Collanos Blog

David Coleman wrote a great follow-up blog to the LaunchPad panel he sat on in last week’s Enterprise 2.0 conference. (See recorded webcast)

As a member of Collanos, I can very much relate to the Ent. 1.5 vs. 2.0 dilemma.
In recent demonstrations in Silicon Valley we often find ourselves over-shadowed by cool Ajax-based (and SaaS) applications that are cool but often either premature for mass user adoption or not justified as stand alone applications. Collanos may be missing the flare of some of these cool applications but if ‘cool’ is the criteria to be considered a 2.0 company, we are very happy to be a ‘1.5’.

Collanos is targeted at users seeking an easy-to-use, affordable and cross-platform solution for managing all cross-organizational team interactions in the context of their teams (hence ‘think out of the inbox’ and why it’s ‘9* better than email’). Enterprises may not be at the forefront of our targeted user-base but there surely are many enterprise users who can use such application when they need to figure a way to get an external member of the team onboard in a shared workspace without needing to put a request in for IT to grant the permissions and make access possible. The thousands of early adopters of our solutions can already attest to Collanos meeting these requirements as well as serving other critical requirements such as ad hoc team formation, data stored only on user machines (no data on servers) and more secure data transfer.

Collanos addresses the pains of today and therefore may in fact be a 1.5 company. When the underwater cables went down in Asia a few months ago and users could not connect to the internet, users flocked to Collanos. When users lose trust in their data being stored on some remote server due to another major breach of data privacy, they will seek out P2P-based solutions such as Collanos. When users come to terms with their email Inbox being their worst nightmare and seek a more contextual solution, Collanos’ team workspaces will spur their interests.

I can go on and on listing the benefits of Collanos Workplace, our flagship solution (and yes, we still need to further enhance the application), but I will leave it to the readers, including the enterprise ‘2.0’ users, to see for themselves how 1.5 is greater than 2.0.

Boston — June 20, 2007 – Collanos Software was selected to participate in Enterprise 2.0’s Launch Pad. Collanos’ mission is connecting people and enabling professional teamwork on a global basis and beyond enterprise boundaries.

Launch Pad features companies that are demonstrating the release of a new product or service. Collanos is one out of four companies selected to present on the main stage during Enterprise 2.0.

Collanos Workplace provides an easy to use, p2p platform for team members to collaborate on projects using Windows, Mac, and Linux Systems, without the need of a server. At the Enterprise 2.0 Launch Pad, Collanos will preview its new integrated communications services allowing team members to collaborate via voice and video in addition to conversation threads, instant messaging, and notes.

Collanos Workplace offers small business teams, students, non-profit organizations, and other knowledge-sharing professionals, an easy-to-use set of comprehensive collaboration tools. Collanos’ global collaborative network allows internet users to easily form teams and effectively collaborate together on a shared passion, goal, or project.

Enterprise 2.0 unites IT and business professionals striving for a more creative, alert, and productive company atmosphere. This conference drives the exploration and adoption of collaborative tools and technologies, focusing not only on the technology, but how the technology works with people.

Yesterday’s flattering review of Collanos Workplace on eWeek was more than just…flaterring. Tiffany Maleshefski, the author, highlighted the fundamental points that make Collanos Workplace one of the leading teamwork solutions in the market.
The review’s title:

Collanos Collaboration Software Simplifies Teamwork

hits right on the mark on Collanos’ main differentiator from other P2P solutions such as Groove (now Microsoft) and any of the many hosted solutions available these days. Collanos simplifies teamwork. Period!

Her opening line immediately addresses our main ‘competitor’, email:

no disputing that e-mail is, at best, a mediocre tool for conducting ad hoc collaboration.

‘Think Out of the Inbox’, our company’s tagline, was chosen for that same reason. We all fall to the trap of using team-unfriendly email even when we need a solution that is more in the context of teams and team projects.

But how do we simplify teamwork? We make it more accessible to the average Joe, Jane, Xian (Yes, also in Chinese language!), Christian and Jolanda. No servers, no IT support, no OS limitations as she states:

Companies out to find a better way to work together without having to roll out a server-based collaboration product or impose particular operating system requirements on potential team members may find what they’re looking for in Collanos Software’s Collanos Workplace 1.1….Collanos Workplace 1.1 can spell relief for IT managers too pressed for time to evaluate, deploy and maintain a server-based collaboration platform.

Simplification is more than just for IT managers (actually, no IT managers required with Collanos in most user settings). It’s the users who find an intuitive, easy-to-use and no training required experience once installing the application and accessing their workspaces:

Collanos Workplace 1.1’s capabilities for rounding up the files, folders and discussions that comprise collaborative projects into single, easily accessible and well-synchronized spaces…we found it much easier [than Groove] to get down to business with the core functionality that Collanos does offer. In our opinion, getting a solid grip on Groove requires a more rigorous employee training than what’s required for Collanos.

Just to be fair, I didn’t post here some of the few ‘less flattering’ comments Tiffany mentioned about the product but these were actually more constructive comments than critiques that we are already addressing in the coming releases.

Collanos provides enterprise-class team workspace solutions for non-enterprise users. Since you are reading this blog, I am confident that you can use something better than email to manage all team content. Next time you click on the “Send” button of an email, think twice if this could have been done differently…or perhaps more simplified.

A while ago we were invited to Apple HQ in Cupertino to record a webcast demonstration of Collanos Workplace for the Mac Learning community.

MacLearning is a community of professional educators, technologists, developers and change agents dedicated to transforming learning through innovation.

The recording was made available using iTunes U, a free, hosting service for colleges and universities that provides easy access to their educational content.

You can view the webcast on the Mac Learning site with iTunes or more simply here below thanks to our streaming video services provider, veodia.