Collanos Blog

“Morgen komm ich später rein - für mehr Freiheit in der Festanstellung” (translated to English: “Tomorrow I will start later - for more freedom in permanent employment”)

As an average person, we spend between 70.000 und 80.000 hours of our lives sitting at the desk. Even though we are part of a knowledge society, we are using structures from industrial society. Sitting out core working hours and excessive overtime seem to stand for „real“ commitment. The economic damage caused by boredom and inefficiency at work is huge.

On August 14, the book “Morgen komm ich später rein - für mehr Freiheit in der Festanstellung” will be published by Campus. The author, Markus Albers, sees the answer to this problem in a playful, flexible, and mobile attitude towards work – let´s call it Easy Economy. Albers: “Go to the cinema during the day, play with your children, integrate hobbies and friends in your daily routine which so far has been dominated by your working life. Make your permanent employment a free-permanent employment. I think, we will witness the end of the office of today. ”

Collanos is also mentioned in the book. The author writes about an interview with me:

“Peter Helfenstein explains the advantages of working without being fixed to a precise point, which means mobility and globalization, increase in efficiency, potential savings, access to highly qualified workers worldwide, and accessibility to customers all over the world thanks to new communication channels. According to Helfenstein, technology is not the reason for this development, but a tool to meet enterprise requirements that have existed long before: We must be in a position to contact anybody, at any time, from anywhere, and collaborate with our customers and contact persons on a flexible, economic and delay-free basis. In view of globalization and rapidly growing competition, 9-to-5 will be an out-dated concept, a competitive disadvantage. Helfenstein sees the New Economy as technology hype, a period when technological prospects offered more than customers wanted. “But today, enterprises, staff members and consumers have realized the advantages of globalization, mobility and flexibility, and now we need technologies that meet these requirements.”

In the new working world outlined above, a slightly different type of employee is required: ”Extroverted personalities actively establishing contact with the outside world and feeling inspired by doing so, are the ones to best fit into this model. Therefore, I am not surprised that this development is advancing faster in the USA.”

Inevitably, flexibility, mobility, and home office mean to widely do without informal communication, get-togethers during coffee break, smokers´corner, or common lunchtime. Helfenstein: “This might weaken identification with team and company and should be balanced by targeted measures, for example fixed dates for team afternoons, occasional work together with all employees at one location, or video conferences which like an intercom system permanently link all employees together worldwide.” Partly, you may be able to compensate physical separation by more frequent virtual meetings, but „ once in a while, you should talk to each other face-to-face. “Our American co-workers come to see us in Switzerland at regular intervals for one or two weeks, and the Swiss travel from USA to India to meet their collegues: the positive effect is noticeable for about three months, afterwards misunderstandings in communication become more frequent again. ”

The Campus-Verlag comments ‘Morgen komm ich später rein’ as follows: “This book harbours a promise which reads: You don´t have to go on working as before. And this book wants to convey a vision. The vision that thanks to modern technology and changing social values, our work will be characterized by more freedom and self-determination than that of our parents´generation. But this does not mean that we have to cut back on performance and career. On the contrary, you would feel more productive, relaxed and competent when communicating with superiors and other staff members. It suggests that we would finally be able to combine our job and your leisure time in a way that we would never have thought of some years ago. And even that, en passant, we might become happier individuals.”

Dr. Wilhelm Bauer at Fraunhofer Institut für Arbeitswirtschaft und Organisation says: “Is this real work – sitting with your notebook in a café or in your garden? The ‘Easy Economy’ as outlined by Markus Albers promises a world of work that is marked by more independence for permanent employees as well as creativity and motivation. The development depicted in the book is sustainable and irreversible. In retrospect, we will eventually refer to it as the revolution of work.”

Markus Albers is political scientist and journalist. He lives in Berlin as a free-lance author reporting for magazines such as Vanity Fair and Monocle. Before this, he did journalistic work for stern, SPIEGEL, SZ-Magazin and Welt am Sonntag. He held the position of directing journalist with the German edition of Vanity Fair. The biography of his career shows a repeated change between free and employed occupations, so the subject of his book also reflects a subject of his life.

http://www.freianstellung.de
http://www.markusalbers.com

“Morgen komm ich später rein - für mehr Freiheit in der Festanstellung”

Zwischen 70.000 und 80.000 Stunden im Leben verbringt der Durchschnittsmensch am Schreibtisch. Doch mitten in der Wissensgesellschaft arbeiten wir mit Strukturen aus der Industriegesellschaft: Abgesessene Kernarbeitszeit und exzessive Überstunden gelten als Beweis für “echtes” Engagement. Der volkswirtschaftliche Verlust durch Langeweile und Ineffizienz im Job ist enorm.

Die Lösung dieses Dilemmas liegt für Markus Albers, Autor des Buches “Morgen komm ich später rein - für mehr Freiheit in der Festanstellung”, das am 14. August um Campus-Verlag erscheint, in einer verspielten, flexiblen und mobilen Arbeitsauffassung - nennen wir sie Easy Economy. Albers: “Gehen Sie tagsüber ins Kino, spielen Sie mit ihren Kindern, integrieren Sie Hobbys und Freunde in Ihren Tagesablauf, der bislang nur vom Berufsleben geprägt war. So wird aus der Festanstellung eine Freianstellung. Wir werden es erleben - das Ende des Büros, wie wir es kennen.”

Auch Collanos kommt in “Morgen komm ich später rein” vor. Über ein Interview zwischen ihm und mir schreibt der Autor:

“Peter Helfenstein erklärt u.a. die Vorteile der ortlosen Arbeitsweise, nämlich Mobilität und Globalisierung, Effizienzsteigerung, Sparpotenziale, der Zugang zu qualifizierten Arbeitskräften weltweit und die zusätzliche Nähe zu Kunden überall auf der Welt dank neuer Kommunikationskanäle. Technologie sieht Helfenstein dabei nicht als Ursache, sondern als Werkzeug, Unternehmensbedürfnisse zu befriedigen, die vorher bereits existierten: ‘Wir müssen in der Lage sein, mit jedem, jederzeit, von überall arbeiten sowie flexibel, günstig und zeitverzugslos mit unseren Kunden und Ansprechpartnern kollaborieren zu können. Durch die Globalisierung und den immer stärkeren Wettbewerb wird 9-to-5 eine Illusion, ein Wettbewerbsnachteil.’ Die New Economy sei zwar ein Technologie-Hype gewesen, so Helfenstein. In dieser Zeit hätten die technologischen Möglichkeiten mehr geboten als die Kunden wollten: “Aber heute haben Unternehmen, Mitarbeiter und Konsumenten die Vorteile der Globalisierung, der Mobilität und Flexibilität erkannt. Nun braucht es die Technologien, dies zu nutzen.”

Dazu bedürfe es zum Teil auch eines anderen Mitarbeitertypus:”Extrovertierte Persönlichkeiten, die den Kontakt nach aussen aktiv suchen, dadurch motiviert werden, können besser mit solchen Modellen umgehen. Für mich ist es deshalb nicht verwunderlich, wenn in den USA die Adoption schneller vor sich geht.”

Durch Flexibilität, Mobilität und Homeoffice falle natürlich die informelle Kommunikation, das Zusammentreffen in der Kaffeepause, der Raucherecke, oder beim Mittagessen nahezu weg, so Helfenstein: “Dies kann die Identifikation mit Team und Firma reduzieren und muss entsprechend durch gezielte Massnahmen kompensiert werden, wie Teamnachmittage, Arbeit an einem Standort mit allen, oder Videotechnologie, die wie eine Gegensprechanlage alle Mitarbeiter weltweit permanent verbindet.” Physische Trennung könne zwar durch stärkeres virtuelles Zusammenkommen kompensiert werden. “Man muss sich allerdings zwischendurch doch mal sehen”, so Helfenstein. “Die Amerikaner besuchen uns regelmässig für eine bis zwei Wochen in der Schweiz, die Schweizer die Mitarbeiter von den USA bis Indien: Es hält etwa drei Monate, danach werden die Missverständnisse bei der Kommunikation wieder grösser.”

Der Campus-Verlag schreibt über ‘Morgen komm ich später rein’: “Dieses Buch birgt ein Versprechen. Es lautet: Sie müssen nicht so weiterarbeiten wie bisher. Und dieses Buch möchte eine Vision vermitteln. Dass wir dank moderner Technik und eines Wandels gesellschaftlicher Werte freier und selbstbestimmter arbeiten werden als die Generation unserer Eltern. Dass wir dabei keine Abstriche im Job machen müssen, was Leistung und Karriere angeht. Sondern im Gegenteil Kollegen und Vorgesetzten produktiver, gelassener und souveräner begegnen. Dass wir endlich Beruf und Freizeit auf eine Weise vereinen können, die noch vor wenigen Jahren undenkbar schien. Und dass wir so vielleicht - ganz automatisch - zu glücklicheren Menschen werden.”

Und Dr. Wilhelm Bauer vom Fraunhofer Institut für Arbeitswirtschaft und Organisation, sagt dazu: “Mit dem Notebook im Café oder im Garten sitzen - kann das Arbeit sein? Mit der ‘Easy Economy’ skizziert Markus Albers eine Arbeitswelt, die durch grosse Freiheiten für Festangestellte sowie durch Kreativität und Motivation gekennzeichnet ist. Die im Buch skizzierten Entwicklungen sind nachhaltig und unumkehrbar. In der Retrospektive werden wir von einer Revolution der Arbeit sprechen.

Markus Albers ist Politologe und Journalist. Er lebt als freier Autor in Berlin und berichtet für Zeitschriften wie Vanity Fair und Monocle aus aller Welt. Zuvor schrieb er für stern und SPIEGEL, das SZ-Magazin sowie die Welt am Sonntag. Zuletzt arbeitete er als geschäftsführender Redakteur der deutschen Vanity Fair. Seine eigene Arbeitsbiografie wechselte stets zwischen festen und freien Beschäftigungen, das Thema seines Buches ist damit auch ein Lebensthema.

http://www.freianstellung.de
http://www.markusalbers.com

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.

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.

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.

Collanos Software and beteo, two global Swiss start-ups, close ranks to share resources, expertise and partnerships. Collanos Software CEO Peter Helfenstein in addition takes on the COO position of beteo. Hence both Collanos and beteo can profit from the experiences and structures of both companies. Despite the intensive cooperation and the shared resources, beteo and Collanos will remain clearly distinctive companies.

Dieter Steiger, founder and CEO of beteo as well as Advisory Board Member of Collanos, claims that “Collanos Software is an exemplary Swiss global start-up. With the help of our management team and Peter Helfenstein as our new COO, we’ll position beteo similarly well on the international market. Of course, I’m thrilled at the prospect”.

The joint forces allow both companies to acquire a certain critical size faster and more easily. Marketing and alliance functions can be created in an earlier phase for both Europe and the U.S. Together, these two firms represent a far more interesting service and software partner for large American and European IT-companies such as HP, SAP, Apple or Sun Microsystems. It also makes them more attractive as a potential client for the near and offshore development partners in Ukraine and India. beteo and Collanos shoulder to shoulder can make joint and better use of their expertise in PR, web presence, product management and investments in infrastructure and back office.

“We are fully aware that reduced working hours of Peter Helfenstein may be a risk for both companies. However, we believe that the synergies and lower costs obtained, will fully justify this partnership”, says Franco Dal Molin, founder, president and CTO of Collanos. “beteo is an ambitious, fast growing and profitable company with unique expertise and potential. Being able to benefit from this is a privilege and a great opportunity for our team. Even though the targeted customer segments are different, both companies have to tackle basically the same tasks. Now, we can do so in a joint effort”.

Even with the intensive cooperation and the sharing of resources, beteo and Collanos will remain distinctly separate companies. Peter Helfenstein, CEO of Collanos Software and new COO of beteo, asserts that “despite a very close collaboration, the two global Swiss start-ups want to act autonomously to a large extent. Both are developing independently according to their own strategy. Yet, thanks to the new partner, they will do so more efficiently and effectively. We are open to alliances with additional Swiss start-ups that share global ambitions with us”.

About beteo

beteo is a visionary Switzerland based global software and consulting start-up. Its application lifecycle management solutions and services focus on keeping Enterprise software system environments flexibly and efficiently adaptable to the changing business needs of the future.

It was founded in February 2007 as a spin-off of a leading Swiss IT Governance service company and is based in Sarnen, Switzerland, and Berlin, Germany. Among its clients are well-known companies in Austria, Germany and Switzerland.

In earlier blogs like Disruptive Innovation at Work and Gartner Prediction Supports the Collanos Business Model I wrote about our progressive go-to-market strategy entering new markets for collaboration, and our starting point to ride the most recent consumerization wave across enterprise boundaries.

Two inspiring new blog articles and their discussion threads seem to confirm our approach:

• Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, in his blog The Black Wire and the White Wire connects a second ethernet cable to his business laptop kicking off an IT “civil war”.

On my desk at work I have two ethernet cables. One is black and one is white. The black one is connected to our corporate network. I use that one when I want to print things. I could also use it for Internet access and stuff, but I don’t because the corporate network blocks a number of ports, including those used for Skype and Second Life. It’s also pretty slow.

The white cable, meanwhile, is a standard consumer-grade DSL connection to the Internet, with nothing blocked at all. Our local IT staff installed it by popular demand, possibly without checking with headquarters (we love our local IT staff!). It’s fast. I use it all the time.

Consumerization of enterprise IT at work…

• Jason Hiner, Executive Editor at TechRepublic, in “The six consumer technologies that are destroying traditional IT ” explicitely sees p2p Collanos Workplace being adopted even by corporate IT supported by some pressure coming from consumerization.

That doesn’t mean IT should necessarily abandon P2P software altogether. It can often prove extremely useful and efficient. For example, Collanos software can be used for sharing and collaborating on documents between various users in a team or workgroup.

Disrupting the collaboration market outside the enterprise platform and being brought in through enterprise doors via consumerization seems like a promising new business strategy – not only for Collanos.

Often we get emails from users asking why we are not steering head on to the enterprise market. For now, Collanos Workplace is all about allowing our users to create ad hoc teams, very likely because they don’t have the resources, time and skills to license a SharePoint, Groove, Groupwise, Notes, etc (or ramp up their entire team on the latest flavor-of-the-day, ‘cool’ hosted collaboration tool, which may be cool but not enough to be adopted by the entire team).

As a result, the SMB market is where we have home advantage. That being said, often we find enterprise users using our application as it still beats the complexity of running some of the afformentioned enterprise solutions. Furthermore, Collanos bridges the gap of being able to collaborate on a team project with organizations external to the brick firewalls of these tight enterprise systems.

Below is a correspondence between our team and a user bringing up some great points about why and how Collanos can fit in the enterprise market:

“Dear Collanos,

…There are a few issues that would need addressing to enable this product for an enterprise, and I am not sure as to whether doing this goes against the ‘decentralised’ model that collanos uses. You would need some of the centralised controls. You would want the ability, for example, to limit certain people from inviting members from outside the organisation. Additionally, from an IT admin point of view I have concerns that I would not know what was floating around the business. In the standard client/server environment we can easily check which files are where, what they contain etc. Having a ‘closed network’ which is what peer-to-peer does, would mean that we would be blind in this respect. The lack of instant messaging logging is also of concern.

The issue of files being deleted / altered, and then users waiting to get them back would also be an issue. Again, in client / server we keep back-ups of all files on the server so it is an easy thing to get them back. I do not know how we would achieve this in a p2p environment. We trailed Groove before Microsoft had bought it and they seemed to address this issues by having servers in the loop - back-up server, relay server etc. I understand that with Groove now you can upload/download content to Sharepoint servers. This whole centralised modelling may be stepping away from the way you envision your product evolving though, although I actually just regard them as a ‘bigger client’ in the loop.

What we were looking for was a simple way for certain teams to work together better. We are currently implementing Lotus Notes as our email system and that obviously has very strong collaboration functionality. However, it does require initial set-up and ongoing maintenance by IT - your type of product is a very quick way to get keep everything in the one place and just ‘work’.

Maybe you could enable your product to sync with a Lotus Domino server like Groove does with Sharepoint? This would certainly help address many of the issues above.
Collanos Member”

Collanos’ response:

“Dear Collanos Member,

Many thanks for the in-depth comments. I understand you points very well. As I mentioned in our first email, we are really targeting a more ad-hoc teamwork environment. Very valuable enterprise needs are as such second priority to what you call to an extent the “simple way for certain teams to work together better”, fast, ad-hoc without administrative hurdles. The price we pay at the moment is that we cannot fulfill typical enterprise needs.

The idea of to be an extension to Lotus reaching beyond the Enterprise came up several times, not only from us. It could make a lot of sense.

We are working on closing some of the enterprise gaps though. Instant messaging will be improved and stored. We are looking at integrating with server peers that will allow back-up and potentially can store a superset of team Workplace data. And to improve Identity Management and the recognition of users is something that we will need to address.

At the moment we are positioned differently and I think that we can create a lot of value for ad-hoc teams working together professionally with Collanos, more professional than using just email to support document-rich inter-company processes.

I am very glad to keep you posted on all our plans and new deliveries. Our goal is clearly through the “consumer” to play more and more a role in the enterprise. Feedback like yours is invaluable for us. If you still see areas where in the context of your business a process can be supported successfully with a collaborative solution like Collanos, we will be glad to learn about it. I think that Collanos also has a role in helping people to improve their work culture to share with their teams and to reuse. From there they can move up into the enterprise-class collaboration league. My experience is that it is most of the time more about cultural barriers than missing technology if collaboration fails.

Many thanks.

Collanos “

Would be very interested in getting your comments on this topic. You can respond directly to this posting or on the related board on our user forum.

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.

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.