want to use blogs to communicate with their audience or customers. Six Apart began offering Movable Type Enterprise in Japan in March. Wednesday’s announcement delivers the software and support to U.S. companies.

Enterprises are just beginning to use blogs to enable worker collaboration and project management. Other developers that offer blog tools for enterprises include iUpload and Near-Time. Both companies combine blogging and wiki capabilities into an enterprise product.

-Nancy Gohring, IDG News Service (Dublin Bureau)

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