Office 365 and SharePoint: Layer2 Awarded Microsoft Gold ISV Partner Status

HAMBURG, GERMANY, May 27, 2011 (Press-News.org) Layer2, a leading European provider of web parts, extensions and solutions for Microsoft SharePoint and Office 365, today announces it has been awarded the Microsoft Certified Gold ISV Partner status in the renewed Microsoft Partner Network again. The Gold ISV certification requires the highest level of competence and expertise with Microsoft technologies and products, and the distinguished partners who achieve this level are recognized by Microsoft as elite partners who provide best-in-class software products.

High level of customer satisfaction with SharePoint add-ons

The Microsoft Partner Network is designed to empower solution providers to succeed in today's business environment. By achieving the prestigious Gold competency, participating companies are provided with a rich set of benefits, including increased customer visibility through branding and accessibility, training and support. The partnership with Microsoft enables Layer2 to provide the highest level of satisfaction to customers leveraging Microsoft products and technologies, especially Microsoft SharePoint and Office 365. Layer2's software solutions allow users to unleash the power of Microsoft SharePoint especially in the fields of data integration, collaborative knowledge management and social networking.

Data integration with SharePoint on premise and in the cloud

The Layer2 Business Data List Connector for SharePoint 2007 and 2010 (BDLC) connects native SharePoint lists directly to almost any external data sources - in just minutes, codeless and optionally with write-back. All common SharePoint list features are available, including SharePoint notifications and workflows in case of external data changes. The BDLC solves many known issues that still exist with the SharePoint 2007 Business Data Catalog and the SharePoint 2010 Business Connectivity Services. Additionally foreign key relationships between data sources can be kept for SharePoint lists with the Key Value Lookup Column add-on.

The Layer2 Cloud Connector for Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and Office 365 connects local line-of-business data to cloud-based or any other internally or externally hosted SharePoint- easy to connect, secure and always up-to-date. Content stored in almost any corporate data sources, e.g. databases, files, ERP/CRM/ECMS or other legacy platforms and on-premise applications like SharePoint, Exchange or Active Directory etc. is replicated to native SharePoint lists into the cloud via secure web services. While the existing integration tools for SharePoint are often not made for cloud-based scenarios out-of-the-box, the SharePoint Cloud Connector was especially developed based on the new Microsoft Client Side Object Model API to solve the specific challenges of disconnected systems in the cloud without any direct access to corporate business data and very restricted feature customization capabilities.

Knowledge Management Suite can close gaps in SharePoint 2010

The Knowledge Management Suite for Microsoft SharePoint 2010 (KMS) encourage knowledge workers to take advantage of the brand-new SharePoint 2010 Collaborative Knowledge Management and Social Networking features by making it as easy as possible to manage tags, to tag content and to use tags for knowledge browsing, navigation, content discovery and search. The KMS provides add-ons for taxonomy export, import and deployment, SKOS support, tag rules, content-based tag suggestions and auto-tagging, tree-style and glossary-style tag navigations, tag clouds and search-driven applications to automatically display related content.

SharePoint Meeting Manager - A corporate meeting management life-cycle application

The SharePoint Meeting Manager adds often required features to the SharePoint out-of-the-box meeting management capabilities, including automatic meeting-minutes generation and other features especially required for corporate meeting management.

Great business opportunities for Layer2 Partners and Resellers

With its cost-free Partner Program Layer2 offers all partners a license discount of 30%, valid leads in their region, free NFR software versions for internal use and priority support for implementing and reselling Layer2 solutions to their customers. All products can be downloaded after registration as a completely free shareware version at the vendor's web site http://www.layer2.de/en/.

About Layer2

As a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and ISV based in Hamburg (Germany), Layer2 is one of the leading providers of Microsoft SharePoint extensions in Europe with a major focus on Data Integration, Collaborative Knowledge Management and Social Networking. Layer2 has also been known as a reliable partner to customers in Central Europe, offering additional consulting and services in the fields of SharePoint, .NET programming and IT infrastructure for almost 20 years.