Bluebeam Software Offers Collaboration Platform Without The Cloud

Collaboration software that allows people at distant locations to work together on one document or a large project is moving steadily to cloud-based environments, but there are many users who need to keep collaboration work on their own networks. A company called Bluebeam Software has introduced Studio Server, a server-based collaboration platform for editing text, images, CAD drawings, blueprints and other content in Portable Document Format (PDF) form but still provide the security of keeping the project behind the firewall.

Studio Server is a follow-up to Bluebeam's PDF Revu 9.0, which enables collaboration in a cloud environment. Small-to-midsize businesses may be comfortable collaborating on projects in a cloud-based environment, but bigger firms and enterprises have concerns about sharing documents concerning a highly sensitive project in the cloud, says Richard Lee, president and CEO of Bluebeam.

"And it isn't just the government and DoD [Department of Defense] customers," Lee says. "You find that large construction and architectural engineering companies would like to maintain the security of their own documents."

Studio Server allows a project manager to control who is granted access to documents in a project and in a particular collaboration session. Each meeting is given a unique ID number, and only those given the number can join that meeting. Although the server storing the project PDFs is behind the firewall, an organizer can grant access to participants beyond the firewall, such as subcontractors, partners and legal counsel.

Studio Server still has the same features of PDF Revu 9.0 for marking up PDFs for a particular project, says Stephani Haynes, director of marketing for Bluebeam. The application includes a number of different markup tools for editing documents, such as highlighting, adding notes in text boxes, and cut and paste functionality. The application also keeps track of changes made to the document, when and by whom, and also notes when and if changes were accepted or rejected.While Haynes and Lee demonstrated Revu 9.0's features on a blueprint for a house, and while its core customer base is in the construction and architectural design space, it has also found interest among customers in the accounting, education, government and legal sectors. In addition to blueprints, documents edited using PDF Revu can include images, manuscripts and spreadsheets.

The platform also allows users to create customized tools unique to their particular industry. "Once you allow that level of customization, that's what really drives the adoption and the usability," says Lee. "That takes most of our customers through their work flow [quicker] because now they can make project review work exactly how they want it to work."

PDF Revu 9.0 and Studio Server have different pricing schema because one is for the cloud and the other is for on-premise, says Haynes. PDF Revu 9.0 licenses are priced between $179 to $299 for each computer operated by someone who would host cloud collaboration sessions. The license limits the number of participants and documents in each session, as well as the total amount of data being edited. The Studio Server charge is $9,995 for an enterprise, and there are no limits on the number of participants, documents or the data capacity in each session.

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