June 10, 2005 - (HOSTSEARCH.COM) - Web hosting providers looking to expand their offering of hosted services may be interested in Confluence 1.4, the latest version Atlassian Software Systems’ enterprise wiki. The new version has a total of over 450 improvements and over 50 new features. Web hosting providers are beginning to turn to hosting applications as well as websites in order to diversify and increase their value to a customer. There is a galaxy of companies offering hosting but by offering collaborative information services that are very ‘sticky’ hosts can retain their customers as well.
By hosting a practical and usable knowledge management solution a hosting provider can make a customer very reluctant to leave if they have to leave their knowledge management system behind as well because of retraining costs and fears of data conversion problems with a new system.
400 plus organisations are currently using Confluence. Confluence 1.4 introduces a cleaner user interface, a completely rewritten rendering engine, page level permissioning, more opportunities for customisation, more built in macros, 'upload-and-go' plug-in support and much more. "Confluence 1.4 is the culmination of six months of intensive work to make Confluence even more flexible and powerful, but at the same time even easier to use by novices and experts alike", explained Charles Miller, Confluence's lead developer.
Confluence 1.4 delivers a simpler user interface, streamlined to focus on the most important content of the Confluence page while still keeping Confluence's most frequently used features within reach. As a result of the improvements, editing a Confluence page more intuitive, allowing the user to edit, insert attachments, rename and move pages all on the same page. The user interface is more customisable, with improved themes support, user defined space logos and greater dashboard space for user information..
Confluence differentiates itself from other wikis via its existing fine-grained, space-level security. Confluence 1.4 extends this security down to the page level, giving trusted editors the power to hide pages from other users, or to protect them from being edited inadvertently.
Confluence isn't just an application; it's a platform for building your own functionality on top of the wiki. From simple enhancements like a macro that can draw information from other systems in your organisation, through to complex plugins that can interact with the user and respond to changes that occur within Confluence, developers can make Confluence do things that even we haven't thought of yet. Many of Confluence's existing features, such as the SOAP API or the livesearch macro have been written entirely as plugins. And of course, just as commercial licensees of Confluence are entitled to full source access, the source-code of all these plugins are available for you to learn from, or even enhance.
Confluence boasts over 400 customers including notables such as Boeing, Raytheon, BMW, Sony, Pixar, Vodafone, McDonalds, Cisco, Siemens, Citigroup, World Bank, United Nations, MIT, Stanford, making it the most widely deployed commercial wiki in the world today. You can find other organisations in your industry using JIRA here: http://www.atlassian.com/c/PR-C/10641
With 50 fresh new features, there is now an even stronger reason to evaluate Confluence. To download a free, fully functional evaluation, try an online demo or just to find out more, visit: http://www.atlassian.com/c/PR-C/10630
