iPad PowerPoint App Swims Into The Enterprise

Tons of Tablets

Nothing seems to slow the Apple iPad's popularity, despite the fact that the tablet lacks many applications that corporate users can't live without.

In particular, PowerPoint-compatibility has been an issue with the market-leading tablet from Apple. But this week, online presentation company Brainshark announced the availability of SlideShark Team Edition, which builds on the free SlideShark iPad app for individuals that the company announced last fall.

That free app has proved to be quite popular, one of the most downloaded productivity apps on the Apple App Store. The app lets the legion of PowerPoint fans view and show .ppt presentations on the iPad with fonts, graphics, colors, and animations preserved.

Building on that popularity, SlideShark Team Edition provides companies with powerful, multi-user functionality--including centralized content administration, team-wide access to content, and usage analytics.

The new Brainshark app comes at an opportune time for Apple. After years of playing second (or fifth) fiddle to Microsoft in the workplace, Apple has seen its iPad become a standard business tool. According to an IDG Connect survey, more than 50% of managers with iPads say they always use the device at work. Almost 80% of survey respondents cop to using the iPad for business when outside the office.

[ Do consumer devices belong on the network? See Bring Your Own Device: IT Control Struggles Continue. ]

"SlideShark Team Edition represents the next, natural evolution of our product and comes in response to user demand," Brainshark CEO Joe Gustafson said in a statement. "With SlideShark Team Edition, we now look forward to helping teams better access and manage their PowerPoint content--and, of course, view or present it properly anytime, on-the-go on their iPads."

The SlideShark Team Edition features include:

-- Shared team content: Users can securely access, view, and present PowerPoint presentations that authorized administrators and team members have uploaded and designated for shared use.

-- Central management: Administrators can add or remove users, change user permissions, manage billing centrally, and assign administrative controls.

-- Usage analytics: Account administrators can view online and download reports that show which users are accessing and viewing content, and which presentations are most and least popular.

-- Team storage: Teams benefit from a decent amount of space for shared content and personal user content, with 5 GB of total storage, plus more as required.

-- Reliability and security: SlideShark Team Edition users take advantage of Brainshark's highly secure, reliable, and scalable enterprise-class cloud computing infrastructure.

"As the enterprise workforce continues to go mobile, the need for applications like SlideShark Team Edition continues to grow," Ira M. Weinstein, senior analyst and partner at Wainhouse Research, said in a statement. "SlideShark Team Edition solves two common road-warrior problems -- the need to easily view PowerPoint presentations on a personal or corporate-issued iPad, and the need for centralized management and controlled access to corporate content. SlideShark has earned its place on my iPad's home page."

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