Collanos Blog

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.