IntraLinks® has just announced the general availability of IntraLinks Courier™, the only enterprise-grade solution for ad-hoc information sharing. We designed IntraLinks Courier to enable organizations to extend important enterprise security and compliance controls to more frequent, less formal communications in which information is shared with business partners and customers outside the firewall. It’s as simple to use as email, and allows business users to easily share files as large as 6 GB. Try it for yourself by signing up for a free trial.

A CEO has business meetings in London and Hong Kong, and in the mean time his company is acquiring a manufacturing center in South America. He is working with bankers in New York and Brazil to close the deal. In the interim the deal documents need to be reviewed and exchanged between all parties securely across borders, time zones, and teams. Luckily for the CEO he has an iPad®, so he can access and review documents throughout the deal regardless of whether he is in a taxi, on a train, or in his hotel room between meetings to ensure that the deal runs smoothly. 

I recently attended the 2011 World Economic Forum on Latin America in Brazil. The theme of the conference focused on sustainable business growth in Latin America and creating long-term economic stability. Brazil has one of the fastest growing world economies, and at a time when global interest in the region is ramping up, what better place to discuss its future economic outlook? The country has attracted strong attention from the rest of the world, resulting in increasing cross-border deal flow. A recent article appeared in the Financial Times stating that the volume of mergers and acquisitions in 2010 reached nearly $153bn compared with almost $60bn a year earlier. Banks like JP Morgan and Citibank are also staffing up in the region to support increasing business.

The below article is just one example of security risks associated with sending sensitive information via email. In the past two weeks, I counted hundreds of articles on email security issues. One thing is clear. These are not isolated incidences. The fact that, at the click of a mouse, we can instantly transmit critical data has desensitized us to the security risks associated with sending sensitive information via email, webmail, and file transfer programs.

The term “collaboration” is rapidly becoming a misunderstood corporate buzz word as it applies to an ever-growing set of use cases. Collaboration is internally focused; it involves external parties. It’s ad hoc; it’s structured. When industry pundits discuss collaboration solutions, what should you pay attention to?