Collanos Blog

Windows Vista is not well adopted, Apple’s next OS will not offer new features and Linux Desktops, at maximum, are a functional copy of the latter. Since the idea of using the Personal Computer as virtual office desktop no real innovation has happened. BeOS, the multimedia operating system, failed. And nowadays the office desktop metaphor for the personal computer is commoditized, as innovation it is not attractive anymore to users. The concept of the individual computer itself gets obsolete.

The traditional personal computer OS is going to die
Operating systems are going to die if they stick with these old fashioned concepts. Having an own computer with own software, own data management and the ability for programming was power in the hands of users at the time of mainframes, made users independent. Today users working differently want something else. The power lies with networks, networks of companies or global networks – internet and cloud computing. A big part of our work depends on others providing us with information or of work results they prepare in parallel. But the PC is not really designed for this. All such support requires additional programs that support such a way of parallel work.

Email is inundated
Electronic mailboxes have accelerated our work. But we could work even faster if mailboxes were not that clumpsy and trashed. In full email inboxes users get lost. Relations between mails are hardly recognizable. And Instant messaging is no answer to this problem either. It supports a different communication need since everything needs to be discussed immediately. Instant messaging is more like an enhancement to email.

But what do we need? Today’s metaphor is not the desktop anymore, it is the communities we are part of. The computer should be the virtual representation of these communities, within and beyond companies and disciplines.

Collaboration solutions are just a crutch
Todays solutions to the above needs are in collaboration tools which is the reason I am invested in Collanos. All documents are shared in workspaces, messages are project related and for this reason 100% spam free. What’s more, Collanos is free, easy to maintain and use.

However, collaboration tools are only a crutch for Operating Systems. They are only needed as long as the community metaphor is not an integral part of the operating system. They should not exist as separate programs. Users should not need to download such software and invite others to communities – this must work differently, much more integrated.

Collaboration needs to be an integral part of processes
Collaboration on operating systems or at the program level is only the first step. Processes must get collaborative. I am developing a new business software. It masters collaboration on the level of the business process. People/team members are embedded in the process – just where and when their information or documents are needed or when they need to receive information – even if they were never involved in the overall process. This essentially accelerates and facilitates work.

The next generation of PC OSs will not make it
I am confident the next Microsoft operating system will not succeed as a collaborative OS and thus Collanos and its competitors will continue to gain traction. Google brings collaboration into programs and by doing so it will outdistance Microsoft – regardless of the rich office desktop features they may have. This new winning category of software will be enhanced by collaborative process software!

Reto Hartinger, IT journalist and serial start-up entrepreneur, is a Swiss internet pioneer and expert. He founded and manages internet-briefing.ch, the most important Swiss internet community.

For some years, several approaches to efficient work in teams, generally called Collaboration, have been initiated, from e-mail and groupware up to Intranet team portals or chat solutions. Some of them are well-established now, for others it is – at best – still a long way to get there. If you consider the challenge of collaboration from the users`point of view, it becomes quickly apparent that there is still a want for improved concepts.

Staff members working in teams within their company are comparably well off – at least if the company structure is a solid one, for example implementing a Lotus Notes/Domino infrastructure. Version 8 of Lotus Notes/Domino together with the Notes-activities has made a great leap towards a flexible collaboration, even though it remains restricted to comparably inflexible Enterprise IT infrastructures. However, mobile users and smaller companies with largely virtual structures as well as temporarily implemented virtual structures for work beyond enterprise boundary, are facing a completely different scenario.

In this area, the typical collaboration tool is e-mail. Everybody is familiar with overflowing mail boxes, and hardly anyone manages to handle the endless amount of attachments efficiently. All things considered, e-mail is an important medium, but simply unsuitable for a great deal of tasks.

Additional chat programs and other mechanisms add to the miserable situation that more and more tools are available without really simplifying communication, just because there are to many different systems and methods. Skype chats are a nice invention, with the results being saved in a log file, but scarcely anybody will ever read these log files.

Looking at the problem with a view to what a typical mobile user working in virtual structures really needs, it becomes quite obvious that many of the standard approaches do not work. The number of users affected by this deficiency is rather large, comprising freelance consultants, small innovative companies, research groups and many others. In these scenarios, solutions requiring their own server infrastructure are the first to be out of the race, for such infrastructures need to be built up and managed by people well-acquainted with this job – who are mostly missing. Additionally, more specific problems are involved as the right bandwidth for accessing the own server, or the higher provider fees for connections providing a fixed IP address – not to mention security challenges. This means to exclude all systems like Lotus Domino or Microsoft Exchange – the latter anyway being rather a mail than a collaboration tool – from a possible selection.

E-mail alone definitely is not capable of covering this demand. WebDAV and various kinds of Internet filing tools are likewise unsuitable, alone for security reasons. So what else is on offer? Hosted Microsoft-Sharepoint solutions and other web-based collaboration infrastructures might solve the problem, but in the first place, hosting is rarely a cheap option, and the needed administration effort is considerable. Finally, this concept reaches the end of its potency for people sitting aboard a train badly missing a stable internet connection. For mobile users it is not at all a satisfying option to only work web-based. But at least, web solutions score with platform independence.

The requirements of the user group in question must be met by a tool that allows offline working – and can be used on various platforms. What these users need is a solution which by demand can also be accessed via web, particularly to integrate staff members from bigger enterprises who are involved in a common project and have to follow specific IT rules not allowing them to install a local application. The ideal solution should enable the user to exchange documents, manage calendars, maintain tasks and do other basic work – in the most simple way. If more than one computer is used, identical data should be accessible on all of them. Add some integrated chat or even VoIP functions for communication within virtual teams, and you will get a tool that supports the mobile virtual user much better than e-mail or the like.

Collaboration vendors have become aware of this demand. Collanos Workplace offered by Collanos clearly addresses this focus. Some of the needed functions as platform independence und offline capability are already implemented, others are found in the Roadmap, from VoIP integration and hosted online services to allow browser-based working, up to a simplified use on more than one computer. The whole system is characterized by a user-friendly look-and-feel. Another solution positioning itself in this market segment is Microsoft Office Groove. However, it rather represents a supplement to Microsoft Exchanger Server – thus catching up with Lotus Notes/Domino 8. And there is no platform independence.

This does not mean that e-mailing will be completely off-limits for users in question. But in many scenarios, information access will be much easier than before – and serve the large group of mobile people working in virtual structures in a more adequate way.

The author, Martin Kuppinger, is IT analyst and founder of the analyst firm Kuppinger Cole + Partner. He also works as a freelance journalist and has written more than 50 IT books in the last few years.

Es gibt schon seit vielen Jahren etliche Ansätze für die Zusammenarbeit von Teams, die „Collaboration“, angefangen von eMails über Groupware bis hin zu Team-Portalen für das Intranet oder Chat-Lösungen. Manche davon haben sich etabliert, andere sind – bestenfalls – auf dem Weg zu etablierten Lösungen. Doch wenn man sich einmal die Herausforderung „Collaboration“ aus Anwendersicht betrachtet, wird schnell deutlich, dass noch einiges im Argen liegt.

Wer innerhalb seines Unternehmens mit anderen Personen zusammenarbeiten muss, hat es dabei noch relativ gut – zumindest wenn das Unternehmen eine feste Struktur hat und beispielsweise eine Lotus Notes/Domino-Infrastruktur anbieten kann, die ja – mit der Version 8 und den Notes-Aktivitäten – auch bei der flexiblen Kollaboration einen deutlichen Sprung gemacht hat, nur eben in relativ starren Enterprise IT-Infrastrukturen. Ganz anders ist die Situation für mobile Benutzer und für kleinere Unternehmen mit eher virtuellen Strukturen, ebenso wie für temporär angelegte virtuelle Arbeitsstrukturen über Unternehmensgrenzen hinaus.

Das typische „Collaborations“-Werkzeug ist hier eMail. Wer hat nicht schon unter übervollen eMail-Boxen gelitten? Und wer kann schon effizient mit den ganzen Attachments von Mails umgehen? Letztlich ist eMail ein wichtiges Medium, aber für viele Aufgaben schlicht nicht geeignet.

Hinzu kommt, dass man mit zusätzlichen Chat-Programmen und anderen Mechanismen immer mehr neue Tools bekommt, die im Ergebnis nicht zur Vereinfachung der Kommunikation beitragen, weil man einfach zu viele verschiedene Kommunikationssysteme und –wege hat. Skype-Chats sind zwar nett und die Ergebnisse werden auch protokolliert. Aber wer schaut schon wirklich nach, was in den Chat-Protokollen steht?

Wenn man das Thema unter dem Blickwinkel der Anforderungen des typischen mobilen Benutzers betrachtet, der in virtuellen Strukturen arbeitet, wird schnell deutlich, dass hier viele der klassischen Ansätze nicht funktionieren. Und diese Gruppe von Benutzern ist nicht klein: Der frei arbeitende Unternehmensberater, kleine und innovative Unternehmen, Forschungsverbünde und viele andere Beispiele lassen sich hier nennen.

Lösungen, die eine eigene Server-Infrastruktur erfordern, fallen hier typischerweise schon weg. Denn es gibt meist niemand, der die Infrastruktur aufbauen und verwalten könnte, von Detailproblemen wie der Bandbreite für den Zugriff auf eigene Server und die höheren Provider-Kosten für Anbindungen mit fixer IP-Adresse und Sicherheitsproblemen mal ganz abgesehen. Also eben kein Lotus Domino, kein Microsoft Exchange – das ja ohnehin mehr Mail als Collaboration ist – und auch kein anderes System aus dieser Kategorie.

eMail alleine reicht auch nicht aus. WebDAV und irgendwelche Ablagen im Internet sind auch nicht die Lösung, schon aus Gründen der Sicherheit. Was bleibt also? Gehostete Microsoft Sharepoint-Lösungen oder andere solche web-basierenden Collaborations-Infrastrukturen könnten eine Lösung sein. Aber erstens ist das Hosting selten wirklich günstig. Zweitens hat man auch hier einen gewissen administrativen Aufwand. Und drittens scheitert das Konzept spätestens dann, wenn man im Zug sitzt und keine stabilen Internet-Verbindungen hat. Für mobile Nutzer ist es keineswegs optimal, nur web-basierend zu arbeiten. Immerhin haben Web-Lösungen aber den Vorteil der Plattformunabhängigkeit.

Für die Anforderungen der betrachteten Benutzergruppe braucht man aber ein Tool, mit dem man offline arbeiten kann. Man braucht ein Werkzeug, das auf verschiedenen Plattformen einsetzbar ist. Und man braucht eine Lösung, die bei Bedarf auch über das Web erreichbar ist – und zwar vor allem, um Personen aus größeren Unternehmen einbinden zu können, mit denen man in einem Projekt zusammenarbeitet und bei denen die IT-Richtlinien die Installation einer lokalen Anwendung verbieten. Mit der Lösung sollte man Dokumente austauschen, Kalender verwalten, Tasks pflegen und andere Grundfunktionen durchführen können – und das in möglichst einfacher Weise. Und wenn man mehr als einen Rechner nutzt, sollte man doch immer auf die gleichen Daten zugreifen können. Dazu noch integrierte Chat- und vielleicht sogar VoIP-Funktionen für die Kommunikation innerhalb der virtuellen Teams, und „schon“ hat man ein Werkzeug, mit dem der mobile, virtuelle Mensch viel besser arbeiten kann als mit eMails und anderen Ansätzen.

Genau auf diesem Weg befindet sich Collanos mit seinem Collanos Workplace. Einiges ist schon da, wie die Plattformunabhängigkeit und die Offline-Fähigkeit. Anderes findet sich in der Roadmap, angefangen von der VoIP-Integration über die gehosteten Online-Dienste, mit denen man auch über den Browser arbeiten kann und eine einfachere Nutzung von mehreren Rechnern aus. Und das Ganze in einer Form, die einfach nutzbar ist. Ein anderes Tool in diesem Marktsegment ist Microsoft Office Groove, das aber eher in Ergänzung zum Microsoft Exchange Server gegen Lotus Notes/Domino 8 positioniert ist. Hier fehlt beispielsweise auch die Plattformunabhängigkeit.

Das heißt nicht, dass man in solchen Strukturen weiterhin eMails nutzen wird. Aber: Man wird viele Informationen einfacher nutzen können als bisher. Und in einer Weise, die für die große Gruppe der mobilen, in virtuellen Strukturen arbeitenden Menschen angemessen ist.

Über den Autor:
Martin Kuppinger ist IT-Analyst und Gründer des Analystenhauses Kuppinger Cole + Partner. Zudem arbeitet er gelegentlich als freier Journalist und hat im Laufe der Jahre mehr als 50 IT-Fachbücher verfasst.

Collanos Software wishes you a happy and prosperous New Year.

2008 will be important for Collanos and hopefully quite exciting for you, one of our thousands “pioneering users”!

Collanos Phone Beta:

We’re starting the year with the introduction of valuable new (and free) functionality!

In cooperation with our voice services partner, Translumina Networks, we just launched the first Beta version of Collanos Phone, a service with voice, video and instant messaging features. The Beta program will demonstrate the robustness of the new offering. We hope you will enjoy these great new features. Your experiences and feedback are highly regarded and valuable to us and the entire Collanos user community. Please check it out and share your opinion on our Community site.

After the Beta phase (should last a couple of weeks) we will launch Collanos Phone 1.0, including premium voice features, allowing you to be called from the public telephone network as well as to call team members’ phones.

Integrated in the Phone is a multi-protocol instant messaging capability, allowing you to use Collanos Phone as your instant messaging front end to AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, ICQ and Jabber.

Note: Collanos Phone uses the same “Collanos Name” and user profile that you have already created with Collanos Workplace.

Collanos Workplace 1.2:
As you may be aware, we recently launched a much improved version of Collanos Workplace, 1.2. After migrating the supporting infrastructure to this new version, it is now required for all users to upgrade to Collanos Workplace 1.2. Earlier versions (V1.1 and older) are no longer supported by the network infrastructure.

The next version of Collanos Workplace, 1.3, including the long awaited team synchronization functionality as well as new messaging capabilities, will follow very soon.

Both the new Collanos Phone Beta and Collanos Workplace can be downloaded from http://www.collanos.com/downloads. We look forward to reading about your experiences. You can be assured, while 2008 has just started, it will be an exciting year for Collanos users!

Nothing like starting the today with a new great review of our product. Actually, there were two great blog postings by two different users who work for the same company AWH Weblog.

Brent and Jesse submitted their objective (truly unbiased) review of Collanos Workplace, including some cons, which we are always welcoming so that we can further improve our products. What’s more, Jesse even provided a step-by-step installation guide for those of you first installing our peer-to-peer based team workspaces solution. Brent brings up some very valid points:

“Personally I was excited to test this product because I feel workplace communication and collaboration is weak in most companies…finding a product to help the process without adding extra work has been a challenge, until now…”

Collaboration adoption is extremely weak at non-enterprise companies (even enterprise adoption can be argued)…simply since we always default to same old out-of-context email. Organizing your content around team workspaces/projects is the fundamental value Collanos provides. Once you ‘think out of the inbox’, it’s hard to fall back to email when working on future team-based projects.

Brent also highlights a key Collanos differentiator, separating us from the many hosted team collaboration solutions currently out there, comparing the client vs. browser experience:

“…honestly I found the interoperability via a client much better than most online collaboration tools I have used…As well I found the overall interface well thought out and enjoyable to use.”

The reason being that with a rich client you get a rich experience, something you are so familiar with from other client applications such as Windows Explorer/Finder, folder navigation, Instant Messengers, etc. granting you immediate comprehension of the Collanos application with zero training required.

The work-offline advantages of Collanos are a no-brainer for those of us even with 10% network downtime throughout the day. The user interface and experience are just as important to get full team adoption, embracing the least tech-savvy member of the team. Otherwise, it’s back to email…

Areas for improvement, such as better permission management and hosted workspaces are already in the works (as is VoIP integration, calendaring and more) but we always like to hear from our users what is their most burning requirements (See related board on our user forum).

We applause Brent and Jesse’s thorough analysis and review of Collanos Workplace and encourage others to follow suit and share with the entire Collanos community how to make the best of Collanos and let us know where we can improve.

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.

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.

Julien le Nestour in his blog “Collanos: core Groove features for free” brought up some interesting comparison points between Collanos Workplace and Groove. In response to his posting I added a comment which I thought our blog readers would be interested as well.

Julien, an experienced Groove user, did a very impressive and thorough analysis and comparison of Collanos with Groove.

I just wanted to add a few notes about the ‘folderisation’ aspect of Collanos Workplace that he brings up and explain why we have chosen to place the workspace at the root of the Collanos solution and not create separate silos for each object type (Tasks, Discussions, etc.) as is the case in Groove.

At the inception of Collanos, our founder Franco Dal Molin was a dissatisfied user of Groove. Money wasn’t a matter, it was the user experience (as well as the Windows only snag).
When team-intensive knowledge professionals as ourselves engage in projects, we are dealing with more than just files and team members. Team projects entail sharing of content that can be in the form of communications (synchronous such as IM and asynchronous such as email and chats) and the content itself (Unstructured data as in Office, PDF, media and other application files and Structured such as in tasks, chats, notes, links).

Team members need to be able to share all these forms of content in the context of the project. What’s more, they need to be able to do this concurrently with other parallel team projects. As a result, Collanos Workplace was designed in a way that users can view all project/s data in ONE location. No separate tabs for each form of content. It’s all there!

Users typically think in terms of projects/workspaces and in their projects they can immediately see all the different forms of content that are available (more objects will be created overtime by Collanos and by opening our studio to advanced users) and be able to communicate real time or async with any online and offline member. The consolidated workspace view is where we see the improvement over Groove, not a shortfall. Users who are very accustomed to Groove may have an initial phase of transition to this structure but for new users, we find that the ease of use is really where we stand out compared to Groove.
The hierarchical structure of folders is also based on users’ close familiarity with Windows Explorer or Mac Finder, further accelerating their ability to ramp up on the solution.

We are always looking for suggestions on how to further ‘dumbify’ our solution and address the weakest link on any team so that the entire team embraces Collanos. We encourage our readers to send us feedback and help us improve the only successful alternative to Groove out there.

SAN FRANCISCO — May 24, 2007 — Collanos Software today released Collanos Workplace 1.1, a free p2p platform that enables team collaboration on Windows, Mac, and Linux systems without the need for a server. Version 1.1 lays the foundation for global team collaboration. In addition, several new features have been added, including a Central User Directory, User Sign In/Out, and Vista OS support. Collanos delivers increased reliability, speed, and overall performance.

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.

With the introduction of the Collanos Central User Directory, users will be able to see and invite any other Collanos community member, even if they are offline. Collanos Workplace allows users to restore any previous version of team member contributions. The Auto start kicks off the replication process immediately after the computer goes online. With the new Sign In/Out step, on top of the existing data encryption and secure storage, Collanos adds an additional security measure to protect project and team data.

Existing Workplace users will see an immediate improvement with the overall performance of the application, and in the speed of content replication across each team member’s workspaces.

With this new release, Collanos Software continues to execute on its vision of bringing free, easy-to-use, yet powerful team collaboration solutions to millions of internet users. Collanos’ mission is connecting collaborating people and enabling professional teamwork on a global basis and beyond enterprise boundaries.

“Over the last few months Collanos has been collecting input from the thousands of Windows, Mac and Linux users to better manage their team projects,” said Franco Dal Molin, CTO and President of Collanos. “Quarter over quarter Collanos triples its users. From the new release we expect important acceleration for this growth.

Following very active engagements and a dramatic increase in Collanos’ user-base in Europe over the last few months, Collanos and Musala Soft, our Bulgarian software development partner, were awarded “Innovation Award ITK 2007 Office Organization ” by Initiative Mittelstand, a German initiative to develop small and medium size businesses.

The award was given following Germany’s reknown CeBIT conference. Other category winners to receive similar awards include Open-Xchange, Collax, www.salesforce.com and Joomla!.