SkyDox and Workshare Join Forces to Launch First Policy-Based Enterprise Collaboration Platform

• £20m growth equity and venture capital investment by SEP and BGF to consolidate Workshare’s market-leading position
• Combined capability will expand Workshare’s existing market-leading document collaboration software by adding cloud-enabled file sharing, synchronization, storage and search
• Workshare to further enhance its long-term, successful relationships with clients by addition of SaaS delivery model
• Software integration teams working with beta customers to deliver combined application in 90 days

12 September 2012

SkyDox, a leader in the provisioning of cloud-enabled file sharing, synchronization and collaboration tools, today announced that it has joined forces with Workshare, a leading provider of document collaboration software. By combining their respective capabilities, they will provide existing and future customers with a unique platform for policy-based, cloud-enabled file sharing and enterprise collaboration.

The combination is supported by growth capital investment from a UK investor group led by Scottish Equity Partners (SEP) and includes Business Growth Fund (BGF).

Mobile working, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), Big Data and the cloud have created a demand for Web 2.0 applications that provide today’s knowledge workers with the features and functionality they expect while also addressing enterprise IP and data security requirements. This combination will allow Workshare to integrate its best-of-breed, policy-based document comparison and metadata removal application with SkyDox’s scalable, highly secure, cloud-enabled file sharing and collaboration platform. The combined organization will enable its current and future customers to improve the efficiency of collaboration across organizational and geographical boundaries, while maintaining full auditability and adherence to internal and external data security and IP mandates.

“Workshare and SkyDox clearly recognize that secure mobile enablement is where the collaboration market is headed and are taking the next logical step towards delivering that to the enterprise,” said Terri McClure, a senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. “The combined entity is uniquely positioned in the market, given the companies’ shared background and exceptionally complementary market offerings. The integrated solution, ultimately, has the potential to raise the industry bar for enterprise collaboration platforms considerably.”

“As the online collaboration services market continues to evolve, the vendors that rise to the top will master the security, compliance, and IT management concerns of IT leaders,” said Forrester Research. “In addition, these vendors will provide IT leaders the flexibility in deployment models they need to serve the unique needs of their business and workforce.”1

The management team will be comprised of a strong combination of executives drawn from the two organizations. SkyDox’s CEO Anthony Foy will be retained as CEO of the joint company. Foy has a deep, longstanding background in the software industry – building customer-centric businesses, improving share-holder value and improving customer satisfaction. Previously Foy served as the Group Managing Director at Interxion, a leading European data center and colocation services company where he was responsible for delivering 22 consecutive quarters of revenue growth which led to an Initial Public Offering. Scott Smull the former CEO of Workshare will continue to work with Workshare and will have multiple key executive responsibilities as part of the Executive Integration Team and spearheading customer advocacy activities. Barrie Hadfield who originally co-founded Workshare and architected the current solution has been appointed CTO. Barrie brings with him a deep understanding of the collaboration space and is well known and respected by a large number of Workshare customers, IT sector thought leaders and the analyst community.

“Organizations are constantly looking for ways to drive operational efficiency, grow revenue and reduce costs. This combination allows Workshare to deliver a more holistic collaborative experience to our customers by blending Web 2.0 technologies with our existing award-winning solutions to provide an unmatched policy-based enterprise collaboration platform,” said Anthony Foy, CEO Workshare. “The combined company is ideally positioned to deliver unique solutions that help employees improve inter and intra company collaboration without sacrificing enterprise information security requirements.”

The integration of SkyDox and Workshare operations is expected to be completed during the second half of 2012, and support and development for SkyDox and Workshare products will continue without interruption.

Torch Partners acted as exclusive financial advisor to SkyDox on the transaction and Linklaters LLP acted as legal advisor to SkyDox.

Resources:

• Members of the media and analyst community, set up a briefing with Workshare CEO Anthony Foy
• Connect with Workshare on its blog, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.
• Note 1. Forrester Research, Inc., THE FORRESTER WAVE™: CLOUD STRATEGIES OF ONLINE COLLABORATION SOFTWARE VENDORS, Q3 2012, August 16, 2012.

About Workshare

Workshare is a next-generation enterprise collaboration platform that facilitates multi-party collaboration across departments, between offices, clients and among partners. Workshare solutions increase team and individual productivity and safeguard confidential information, ultimately securing corporate intellectual property, customer relationships and the organization's reputation.
Today, information professionals in 70 countries rely on Workshare to create and control high-value content through advanced policy enforcement; secure cloud-enabled file sharing, comparison and synchronization features. Workshare fosters the growth of organic and simplified networks for collaboration, providing scalable, highly secure, enterprise-grade service that can be deployed behind the firewall or configured as a private or public cloud to meet customer and compliance requirements. 

For further information visit www.workshare.com or contact our regional press leads:

Workshare North America Press Contacts

Aarti Shah / Joanna DiTrapano
March Communications

Tel: +1 617 960 9878 / +1 617 960 9874

E: Workshare@MarchPR.com

Workshare Europe Press Contacts

Robin Campbell-Burt / Jack Elliott-Frey
Spreckley Partners

T: +44 20 7388 9988 / +44 (0) 77 6561 4383

E: Workshare@Spreckley.co.uk