Collanos Blog

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.

We are excited to announce the availability of an update to Collanos Workplace 1.1.

As opposed to past updates, this specific update will not pop-up automatically when you open the application. You will need to visit our Downloads page, select your operating system and download the installer. Once you have completed the download, close Collanos Workplace, run the installation and when prompted where to install the application and application data be sure to select the existing locations of your current Collanos Workplace application and data. This will assure you are updating your existing application and data and not creating a new installation.

Important bug fixes, performance enhancements and new features have been introduced with this update. For more detailed information, read the release notes on our user forum.

The update also includes tasks that improve the storage of Collanos Workplace data and CPU performance. In certain scenarios, just after the installation, updating the data store might lead to heavy CPU load. In such cases, it is recommended to run the updated version of Collanos Workplace for the first time during a period where the PC is less loaded with other applications, for example overnight.

Also want to take this opportunity to welcome our two new Collanos Country Ambassadors, Paulo Xavier of Portugal (Ranked #12 in number of Collanos users) and Sergio Burdiles of Chile (Ranked Country #45). Want to represent Collanos in your country, campus or industry and help us get the Collanos word out or perhaps share with the Collanos community what your team is doing with Collanos via our Spotlight Series? Send us an email.

As always, looking forward to your feedback. Please share it with the entire community by posting it on our user forum.

Sincerely, Gil Heiman

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.

Collanos bringt Workplace 1.1. mit neuen Features auf den Markt

Zürich, 15. Mai 2007 – Collanos Software bringt Collanos Workplace 1.1. auf den Markt. Die aktuelle Version der kostenlosen Software für firmen- und teamübergreifendes Zusammenarbeiten im Internet wartet mit Neuheiten auf: Sie ermöglicht das Auffinden von Teammitgliedern, auch wenn diese nicht online sind, vereinfacht die Zusammenarbeit unter den Mitgliedern, erhöht die Sicherheit und läuft neu auch unter Vista.

Collanos Mitglieder können ihr User-Profil dem gesamten Netzwerk zugänglich machen. Damit schafft Collanos ein globales Netzwerk. So können andere Collanos Nutzer via Internet einfach gefunden und eingeladen werden – selbst wenn ein Mitglied offline ist. „Wir müssen öfters neue Teammember in Collanos einladen, die genau zu dem Zeitpunkt nicht online sind“, erklärt Christian Aglen, Wirtschafts-Student an der Maharishi University of Management in Iowa. „Mit dem neuen Benutzerverzeichnis können wir jeden User finden und unabhängig vom Status einladen.“

Mit Collanos kann man jederzeit auf frühere Versionen von Beiträgen und Informationen zurückgreifen. Neu synchronisiert Collanos die Informationen unter den Mitgliedern, sobald die Computer eingeschaltet werden. Die neue Version garantiert hohe Sicherheit der Projekt- und Teamdaten dank Login und verschlüsselter Datenhaltung sowie Übertragung.

Typische Collanos-Nutzer sind kleinere, innovative Firmen, mobil und global agierende Arbeitsgruppen, aber auch Studenten, die eine flexible Kollaborationsplattform über Standort- und Firmengrenzen hinaus benötigen.

„Zehntausende Benutzer brauchen Collanos Workplace, um auf gemeinsame Dokumente, Kontakte, Diskussionen und Projekte zuzugreifen und dies unabhängig davon, ob sie unter Windows, Mac OS X oder Linux oder einer Kombination davon arbeiten“, erklärt Peter Helfenstein, Collanos CEO. „Collanos verdreifacht von Quartal zu Quartal die Nutzer. Von der neuen Version erwarten wir eine weitere Beschleunigung des Zuspruchs.“

Der kostenlos erhältliche Collanos Workplace 1.1 steht unter www.collanos.com zum Download bereit.

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.

You asked - we delivered! With the release of our latest version of Collanos Workplace, 1.0.0.10, Collanos is now also audio-enabled.

From now on you will be sound alerted when you receive new content, get pinged by other team members or when other certain actions take place in your workspaces.

Get a flavor of it (double click the arrow)…

This alone may not be the breaking news you would expect in a blog posting (although for Peter and me it is like music to our ears) but the release of audio alerts is one of many features being introduced recently by our highly committed and proficient development teams Musala Soft in Bulgaria and Qarea in Ukraine.

Collanos Workplace, our free P2P team collaboration solution, has gone through accelerated growth stages (yes, we are on growth hormones) over the last few months from being in early Beta to the current state of being able to smell the scent of the upcoming GA (General Availability).

Almost every two weeks our team has churned out a new release with new features and enhancements, further strengthening our position as the leading cross-platform (Windows, Mac, and Linux) team collaboration solution.

Wouldn’t this sound better if it were coming from our users? It sure would, so let me share some of it with you:

Since using Collanos we’ve been able to reduce the overhead load per work-unit by at least 20-25% which translates into a significant productivity gain (Gottfried Ryser, Switzerland).

We see the p2p based solution help us more to manage the daily workload in the projects with less effort than a server based one. Also means less emails with attachments. Now all projects have their space in Collanos (Christoph eBell, Switzerland).

Months I’ve been looking for a way to share documents with colleagues. We often update these documents and then send them around using E-mail. Efficiency has left the building…(Michiel Masselink, Netherlands)

If you spend most of your time working with one or more teams, and your email inbox is littered with endless out of context emails and spam, Collanos Workplace will cure many of your pains.

If you’re as skeptical as I am of what you read on blogs published by us vendors, take us for a test-drive! The keys are inside, no payment required. And while you’re at it, if you see me (Gil Heiman) online, invite me to a test workspace. I never decline an invite!

Last but not least, pump of the volume! Got to love that noise.

Since we released the beta 1 in late June 2006, we have fixed 180 bugs and issues in the product.

Previously we have been keeping you informed by posting occasional updates to our forum. From now on, we will be publishing release notes with each update or release of Collanos Workplace. This way you can easily find out what problems we fixed and on what issues we are still working. Our goal is to keep you informed regarding our product and let you know that we are listening to your requests and acting on them.

We appreciate the time you take to give us feedback.

Sincerely,

Steven Tedjamulia
Head of Product Management
Steven DOT tedjamulia AT collanos DOT com