US startup Almond Labs has launched a  turn-key extranet solution for SharePoint collaboration with clients and partners outside the organisation, Identity Service Application (ALISA).

According to Forrester Research, 82% of organizations use SharePoint for internal document collaboration but only 32% effectively extend the reach of SharePoint to their clients and partners.

The company says implementing extranets is cumbersome, expensive and risky. ALISA eases the burden of external user authentication and management. 

“Organizations seeking to build an extranet to collaborate with external users face several challenges – account and password management overhead, lack of visibility after content is shared, security concerns and technology costs,” said James Landrum, a co-founder of Almond Labs. “We built ALISA to provide end-to-end tools that address these problems.”

The product empowers Site Owners to share content instantly using an intuitive user interface. The effort associated with basic account management for External Users is removed by allowing them to register and log in using their existing cloud identity (Google, Facebook, Live ID, etc). 

ALISA is compatible with SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2013. Key features include: 

• - Support for popular cloud identity providers
• - Self-Service tools for profile management and content discovery
• - Simple sharing options to promote collaboration
• - Powerful governance tools for administrators
• - Real-time reporting for site owners and administrators
• - Secure sharing through temporary access authorizations
• - Dynamic security roles based on user information
• - Extensible branding options

http://almondlabs.com/ALISA/