REDMOND, Wash., Aug. 18, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Addressing the
unique document management and collaboration requirements of
today's legal professionals, Microsoft Corp. on Monday announced a
preview version of Matter Center for Office 365 at the
International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) annual conference
in Nashville, Tenn. Matter Center,
an intuitive document management and collaboration solution catered
toward law firms and law departments, works seamlessly with Office
365 and offers legal professionals a way to easily find, organize
and collaborate on files without leaving the familiar Microsoft
productivity tools they use the most.
"Microsoft has built a security-enhanced, cloud-based document
management application that allows our professionals to quickly
locate and collaborate on documents with our counsel from virtually
anywhere," said John Frank, vice
president and deputy general counsel at Microsoft. "We've decided
to make this solution more broadly available at the request of our
outside counsel, who want to utilize it in their own
environments."
Matter Center for Office 365 offers benefits to both legal
professionals and IT.
Valuable benefits for legal professionals
Matter Center gives legal professionals security-enhanced access
to the information they need — virtually anywhere, anytime, and
from virtually any device.
- Your briefcase in the cloud. Matter Center works with
OneDrive for Business, providing 1 TB of individual storage and a
personal briefcase, which automatically synchronizes your documents
so you can access them online and offline from virtually any
device.
- Get more work done together. Share your files with others,
both within and outside your firm. Work simultaneously on your
documents with other attorneys, and easily track changes with
automatic version control.
- Robust matter and document search. Easily search
and find matters and related documents directly within Outlook or
Word. Track or pin frequently used or recent matters and documents.
- Integrated and automated document management. Drag, drop
and save emails and attachments from Outlook into the right matter.
Tagging and sharing each document separately is no longer
necessary, as the matter documents are automatically saved with the
right metadata, permissions and version control.
- Security-enhanced access and permission
controls. Users can be granted or excluded access to a matter.
All subsequent documents associated with the matter will inherit
the same permissions, thereby reducing the worry about ethical
walls and data leakage.
- Reduce overhead and maximize time with clients. Matter
Center helps you to reduce the amount of administrative resources
needed to support a document management system, enabling you to
spend more time working with clients.
Maximizing ROI for IT professionals
Matter Center offers a way to begin your journey to the cloud,
enabling you to maximize the ROI on your existing infrastructure
with enterprise-grade security, management and administrative
controls.
- Deploy based on your terms. Matter Center can be
deployed in the cloud, in a hybrid scenario, or as part of an
on-premises SharePoint environment based upon a firm's needs and
existing infrastructure.
- Maximize ROI on existing IT investments. Adding Matter
Center to existing on-premises solutions such as SharePoint and
Exchange will help you realize greater value from a unified
productivity platform.
- Built on an industrial strength platform. Matter Center
includes enterprise-grade security, management and administrative
controls, and is compliant with multiple industry standards.
Permission control and taxonomy are centrally managed and applied
automatically; legal professionals don't need to manage with the
back-end settings.
- Always up to date. By deploying in the cloud, you can
reduce the cost and time of upgrades and migrations as Office 365
is always up to date. No patches or software upgrades are
necessary, and Microsoft frequently adds new value and
capabilities.
- Higher adoption rates. Matter Center has an intuitive
interface, simplifies processes, and can be accessed directly from
Microsoft Office products that are used every day. This tool
satisfies the most important needs of users, while reducing
training and support efforts.
"Matter Center for Office 365 is the product of months of
collaboration between Microsoft's Legal and Corporate Affairs (LCA)
division, outside law firms, and our Office 365 product engineering
teams," said Tejas Mehta, group
product manager for Matter Center at Microsoft. "We are very
excited to bring Matter Center to market in the near future."
Matter Center for Office 365 is available in a limited preview.
Interested customers can learn more about participating in a beta
program at http://www.microsoft.com/mattercenter. More
information about Matter Center and other solutions for customers
in the legal vertical can be found at
http://www.microsoft.com/legalproductivity.
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT") is the worldwide
leader in software, services, devices and solutions that help
people and businesses realize their full potential.
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SOURCE Microsoft Corp.