On the heels of the Enterprise 2.0 Conference, OutStart, a leader in social business software and learning systems, is seeing unprecedented demand for its OutStart Participate social business solution. Participate applies the full potential of Web 2.0 models like communities, collaboration, and user-generated content in a secure, managed environment that makes social media work for the enterprise. Since 2005, leading organizations such as CVS Caremark, DIRECTV, Life Technologies, and TiVo have relied on Participate to power their customer communities and tap into the collective intelligence of their employees and extended enterprise.

Participate is a complete social business platform, which was one of the first solutions to bring online conversations together with the ways (e.g., email, IM, and Microsoft Office) businesses already communicate. Plus, Participate is one of the only social business solutions to seamlessly support both internal and external communities and offer a unique expertise exchange and advanced natural language and guided search, built-in.

PRODUCT HIGHLIGHTS:

Desktop Plug-ins and Connector Services – Participate offers proven Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, email plug-ins to enable users to create and collaborate from wherever they wish to work, out-of-the-box Web and File crawlers, and a Database Connector to seamlessly interact with enterprise applications and content.

Social and Content Services – Participate supports the most popular social channels and approaches, including social networking, blogs and wikis, plus offers bookmarking and even rich media like podcasts.

Mobile Services – Participate leverages OutStart’s wireless expertise to offer class-leading mobile capabilities to deliver information on-demand to users, wherever they are, plus expert location and mobile-managed contacts.

Management Services – To help businesses tap into the potential of communities and social media, and optimize their social channels, the Participate platform includes integrated reporting, activity tracking, member recognition, granular security, workflow, and multi-lingual and multi-community support.

Additional Product Resources

http://www.outstart.com/participate_features_overview.htm

http://www.outstart.com/sbs-platform.htm

EXECUTIVE QUOTES

“The unique value of a solution like Participate is that it offers one collaboration platform for internal and external communities,” said John Ragsdale, vice president of Technology Research for TSIA. “Expertise comes from both inside and outside an organization, of course, and a single platform for unifying all of your audiences is indispensable.”

“Capturing and exchanging know-how happens in many ways, including formal training, participation in online communities, and conversations with experts,” said Massood Zarrabian, president and CEO of OutStart, Inc. “Participate offers organizations of all kinds a platform that harnesses these channels to improve how they sell, support, deploy and service their products.”

REGISTER and Hear DIRECTV Discuss Social Media

Learn more about Participate and the success of our customers, and download our new Use Case White Paper at: http://www.outstart.com/sbs_overview.htm. Also hear from social media pioneer and Participate customer DIRECTV on an upcoming CRM Magazine Web Event, on November 18, 2009. Register for this session at: http://www.destinationcrm.com/Webinars/Details.aspx?EventID=203&src=out4

About OutStart

At OutStart, we’re out to solve a big problem.

Most organizations posses a wealth of underutilized collective intelligence around their products, services and processes. This underutilization negatively impacts employees, customers and partners, costing precious time and money while hindering performance. Said simply, “what your people don’t know will hurt you.”

OutStart’s social business software and learning systems act like a lifeline: connecting people to the know-how, creativity and learning they require to be efficient, effective and agile.

Since its inception in 1999, and backed by leading venture capital firms, OutStart has matured into a profitable and rapidly growing company with an impressive range of customers who are surpassing expectations and delivering exceptional business results. The company is honored to have customers like Autodesk, BB&T, Boeing Company, BT, CVS Caremark, DIRECTV, EDS, Internal Revenue Service, Lufthansa, McDonald’s, MetLife, Prudential, TiVo, Australian Defence Force, U.S. Navy, UK Ministry of Defence, Verizon Wireless and Yum! Brands.