Realcom Connects MS Entertainment & Devices Product Teams

Realcom, a provider of enterprise software applications that enable organisations to capture and leverage enterprise information and expertise, has announced the selection of Realcom’s AskMe knowledge management and enterprise social networking suite to knowledge-enable Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices Group. The solution allows employees to discover and share knowledge, locate experts and discuss ideas across the E&D Hardware organisations without being constrained by organisational structure, geographical location or time zones.

The AskMe implementation, known within Microsoft as ‘Converge’, will create a virtual world in which individuals, teams and groups can meet and interact. Converge will continue to remove the artificial walls that often grow around sub-sets of a division, allowing developers, program managers, testers, and others from every part of the Hardware group to share information and ideas. And, users will be able to access information from any other user – so a program manager in Zune will be able to interact with a developer from Xbox, while a PC hardware designer will be able to chat with surface testers, and so on.

“This is a perfect example of how the AskMe solutions provide value to organisations, who want to leverage the information, knowledge and expertise that is resident in their systems and people, and make it actionable,” said Steve Hanson, VP of Sales and Marketing for Realcom, maker of the AskMe knowledge management products. “The knowledge and expertise is already in the organisation. If you can locate and leverage it, you can apply it to solve real business issues such as meeting time-to-market windows or delivering on aggressive quality standards. AskMe solutions allow our customers to do just that.”