Collanos Blog

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.

According to Guy Kawasaki, author of the book “The Art of the Start”, traditional mission statements should be replace with a mantra. Most mission statements are like a “…long, boring, commonplace, and pointless joke”, states Guy.

On the other side, a mantra is short, and evokes power and emotion. Collanos’ mantra is:

Intrigued? Read more about mantras on Guy’s blog.

Today we had nice party with a toast as we officially launched Collanos Software’s U.S. operations, introduced our team, and heard from Peter Helfenstein, former Country Manager of Novell and Cambridge Technology Partners Switzerland, why he has decided to join the company.

About 50 friends of the company joined the event in the event hall of our 1850 red bricks office building in downtown San Francisco.

Pictures of the event can be found on our “Life and Fund at Collanos” blog.

San Francisco – March 23, 2006 – Collanos Software, a provider of software solutions that enable teamwork beyond enterprise boundaries, has appointed Peter Helfenstein as the company’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO). He will be responsible for Collanos worldwide activities.

Mr. Helfenstein joins Collanos with more than 20 years of experience working for international software and consulting companies in Europe, including, most recently, as Country Manager of Novell and Cambridge Technology Partners, Switzerland. Previously he served as General Manager Southern Europe for Kintana, Regional VP and Country Manager for Sterling Software and Knowledgeware in Germany, France and Switzerland and various management roles at IBM Switzerland. He has extensive experience in launching international start-up companies as well as managing global and well-established organizations.

“Peter’s first-class sales and people-management skills, combined with a successful track record in building international partner networks, perfectly complement our management team. He will be instrumental as we launch Collanos in the marketplace and release our first production application in May 2006.” said President and Founder Franco Dal Molin.

“I am excited to join Collanos at this critical phase”, said Peter Helfenstein. “It is time for professionals to finally give up email as the primary tool for team collaboration beyond the enterprise. We believe that our innovative solution will be adopted rapidly and enable teams all over the globe to work together much more efficiently and in an entirely new way. That’s what I am here to focus on.”