Interwoven, Inc. announced at the Interwoven GearUp ‘05 conference that Interwoven has become a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and will deliver tightly integrated end-to-end ECM solutions for the information worker. The strategic relationship was unveiled today during a special keynote by Martin Brauns, chairman and CEO of Interwoven, and Rob Bernard, general manager of Global ISVs for Microsoft. Interwoven, building on Microsoft technologies, will enable information workers-starting with professional services firms including legal, accounting, management consulting, corporate legal departments, and IT consulting-to manage the entire content lifecycle through the tight integration of the Interwoven WorkSite Collaborative Document Management, E-Mail Management, and RecordsManager solutions with the Microsoft platform including Office and Windows.

Today, business professionals across the majority of professional services firms create and communicate information in Microsoft Office applications such as Word, Excel, Outlook and SharePoint Portal Server, while Interwoven WorkSite, E-Mail Management and RecordsManager are already used by more than 1,000 professional services companies for Enterprise Content Management. Interwoven will offer high velocity end-to-end ECM solutions for the creation, storing, communication, collaboration and archiving of content based on the Microsoft Windows and Office Systems.

The alliance announced today is being welcomed by professional services companies such as Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, the world’s fifth-largest law firm and an existing customer of both companies. “We see tremendous value for our firm in the strategic relationship between Interwoven and Microsoft,” said David Hamilton, IT director at Freshfields. “We use both Interwoven WorkSite and Microsoft Office extensively across our organization, and from an immediate perspective we are planning to roll-out Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, Microsoft Office 2003 and Microsoft Windows XP in combination with Interwoven WorkSite 8. Having our two main software suppliers working even more closely together will make this a very seamless and straightforward implementation and will help us simplify our IT operations and future development roadmaps. This relationship is a winning combination for customers.”

“Expanding our relationship will benefit our customers,” said Brian Zeve, managing director, Professional Services Industry Group at Microsoft Corporation. “By working together, we will offer further simplicity and opportunity for innovation for our law firm customers.”

High-Velocity ECM solutions for Professional Services

In today’s fast-paced and highly-competitive business climate, organizations are demanding highly-targeted business solutions that can be quickly and easily adopted without disrupting current business processes. By taking optimal advantage of Microsoft’s technologies and Interwoven’s industry expertise, Interwoven can deliver High Velocity ECM Solutions that professional services firms can rapidly adopt to address specific business processes for immediate benefit.

“We are excited to announce that Interwoven is a Gold Certified Partner,” said Rob Bernard, general manager, Global ISVs at Microsoft. “We believe that the strong integration between Interwoven’s solutions and Microsoft’s platforms and technologies will enable customers to realize even more value from both their Microsoft and Interwoven investments. We are also excited that Interwoven will be releasing new Web Parts for SharePoint Portal Server this fall. We believe that customers using Worksite along with SharePoint Portal Server will be able to realize significant gains in productivity.”

“Interwoven’s strategy is to deliver the most comprehensive ECM solutions for information workers,” said Martin Brauns, chairman and CEO, Interwoven. “Customers are looking for a truly end-to-end solution to mange the entire content lifecycle—streamlining their platform and solutions strategy—and we are addressing this with our alliance with Microsoft. Our strategic relationship will bring value to our mutual customers implementing ECM solutions.”