Collanos Blog

Today we have released a small maintenance patch that fixes a memory problem that could happen in some circumstances.

For instance, during intensive content replication situations, the internal Java memory management (so called Heap memory) would not be cleaned out properly from old transport-route related information, and would gradually fill up, which would in turn lead to slow response or stalled situations. Again, this would occur only occasionally for users with many active members and ongoing replication processes.

This patch fixes this problem. The patch is being provided via the auto-update mechanism. Existing users simply need to restart Collanos Workplace to trigger the automatic update process.

Note for Vista users: On a Windows Vista with the UAC (User Access Control) activated, if Workplace is installed in Program Files, the software update does not work unless you start Workplace with the ‘Run as administrator’ option.

Collanos Workplace 1.3.0.3 contains some new features, many improvements to existing functionality, as well as various minor enhancements and bug fixes. The focus of this release was to further improve the day-to-day work of users by filling in small but essential capabilities, as well as to lay the groundwork for supporting additional language translations.

New language translations can now be deployed independently from product releases in form of download-able language packs.

Workplace now supports external Hyperlinks and Emoticons (Smilies) in Chats and Discussions. Hyperlinks are also supported in the text areas of Note, Task and Link objects.

Existing contacts in popular social networks can be invited directly to join Collanos.

Many enhancements have been implemented and existing functions polished. See the illustrated Release Notes (PDF format) for more details.

As always, Collanos Workplace 1.3.0.3 is available in versions for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. The software ships with built-in English, German and Chinese languages. Additional languages will be rolled out in the coming months, using the new language pack delivery mechanism.

The current version 1.3.0.3 is compatible with all previous 1.3 versions, and to a lesser extent to version 1.2, giving teams with mixed installations a smoother transition. The new release is available both as installer from Collanos’ web site and as automatic update process for existing users (Vista users see note below).

Collanos continues to improve the free version of Workplace. Our gratification is a steadily growing, active and vibrant user community. As always, we look forward to your feedbacks! Please help us by spreading the good news, for instance, by inviting your friends and business contacts to join Collanos as well. Thank you!

Release Highlights
This Workplace release contains a number of important improvements and new features:

• New delivery mechanism and simplified support for new languages
• Hyperlinks supported in Chats, Discussions and text areas of Notes, Tasks and Links
• Emoticons (Smilies) added to Chats and Discussions
• Invite contacts from social networks (Orkut, Friendster, MySpace, Hi5, Facebook, Xing, BlackPlanet)
• Improved usability of “Invite to Collanos” dialog
• Functions “Open With…” and “Save as…” added to Conflict Bin (for File objects)
• Central users directory now supports full name search; plus empty searches more meaningful
• Web page names fetched and filled-in automatically in Link objects
• Plus many more enhancements and over 80 issues resolved…

Compatibility
The current version 1.3.0.3 is protocol-compatible with all previous 1.3 versions, and to a lesser extent to version 1.2, giving teams with mixed installations a smoother transition. Users with older versions will obviously not benefit from new features. For example, a 1.3.0.2 user won’t see Hyperlinks or Emoticos in Chats or Discussions, but only plain text representations.

Automatic Update
We strongly recommend upgrading to the latest version. Existing Workplace 1.3 users will benefit from an automated upgrade process. All you need to do is restart your application to trigger the auto-update process. Note for Vista users: On a Windows Vista with the UAC (User Access Control) activated, if Workplace is installed in Program Files, the automatic software update does not work unless you start Workplace with the ‘Run as administrator‘ option.

Download Collanos Workplace 1.3.0.3
Just click on any of the icons and download Collanos Workplace 1.3.0.3 now!

User Forum
We always like hearing from you! Feel free to share your feedback, post your questions and engage in discussions right here or - even better - on our Community Forum. Thank you.

The popular German business magazine “brand eins” has a great story about European entrepreneurs moving to California to start, re-launch, invigorate or otherwise promote their start-up companies. The article contains bits and pieces about Collanos Software, which had also launched its US activities in 2006-2007 with the help of the Swiss start-up promotion agency “CTI Start-up“. We started our US activities based out of “swissnex San Franciso“, a Swiss innovation incubator and networking hub.

Our legal counselor in the US, Achim Hölzle with FeldbergPacific Law Group, made it even to the double-page cover picture (guy on the right) of the story!

Download PDF document.

Many European organizations (from small start-ups to large corporations) are outsourcing their software development, testing, and maintenance tasks to specialized providers in Eastern Europe and the CIS. Because of the geographical proximity, this outsourcing model is often called “nearshoring”.

Collanos is also applying and benefiting from this distributed working model. We are managing all our software development processes from our headquarters in Zurich, but outsource work to suppliers in Ukraine, Bulgaria, India, and other destinations. Our experiences so far have been mostly positive, but of course there are always aspects that can be improved. Collanos is currently preparing for expansion steps and we need to further grow our software development teams.

The whole discussion is not about cheaper labor costs only. In fact, the lower the direct costs get (read: the farther East one moves), the higher the indirect costs typically get, including reduced overlap of time zones, bigger travel distances when visiting, more problems due to cultural differences, and others.

To better share our own experiences with others, and to hear from other buyers about theirs, we have created a new group on the Xing business networking platform. The goal of the group is to represent the interests of the buyers’ side, by sharing practical experiences, exchanging tips and advises, bringing transparency into the practices of this industry, learning from each other, collecting best practices, avoiding typical pitfalls, and so forth.

The group is exclusive to European professionals in the software industry which are buying services in Eastern Europe. Outsourcing providers looking for new customers will not be allowed to join the group. With this narrow focus and membership profile, the group will be able to build-up trust between its members and become a highly relevant resource for many European professionals.

To join the group (you must be a Xing member to do so), please visit the Xing Group “European Buyers of Software Development Outsourcing (Nearshoring to the East)“.

We look forward to meet other professionals outsourcing their software development work to Eastern European providers, and valuable exchanges of experiences. Please feel free to forward this information to interested colleagues. Thank you.

UPDATE:

There is also a related discussion on LinkedIn Answers: “Nearshoring Software Development to Eastern Europe”. Great and valuable answers indeed.

Today we made available release 1.3.0.2 - a pure maintenance release for Collanos Workplace. It fixes a number of defects and limitations discovered since the launch of the main 1.3 version three weeks ago. Furthermore, this maintenance release reduces the load on CPU, bandwidth and overall traffic volume significantly. Several optimizations were applied to the replication engine. All users should update to this version to guarantee smooth operation of Collanos Workplace.

For more information, please check also the release notes.

Collanos Workplace 1.3.0.1 is an important release of the multi-platform P2P team collaboration solution. This version contains a number of new features, major improvements to existing functionality, as well as many enhancements and bug fixes. The focus of this release was to further improve the overall user experience, fill-in functionality gaps, and increase the collaboration productivity of dispersed teams.

These goals have been achieved with the following measures. The core P2P content synchronization algorithm has been further enhanced with the much anticipated “fetch from any” capability. Team members can now synchronize with any other team member, even if the original content creator is not currently online. A brand new real-time instant messaging subsystem is replacing the old “send a message” function. The new instant messenger supports informal ongoing chats with all existing contacts, outside the scope of team workspaces.

To improve the life of Task intensive workers, a new “All Tasks” perspective has been introduced. Tasks from all folders of all workspaces can now be viewed, filtered and changed in one location.

To facilitate moving data in from and out to the operating system, a number of functions were added. Dragging and dropping of folders now works also from “inside-out”, i.e. whole workplace folder structures can easily be dragged and dropped to the file system. As an alternative function, users can also use the new “Copy To…” function. Finally, File objects can now be opened with any application, using the new “Open With…” feature. Many more enhancements have been implemented. See the illustrated Release Notes (PDF format) for more details.

As always, Collanos Workplace 1.3.0.1 is available in versions for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. The software is available in English, German and Chinese translations. The current version 1.3 is compatible with the last version 1.2, which will give teams with mixed installations a smoother transition. The new release is available both as installer from Collanos’ web site and automatic update process for existing users.

Collanos is proudly improving the FREE basic version of Workplace with each new release. Our gratification is a steadily growing and vibrant user community. We look forward to your feedbacks! Please help up by spreading the good news. Use the built-in “Invite to Collanos” tool and invite all your contacts and friends. Thank you!

Release Highlights
This Workplace release contains a number of important improvements and new features:

• P2P “Fetch From Any” replication algorithm
• Persistent Instant Messenger
• New “All Tasks” perspective
• New “Open With…” function on File objects
• Drag and Drop workspace folders to file system
• New “Copy To…” function to file system
• Automatic detection of “inconsistent members”
• Plus many more enhancements…

Compatibility
Workplace versions 1.2 and 1.3 are protocol-compatible with each other for all basic operations. Mixed teams will be able to work together. Users with old versions will obviously not benefit from new features and improved capabilities. Furthermore, even 1.3 users will have limitations when interacting with old users. For example, a Workplace 1.2 user and a Workplace 1.3 user won’t be able to use the new instant messenger together.

Automatic Update
We strongly recommend upgrading to the latest version. Workplace 1.2 users will benefit from an automated upgrade process. All you need to do is restart your application to trigger the auto-update process.

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 Kharkov, Ukraine, 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.