Canto has released Cumulus Sites, a new product that bridges Web site ease of use with the power and control of Cumulus digital asset management.

Cumulus Sites offers a live asset delivery platform organisations can stylise to suit their identities, and customise to suit their file sharing and distribution requirements.

"Customers want seamless integration between their files and websites," explains Canto CEO Ulrich Knocke.

"Cumulus Sites enables them to manage files using Cumulus, while making files available to website visitors in real time, based on any permissions they define."

Cumulus Sites features a "login-free" mode that offers instant "guest" level access. Common permissions for guests include browsing of approved files, and downloads of watermarked on-the-fly variants, though any access level can be defined. Cumulus account holders can gain higher access levels through an "anytime" login option. User actions can be tracked for usage statistics reporting from within Cumulus.

Sites users can share one or more files using a collection link feature. Links can include passwords and expiration dates, and they may be emailed or even added to PDFs, YouTube/ Facebook/Twitter pages, etc. for "viral" distribution benefits. Cumulus accounts are not required to access files shared via collection links.

"Collection links are based on personal collections users create," explains Steffen Setzer, Canto's director of marketing. "This enables users to easily re-send links to files they distribute often, such as product brochures, support materials, etc. This alone is a powerful new benefit offered by Cumulus Sites."

The appearance of Cumulus Sites can be easily modified using layout options inside Cumulus. Additional basic configurations are defined via XML, while advanced configuration changes can be performed via CSS and JSP.

Cumulus Sites also supports Canto's new "Cumulus-Direct URL" technology, which enables organisations to provide downloads and previews of Cumulus assets from URLs embedded in websites. Cumulus-Direct URLs prevent customers from having to upload updated files to website directories, because Cumulus always serves the most recent version. Downloads and previews are tracked for usage statistics reporting from within Cumulus.

Cumulus Sites is a standard component of new Cumulus Workgroup, Enterprise &
Complete systems. Cumulus Sites requires v8.1.1 which was released concurrently. Sites is available as an add-on to previous Cumulus systems updated to 8.1.1.

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