Patent ID: 7143136

Claim:
A secure inter-company collaboration system, comprising: a set of one or more utility servers maintained by a first company; a data storage communicatively coupled to at least one of the utility servers via a secured subnet and storing access-controlled data, wherein the data storage is partitioned by projects to isolate the access-controlled data based on the projects; a set of resources residing on the set of utility servers, the set of resources comprising an application; a secure network connection between the set of utility servers and a second company; an access control mechanism configured to control access to the set of resources and to the secure network connection by the first company and the second company, wherein access is limited to specific authorized individuals from the first company and specific authorized individuals from the second company; a remote controller configured to enable an authorized individual from the second company to remotely view a user interface of the application while an authorized individual from the first company is executing the application on the set of utility servers; and a file manager configured to manage data files that are shared, according to one or more rules, among a group of authorized individuals from the first and second companies, and configured to operate automatically in the background according to the one or more rules.