SurDoc Corporation, an innovation leader in document processing and backup technology, today announced its new service offering 10 GB of free storage in tandem with free, secure and completely automatic backup of Microsoft Windows data files to the cloud. Launching with $4M in funding from IDG Ventures, SurDoc also offers the unique ability to share any kind of document with exceptional layout fidelity across mobile and desktop in an open fashion using any HTML 5-enabled Web browser (no plugins) or email client.

Seeking to redefine what consumers should expect from a free backup service, SurDoc offers users on all platforms this new open document sharing capability - a feat made possible through UOML (Unstructured Operation Markup Language) technology. UOML is an OASIS global standard that defines instructions on how to process documents, i.e., any information that can be printed on paper.

Although expressed in XML, UOML is not a document format (unlike PDF). UOML (and SurDoc's VisiDoc implementation of the UOML standard) instead offers a standard interface between application software and common platform software called a DoCbase Management System (DCMS). To use an analogy, UOML is to unstructured documents as SQL (Structured Query Language) is to structured data - it provides a way to describe and manipulate all document contents and elements in a standardized fashion.

VisiDoc handles not only Visual Document representation, but also various aspects of associated information (e.g., metadata, security rights, etc.). Using VisiDoc, any document can be represented and described in its final form in a completely open format. The founder of SurDoc and his team own more than 100 issued patents and patent applications related to the document management field and are the developers of the UOML standard. The company was just issued its first US Patent in December of 2011 for technology specifically related to SurDoc.

Signing up for SurDoc is simple - just provide an email address and your name, and you instantly have 10 GB of data storage available at no charge (higher tiers of storage are available as well for paid subscribers), as well as free access to the SurDoc backup software for Windows. Completely automated once installed, SurDoc backup software can begin data file backup within 5 minutes of installation - all user data is protected with 128-bit AES encryption and offers double offline redundancy with RAID-5 storage systems for end-user peace-of-mind.

SurDoc is currently in a free trial of its service - all users can sign up for free and instantly receive 10 GB of cloud storage (permanently theirs), as well as all the benefits of VisiDoc WYSIWYG document sharing.

"SurDoc is a milestone in document portability - email attachments on cell phones just don't work as seamlessly as they could," said Laurent Liscia, Executive Director of OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards), a not-for-profit consortium of more than 600 companies that drives the development, convergence and adoption of open standards for the global information society. "SurDoc lets you access your documents from a browser - nothing could be simpler. Of course I'm delighted that SurDoc chose to implement OASIS document standards, so that any and all document formats can be read from any browser; but even more importantly I appreciate this giant step forward in usability."

"SurDoc offers the best solution to date for 'in-the-cloud' online document storage and management. Storing documents online using services like Dropbox® or Google® Docs cannot guarantee the 'look and feel' of the documents - SurDoc is the first truly WYSIWYG document management service that is 100% in the cloud. Users of SurDoc can store and manage all of their documents online, regardless of the document format, and no longer have to worry about accessibility, security, backup and the layout fidelity of their documents. I would highly recommend it to anyone who desires truly universal document access and great automated backup," said David Xue, an Attorney with Goodwin Procter, LLP.

SurDoc Corp. is a new Silicon Valley startup that launched in December of 2011 to redefine PC backup and cloud-sharing of documents. Based on the OASIS UOML standard created by SurDoc's founder, textual and image data from virtually any source (word processing, spreadsheet, presentations and more) can be viewed, shared, annotated and digitally signed using any modern Web browser. SurDoc offers free data backup to its users and is a pioneer in standardizing shared document data.