MANCHESTER, NH--(Marketwire - April 15, 2010) - Newforma®, a software company addressing the project information management (PIM) needs of architecture, engineering and construction firms, announced today that, following the successful completion of an early release program with 11 Newforma customers, Newforma® Project Center Seventh Edition will be generally available in late April, 2010. Seventh Edition offers more efficient, robust indexing of a customers' entire company network, and expands email management capabilities beyond Microsoft Office Outlook to include Novell Groupwise, Google Gmail, Lotus Notes and Domino Server, and other email platforms employing IMAP-compatible servers. In addition, Seventh Edition incorporates numerous customer-requested enhancements that make the software easier to use and administer.
A fundamental change in underlying technology accounts for many of the improvements in Newforma Project Center Seventh Edition. For example, Seventh Edition employs Newforma's own advanced indexing system based on the MySQL relational database management system with the result that the software can index five times more data with a single indexing server, as well as offer the following benefits:
- Increased scalability
- Improved performance, particularly for remote office and VPN usage
- Increased flexibility in providing access to information via Newforma Info Exchange
- Data access via standard SQL reporting tools, enabling development of custom reports
- Virtual server deployment
One of the Newforma customers participating in the early release program was Affiliated Engineers, Inc., a mechanical, electrical and piping/plumbing engineering firm of 700 people in 11 offices in the United States and Kingdom of Bahrain. Project Engineer Matt Tosto said that, before Seventh Edition, the firm was faced with installing a second server to index the nearly three terabytes of data on the firm's network. "Previously the processors were at 10 percent utilization, but the indexes themselves just couldn't keep up," Tosto said. "Seventh Edition is running on the same hardware as Sixth Edition, but the hardware is being utilized much more efficiently, averaging between 40 percent and 50 percent utilization, dramatically increasing the effective capacity of each Newforma Project Center Server. Our most popular Newforma Project Center functions are Search and Email Management. The fact that we don't have to install a second indexing server to keep up with user demand is a huge win for us."
Newforma Chief Executive Officer Ian Howell said early release validation has been essential to Newforma's ongoing success. "Only after extensive pre-release work by our engineering, services, quality assurance and support teams do we have customers validate a release in their live production environments. They get a head start on the newest, productivity-enhancing abilities of the software, and we continue our practice of doing everything possible to make sure our software is built for the ways that real-life AEC professionals work. We extend our thanks to all of the Seventh Edition early release program participants for their help to verify product readiness for full commercial release."
Easier to use and administer
Boston-based Bruner/Cott & Associates is a 50-person planning and design firm best known for its achievements in adaptive re-use. Senior Project Manager Andrew Enright, Registered Architect, LEED AP, is a contract administration (CA) specialist who uses Newforma Project Center to streamline management of submittals, RFIs and other CA information. He says Seventh Edition improvements have slashed the time required to generate logs and reports. "The Newforma solution captures a wealth of detail related to CA," Enright said. "Seventh Edition includes the ability to save and restore views of the CA activity centers that show only the selected data we want to review. This one feature will save us even more hours over the course of the year."
Seventh Edition includes many improvements that streamline administration of the software itself. AEI's Tosto says, "I can now rename projects on the fly. I can also change locations of project files on the servers on the fly. These tasks used to be multi-step processes. These Seventh Edition upgrades make an administrator's life a boatload easier."
Many of the customer suggestions that have been included in this new release are focused on making the user interface clearer and workflows more productive. For example:
- User interfaces for Document Set and Compare functions are easier to use.
- The Info Exchange home page provides quicker access to projects, as well as a summary of upcoming and overdue items.
- Enhanced submittal and RFI workflows now accommodate both multi-discipline and contractor work processes.
- Incoming submittals and RFIs that external team members create in Newforma Info Exchange show up in the appropriate Submittal or RFI activity center as pending incoming items, simplifying the workflow.
- Out-of-office users can now access and search project email via Newforma Info Exchange
- Project email addresses have been added which, among many uses, allows smartphone users to file messages in projects as they send them.
- The Newforma Viewer capabilities have been expanded to include display of drawings created in AutoCAD 2010 and AutoCAD 2011.
More detailed information about what's new in Seventh Edition can be found at www.newformant.com.
About Newforma
Newforma is a software company serving architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) organizations worldwide, and the owners they serve. Its mission is to develop and market project information management (PIM) solutions which improve responsiveness to clients, mitigate risk, streamline project execution, raise productivity and facilitate integrated project delivery (IPD). Newforma® Project Center, Newforma's flagship product, is the industry's first comprehensive PIM solution to organize and share project information, drive accountability, raise transparency and streamline project delivery processes. Newforma Project Center is currently implemented on over 300,000 projects in industry-leading AEC firms. For more information about Newforma, visit www.newforma.com, or phone +1 603-625-6212.
© 2010 Newforma, Inc. Newforma is a registered trademark of Newforma, Inc, in the United States and in other countries. All other brands or products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and should be treated as such.
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