Allen & Overy Chooses Percussion Software’s Rhythmyx for Web Content Management Solution to Drive Online Ambitions and Extend Information Management

London - 27 June 2005 - Magic circle legal practice, Allen & Overy, has chosen Percussion Software’s Rhythmyx for Web Content Management (WCM) solution to extend the level of content management to include how the global firm manages and publishes information to the company’s intranet, internet and customer extranet sites. Rhythmyx was selected following a competitive tender and will be used in conjunction with the law firm’s existing document management system. The WCM solution will be instrumental to the success of a number of web-based projects that Allen & Overy is currently planning which will benefit fee-earners and drive higher revenues through more efficient work practices.

Allen & Overy is an international legal practice with 4,800 fee earners in twenty-five offices across twenty countries. The law firm’s intranet site currently features over 2,000 pages of content and each country and global practice area has individual internet sites with individual content.

Rhythmyx fits extremely well with Allen & Overy’s publishing model. The firm has created a global internal information store for documents called Omnia, which is based on Hummingbird Document Management (DM) technology and acts as a secure repository for all company-wide information. Omnia stores a single copy of each document, and Rhythmyx integrates with Omnia to manage content reuse, allowing dedicated content authors to access, publish and reuse content in multiple destinations including the firm’s intranet, customer extranet and public internet sites. In addition, users are able to define access rights down to the content level and set up protected folders for group projects. Rhythmyx workspaces can be tailored to display only the folders to which a specific user has access.

Dave Burwell, IT Director, Allen & Overy: “Rhythmyx is able to integrate seamlessly with our existing DM solution and allows us far greater control of how we can use the content contained within Omnia. Our key priority was to improve the level of control in the way in which we handled our internal information and Rhythymx enables us to do that effectively. Rhythymx has a built-in approval process that provides great peace of mind given the sensitive nature of our documents.”

Another key reason Allen & Overy chose Rhythmyx was due to the software’s tight integration with Microsoft Word and user friendliness. With over fifty content authors spread across the globe, the firm needed a solution that was intuitive and required minimal training to use. Rhythmyx offers a wide range of additional feature benefits that were of huge appeal to Allen & Overy. For example, the software’s Impact Analysis feature, which enables users to understand the effect of content edits across multiple sites, including where each piece of content is used and the impact of related links in a single view, was of critical importance.

Burwell continues: “Like many other law firms, we are investing heavily in our use of the web for both internal and external communication. For example, we want to improve our public website to reflect a more dynamic and global brand presence. Rhythmyx will play a crucial part in the success of these projects. The flexibility and scalability that Rhythmyx offers us ensures that it is the right product both for today and also for the future.”

A robust enterprise content management solution, Rhythmyx manages web content, documents, digital assets, portals and scanned images. The solution offers rich functionality out-of-the-box, allowing customisation to be focused on meeting specific needs, and easy on-going administration by IT staff. By delivering a range of pre-built application functionality through Rhythmyx FastForward for Web Content Management (WCM), Rhythmyx allows organisations to implement the functionality they need today, whilst ensuring that they can meet tomorrow's needs with an extensible, standards-based architecture. With the industry's only De-Coupled Delivery architecture, Intelligent Relationships and Active Assembly, Rhythmyx solves the key content management challenges of enabling true content reuse and cost-effective multi-channel delivery.

This announcement follows on from the announcement in November last year that DLA Piper Rudnick had also adopted Rhythmyx. Joseph Wykes, managing director, European operations, Percussion Software: “Allen & Overy has a reputation as being at the forefront of embracing new technology standards. Our work with DLA Piper Rudnick and now with Allen & Overy evidences the beginnings of a trend in the legal sector. A new requirement has emerged as the legal sector looks to be able to easily manage and publish centrally stored content to multiple sites and channels via a robust web content management solution, such as Rhythmyx, whilst integrating with and complementing existing IT infrastructure, including document management systems. We are making great progress and the legal sector will remain a key priority for the coming year.”

About Allen & Overy

1. Allen & Overy is an international legal practice with over 4,800 staff, including some 440 partners, working in 25 major centres worldwide.

2. In this press release 'Allen & Overy' means Allen & Overy LLP and/or its affiliated undertakings.

3. Any reference to a partner in relation to Allen & Overy LLP means a member, consultant or employee of Allen & Overy LLP.