Collanos Blog

Check out the great free resources the organizer of the Enterprise 2.0 conference has just made available online. You will find great keynote videos, photos, podcasts, speaker slides, and more.

As founder and CTO, I would like to initiate a dialogue on our company blog about the technical aspects of Collanos’ offering. This article discusses the main limitations of today’s Workplace release as well as our ongoing activities to address and rapidly fix the problems. The focus is on fundamental platform evolution. I will not talk about business features or collaboration functions today. In my next blog postings, I will shed more light on other aspects like Collanos’ vision, product portfolio and feature roadmaps.

Collanos had been in “beta” for about half a year before dropping the “beta” label two months ago. We have come a long way, but the journey has just started. There are many exciting new features we plan to release to our growing user base. This post introduces some of the features we will release in the coming months.

Starting Out
In eight months, we went through a dozen of small releases, fixing nearly 400 bugs and issues. Don’t be surprised; this is software engineering best practice: quick turn around cycles and “perpetual releases”. We also added many features, and with every improved version, the number of downloads continued to increase. We are about to reach 40,000 downloads, and it is exciting for us to see that famous “exponential curve” (aka the ‘hockey stick curve’) kicking in.

Invaluable Feedback
A big thank you goes to our active user community. Your great feedback helps us better understand what works, what doesn’t, what you like and dislike, and what you miss. This blog post is a summary of the main limitations of our product and how we are addressing them. If you are interested in raving quotes and why users are enthusiastic about Collanos, you can find them on our web site. We have about 30 rotating quotes on the Products page, and new quotes are added daily – just refresh the web page regularly to see them.

Main Limitations
While we receive great feature requests and lots of ideas from users, many could be classified as “nice to have” or are subjective to a very specific use-case. Still, there are a number of issues that come up frequently. In fact, there are important limitations in our current product release that prevent some of our users to deploy the solution more widely. Here is the ranking:

1. User must be online to be invited – An invitee must be online, otherwise there is no way to invite this person. This limitation comes from our current “pure” P2P model with no additional centralized servers or “helper” services.
2. Conflicts can lead to data loss – If two users make changes to content at the same time, then one of the two will likely lose his/her changes. This is a limitation of the current simple “last modifier wins” rule. BTW conflicts cannot be avoided in a P2P system – only mitigated and managed.
3. All content must be received from its originator – The current P2P replication algorithm fetches data from the source (i.e. its originator) only. If the originator is currently offline, its new content or latest changes cannot be received even if another team member is online with that new content.

Near Future
We are addressing all of the above issues with high priority. Our goal is to relieve “user pain” with as simple and pragmatic solutions as possible. We could certainly think of very elaborate and complex “enterprise class” feature sets, but this would only delay the process. Our mantra in engineering is: Deliver great user value fast. In the near future we are going to ship the following features (in this order):

1. Central User Directory – This new central service serves multiple purposes. First of all, it’s a directory for our community so users can easily find other users regardless if they are online or not. You will be able to search by different attributes – much like current social networking sites. And no matter if a person is currently online or offline, you will be able to invite this person.

2. Conflict Bin – This simple “save my data” concept will prevent users from losing their work due to unexpected conflicts. If a conflict happens (again, this is unavoidable in P2P networks), then the overwritten (or even deleted) copy will be saved into the Conflict Bin of the affected user. From there, the data can easily be recovered. At a later stage, we might expand the concept and add support for file versioning. With this, users will be able to refer back to any previous document version.

What’s better? These two features will be rolled out within 3-5 weeks so stay tuned!

3. Improved Replication – Another major effort is going into bringing our replication algorithms to the next level. We are building in some advanced capabilities and intelligence like a peer’s ability of fetching new workspace content from any other peer who already received it, or fetching it from many peers at the same time. Other measures will include advanced optimizations such as measuring P2P bandwidths or dynamically applying priorities. It will also be possible to see how much data is left for transmission on a per object basis.

As you can imagine, the third feature set is a bit more complex to implement. We plan to roll out features gradually with the first set of improvements due in approximately two months. This second-generation synchronization will be the single most important improvement of the Collanos platform. The benefits for our users will be substantial. Users can expect faster replication times and higher transparency of what is being replicated.

And Beyond…
We have a bolder vision, and some of the building blocks are already on the drawing boards:

• Permanent Peer – This service will be an on-demand subscription offered through ISPs. It will boost your overall Collanos experience. Think of it as your other always-on peer that not only maximizes up-to-date workspace content, but offers backup, workspace management, and more.
• Web Workplace – This extension will come with the Permanent Peer. It essentially brings the Workplace to your standard web browser, allowing you to access your workspaces from any connected device. This flexible hybrid architecture will make Collanos the first seamless Peer-to-Peer-to-Web offering.
• Voice Services and Instant Messaging – We will integrate VoIP and more general instant messaging services with our Workplace very soon. The idea is to facilitate individual and team calls directly from the context of your various workspaces. Imagine a one-click conference call with your team!
• Multiple Languages – With the help of our user community, we recently added German to the Workplace and will soon add Chinese. More languages will be added this year. If you are interested in contributing with a specific translation, please get in touch with us.

I hope this information was valuable for you. Do you think we are addressing all the right issues? Do you have questions or would you like to see other topics covered? Please let me know what you think.

The CEO and parts of the core team at the headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland, the CTO and another part of its nucleus in downtown San Francisco, USA, a software development team in Sofia, Bulgaria, as well as a number of additional small contractors and “company ambassadors” around the globe - Collanos Software is a what Business 2.0 Magazine calls a “Global Startup” in a recently published article:

How startups go global

Think multinationals have to be big? Think again. Scrappy, savvy small companies are operating worldwide in the battle for technology, talent, and customers.

Collanos is just at the beginning of this development. “We want to add additional talent to our already global team.” says Franco Dal Molin, Collanos’ founder and president, “We are ready to push the limits by implementing collaborative innovation networks and global sourcing models”.

The International Herald Tribune published an article on an important trend: European Internet and software companies are bringing to the market waves of relevant innovations. The following excerpts and quotes are taken from the article by Victoria Shannon:

• For one, companies expect and plan to have an international presence from the moment of inception, knowing that they can count on a more mature Internet as a global distribution and communications tool.
• And Europe has a head start in several technologies that are especially hot, according to Danny Rimer, a managing partner with Index Ventures in Geneva.
• Another particularly European niche is peer-to-peer computing, in which much of the work of conveying information on a network is handled by many small computers rather than one central server.

Collanos pretty much shares the same attributes and fits nicely in this “fire-catching” category. The IHT article can be found here.

Collanos Software releases its free solution making Internet-based teamwork available for everybody. Leading MBA programs are among the first to adopt.

San Francisco – June 19, 2006 – Collanos Software, provider of software solutions and services that enable teamwork beyond organizational boundaries, released today “Collanos Workplace 1.0 Beta”, the first commercial and publicly available version of its free flagship application. The software is available to download at http://www.collanos.com.

Geared for wide-scale adoption by Internet users worldwide, Collanos Workplace has been designed to meet the requirements of modern mobile and dispersed knowledge workers. While existing collaboration solutions rely upon web-based platforms, Collanos’ Peer-to-Peer solution addresses the growing need of users for an online and offline solution that transparently synchronizes information between all team members.

Collanos is initially being adopted by MBA programs as their teamwork environment. The company is involved in pilot programs with leading MBA universities across the United States and Europe. Consulting, research and marketing teams are following track, using Collanos to manage their unique teamwork settings.

“MBA students typically spend more than 70% of their time working on multiple team projects”, said Peter Helfenstein, CEO of Collanos Software. “Not wasting time anymore on congested email inboxes or complex server-based solutions means simply more time for the team to concentrate on quality deliverables.”

To the question: “Is Collanos a Web 2.0 company?” Franco Dal Molin, Collanos’ Founder and President said, “Yes and no. While it has all the key Web 2.0 attributes, we are not just another web-based collaboration solution. The hybrid P2P platform, a matchless solution available for Windows, Mac and Linux, offers our users the best of both worlds. That’s Peer-to-Peer 2.0.”

Collanos’ goals are to sign-up 100,000 active users worldwide within the next twelve months and harness the internet to create a solution that truly reflects how 21st century teams work.

Effizientes Werkzeug für die Zusammenarbeit in virtuellen Organisationen

Zürich/San Francisco (USA), 19. Juni 2006 – Collanos Software präsentiert mit «Collanos Workplace 1.0 Beta» die weltweit erste Version ihrer online Kollaborationssoftware. Die Plattform unabhängige Softwarelösung – auf der Basis einer Weiterentwicklung der von Tauschbörsen her bekannten Peer-to-Peer Technologie (P2P) – steht ab heute zum freien Download bereit unter: http://www.collanos.com.

Die modernen Wissensarbeiter operieren zunehmend mit Personen ausserhalb ihrer Organisationen wie Kunden, Partner und Lieferanten in Team-ähnlichen Strukturen zusammen. Für solche auch virtuelle Netzwerke genannte Organisationen gab es bis anhin nur Lösungen, mit denen online über eine serverbasierte Webplattform auf das Wissen der Gruppe und den Stand der Projekte zugegriffen werden konnte. Mit der Beta-Version des Collanos Workplace steht nun erstmals eine Lösung bereit, mit der online wie auch offline plattformübergreifend informiert und kommuniziert werden kann.

Projektorientiert gegen die Informationsflut
«Collanos Workplace 1.0 Beta» eignet sich zum Beispiel für Marketing-Teams, die mit externen Agenturen und Lieferanten an derselben Kampagne arbeiten. Oder für Beratungsunternehmen, die länderübergreifende Projektteams bilden und für Vereine und Studenten. Insbesondere bei MBA-Studiengängen kommt der Workplace sehr gut an. Die Studenten tauschen sich in ihren oft parallel laufenden Projektarbeiten direkt über die Collanos Software aus, halten so die Email-Flut unter Kontrolle und können sich auf die Aufgaben des jeweiligen Projektes fokussieren.

Sicher und ortsunabhängig
Dank der Peer-to-Peer Technologie braucht es keinen Server mehr, um sich Informationen wie Kontakte, Diskussionen, Dokumente, Teamkalender, Aufgaben und Projektinformationen zur Verfügung zu stellen. Sobald ein Benutzer online ist, werden alle Informationen auf den Computer des Teammitgliedes mit einer 256-Bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) Verschlüsselung synchronisiert. Jedes Teammitglied ist somit auf dem neuesten Stand und kann anschliessend auch ohne Internetverbindung weiter arbeiten und Änderungen direkt im Client vornehmen.

Kostenlos und Multi-Plattform
Collanos Workplace 1.0 Beta ist kostenlos unter http://www.collanos.com erhältlich. Der Peer-to-Peer Client läuft auf den Betriebssystemen von Windows XP und 2000, Mac OSX und Linux. Systemvoraussetzungen sind ein Desktop oder Notebook mit einer Prozessorleistung von 500 Mhz. Für die Synchronisation ist eine Internetverbindung nötig und Teammitglieder müssen gleichzeitig eingeloggt sein. Die Funktionen der Basisversion umfassen die Erfassung von Benutzern und deren Kontaktdetails, die Möglichkeit zur Ablage von Dokumenten und das Anlegen einer Ordnerstruktur. Weiter bietet der Collanos Workspace die Möglichkeit, mit Teammitgliedern weitgehend ohne Email zu kommunizieren, ein wichtiger Beitrag im Kampf gegen die Mailflut.

To accelerate the adoption of our solutions, we focus of viral marketing activities on chosen groups that truly reflect our target audience. Our first “seeding” areas include MBA students and faculty at Universities.

MBA students spend most of their time on multiple team oriented projects, exchange large files and correspond about them frequently, have different operating systems and require offline access to their files. Sound familiar?

These characteristics represent what Collanos is all about and selecting this target group was a natural choice for us. Furthermore, many of us on the team have gone through advanced degree programs several years ago. Now, as we spend more time getting to know future users of our solutions, we realize that when it comes down to team collaboration solutions, little, if not none, progress has been made. It’s the same old email, file servers and random instant messaging. Time for change!

We are working closely with MBA programs at leading universities to prepare for the launch of simultaneous pilot programs. Some of these include:

• Boston University
• Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley
• University of San Francisco
• Stanford GSB
• San José State University
• University of Phoenix
• MIT Sloan
• IMD Lausanne (Switzerland)
• University of St. Gallen (Switzerland)

Several programs have already committed to the pilot and, based on an early demo of our applications, faculty and administration alike are eager to introduce our free solutions on campus.

Peter Rip, Managing Director at Leapfrog Ventures, wrote a great article about “The Coming Wave of Enterprise Web 2.0“. He and other industry thought leaders are seeing this as a major trend, the convergence of consumer and enterprise apps. He states that Collaboration can be an End or a Means, but I like the part best where Peter emphasizes why collaboration will only be enduring if it is the “Means”. Here is an excerpt from his post, containing his conclusions:

“This is why I think Enterprise Web 2.0 is different from Consumer Web 2.0. Enterprise’s have goals and structure. People around the Enterprise collaborate, but the collaboration is (supposed to be) undemocratic, i.e., ordered and non-chaotic. Ironically, this is not a new category. We used to call it Workflow and it was on the Known Quicksand Sector list at every VC firm, along with Middleware, Knowledge Management, and Enterprise Search. It was a Known Quicksand because no two implementations looked the same. Users couldn’t change the workflow to suit their needs. Users couldn’t automate the dozens of little tasks of collaboration that they do every week.

Despite being Known Quicksand, nearly every VC firm has placed a bet on workflow at one time or another. Why? Because the big Enterprise Apps automate you and me and we’re done. Automating the white space between us is the last untapped source of Big Win in the Enterprise.

This is more than just Workflow. It is Information Flow. And it’s not just an inside-the-firewall problem. In fact, it’s bigger outside than inside. All the wondrous improvements in personal mobility, communications, and 7×24 information access have exacerbated the problem. Customers, field service, sales people, consultants, outsourcers, telecommuters, suppliers, etc., all suffer the rising expectations of responsiveness that comes with personal automation and the sinking realization associated with the quagmire of complexity when trying involve others.

Mobile, Web 2.0, SaaS are going to converge into a set of new, lightweight Enterprise Web 2.0 applications. Collaboration is the Big Driver within Web 2.0 and nowhere is collaboration more valuable than when time is money – the time to assimilate information from the enterprise edge and the time to organize and respond. Prepare to see a wave of Enterprise Web 2.0 collaboration applications in the next 24 months. And, like every wave, it will be 5% innovation and 95% imitation.”

It is great to read this, because this is exactly Collanos’ vision and we have been working on these concepts since 2003. Collanos Workplace connects people around the enterprise, structures cross-organizational team work in secure spaces and essentially automates the “white space between you and me”.

Collanos basically team-enables your computer! Collanos addresses the growing pains of teams being overloaded with information scattered across various communication channels, most notably congested email inboxes. Collanos allows ad hoc, cross-organizational teams to easily access, update and share team knowledge on their computers and within the context of their activities. Teams can reach their goals faster, more securely and more effectively. Team members access shared workspaces locally on their computers, communicate with their colleagues using secure channels, and Collanos’ peer-to-peer technology keeps members’ workspaces in sync. On this foundation, Collanos provides dispersed teams intuitive and transparent solutions that enable superior teamwork. The base version of the product is offered free of charge.

According to a post on Dr. Dobb’s Portal, Microsoft is pulling from Windows Vista PC-to-PC Sync, a P2P-based technology for keeping files up-to-date on multiple machines.

[… The consumer-oriented PC-to-PC Sync, however, was limited in that it would synchronize files and folders only between machines running Vista, and then apparently only between computers which had the same user account name and password (in other words, between PCs owned and used by the same person). …]

On June 19 2006 Collanos will announce and make available a free software offering to team-enable computers. Collanos’ PC-to-PC solution is a P2P-based technology to synchronize files, business objects, group discussions and more in secure team spaces seamlessly between Windows, Mac and Linux computers.

Collaboration Loop today published an interview with Irwin Lazar, a senior analyst with the Burton Group, conducted by Stowe Boyd. It contains some good catches about the importance of integrating communication and collaboration channels, as well as social issues related to information overload and how to avoid it.

Read the interview here.