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.

Top 10 lists are out. Analyzing the short tail of registered Collanos users per country is nevertheless revealing. The distribution of the countries is changing slowly, not really surprisingly.

United States is number 1 with 35% of the registrations. This percentage share is growing steadily since the introduction of version 1.1.

Position 2 is Switzerland with 12%! After all, it is Collanos’ home country and Collanos Workplace has a German version of the product. The share of Switzerland is slowly decreasing which actually is expected given the size of the market.

Not surprisingly number 3 is Germany with 9%.

Rank 4, 5 and 6 are Canada, UK, India with each 4% and Australia 7th with 2% as all are strong English speaking markets. These countries have shown the strongest growth percentage over the last month with India having the highest growth rate.

8 and 9 follow the top markets even without national language versions: Netherlands and Italy with 2% of registrations.

Ranked 10 now is China also with 2%. The introduction of the Chinese version has led to nice growth, not only in China but overall in East Asia. Many countries in that area are climbing up the list and are in the meantime positioned between 20 and 30.

And who is positioned to enter the top 10? 11 to 20 are Portugal, Sweden, Austria (Collanos needs some push in the German speaking neighbourhood it seems), Brazil, Bulgaria, Malaysia, Russia, France, Poland and Philippines.

It will be interesting to see the changes over the next few months. Since the numbers of registred users are still small the effects of launching new language versions as well as of the work of active Collanos Ambassadors and communities are strongly influencing the growth of the user base.

Great to see the number of Collanos users growing all over the world. I am glad to share these stats with all of you regularly.

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

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.

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.

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.

Yesterday’s flattering review of Collanos Workplace on eWeek was more than just…flaterring. Tiffany Maleshefski, the author, highlighted the fundamental points that make Collanos Workplace one of the leading teamwork solutions in the market.
The review’s title:

Collanos Collaboration Software Simplifies Teamwork

hits right on the mark on Collanos’ main differentiator from other P2P solutions such as Groove (now Microsoft) and any of the many hosted solutions available these days. Collanos simplifies teamwork. Period!

Her opening line immediately addresses our main ‘competitor’, email:

no disputing that e-mail is, at best, a mediocre tool for conducting ad hoc collaboration.

‘Think Out of the Inbox’, our company’s tagline, was chosen for that same reason. We all fall to the trap of using team-unfriendly email even when we need a solution that is more in the context of teams and team projects.

But how do we simplify teamwork? We make it more accessible to the average Joe, Jane, Xian (Yes, also in Chinese language!), Christian and Jolanda. No servers, no IT support, no OS limitations as she states:

Companies out to find a better way to work together without having to roll out a server-based collaboration product or impose particular operating system requirements on potential team members may find what they’re looking for in Collanos Software’s Collanos Workplace 1.1….Collanos Workplace 1.1 can spell relief for IT managers too pressed for time to evaluate, deploy and maintain a server-based collaboration platform.

Simplification is more than just for IT managers (actually, no IT managers required with Collanos in most user settings). It’s the users who find an intuitive, easy-to-use and no training required experience once installing the application and accessing their workspaces:

Collanos Workplace 1.1’s capabilities for rounding up the files, folders and discussions that comprise collaborative projects into single, easily accessible and well-synchronized spaces…we found it much easier [than Groove] to get down to business with the core functionality that Collanos does offer. In our opinion, getting a solid grip on Groove requires a more rigorous employee training than what’s required for Collanos.

Just to be fair, I didn’t post here some of the few ‘less flattering’ comments Tiffany mentioned about the product but these were actually more constructive comments than critiques that we are already addressing in the coming releases.

Collanos provides enterprise-class team workspace solutions for non-enterprise users. Since you are reading this blog, I am confident that you can use something better than email to manage all team content. Next time you click on the “Send” button of an email, think twice if this could have been done differently…or perhaps more simplified.

A while ago we were invited to Apple HQ in Cupertino to record a webcast demonstration of Collanos Workplace for the Mac Learning community.

MacLearning is a community of professional educators, technologists, developers and change agents dedicated to transforming learning through innovation.

The recording was made available using iTunes U, a free, hosting service for colleges and universities that provides easy access to their educational content.

You can view the webcast on the Mac Learning site with iTunes or more simply here below thanks to our streaming video services provider, veodia.

Thought our blog readers would be interested in reading the latest Collanos Momentum Newsletter we sent out via email last week to the Collanos community:

“Since our last Collanos Momentum Newsletter in October 2006 we progressed well towards our goal of becoming a “one million users teamwork internet platform” by the end of 2008. Here’s a short update on our latest milestones:

Collanos’ management and financial foundation has been reinvigorated with the addition of Andreas Danuser, as a major investor and board member. Andreas is a successful serial entrepreneur (Inalp Networks, SwissQual, NetModule, CTModule, Comitas and Translumina) who brings all his VoIP competence into our company.
We are now working on the next investment round, which will allow us to switch gears, further enhancing our offering and, most importantly, solidifying our global structure and reach!

Collanos Workplace, our flagship solution, has matured a lot. On December 14th, 2006, after a six months beta phase, we launched Collanos Workplace 1.0. On February 8th, 2007 we released an important update making it available also in the German language.
Finally, last week, on May 14th, 2007 we launched Collanos Workplace 1.1, our newest version adding new key functionality to the product. Now users can find and invite other Collanos members and team workers around the world, even if they are offline. We also added the ability to restore older document versions of the team at any time. In addition Collanos supports now a third language – Chinese. After English and German this will allow us to increase our user base in the fastest growing internet market.

Since February we further broadened Collanos’ global PR reach. Our head agency, Jenni Kommunikation in Switzerland, was complemented with PR agencies in the United States (FutureWork PR – specializing in social media PR) and Germany (100zehn). This increased the effectiveness of our PR work in these countries very notably.
Just the fact that at CeBIT we were awarded with the “Office Organization Innovation Prize 2007” increased our visibility all over Europe!

Collanos’ user base has grown substantially with nearly 10,000 registrations just on our own website. We estimate the downloads on more than 1000 freeware download sites to be at least 5 times that number!
Using Collanos Workplace 1.1, you can now see for yourself how many users have registered with Collanos.

The growth of Collanos’ user base is fueled by successful use-cases and teams. We started to document these stories and role models, including: JC eBell, Pure Swiss, San Jose State University (SJSU), the agency teams of Jenni Kommunikation and Tweakfest.
With the much improved Collanos Workplace 1.1, new stories will be added frequently over the next weeks.

Early this year we also launched the very successful Collanos Ambassador program. Collanos friends from all over the world, including the U.S., Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Canada, Nicaragua, Brazil and the Philippines, voluntarily motivate, communicate, invite and support other Collanos users in their vicinity. This has been a great reward for our team to see other users so actively engaged with the Collanos community and provide us with valuable feedback.

Is there anything else we can do better? Oh, yes, there is!
We learned a lot over these last few months and have pushed our team decentralization to the maximum and beyond. Technology allows having teams spread all over the world but there are also limitations. As a result, we are going to concentrate our business functions in certain locations with the development organization in Kharkov, Ukraine, and the management and marketing in Switzerland and San Francisco.

Our product needed more time to mature than we had expected. This was a tough learning. The good news is that Version 1.1 is a major step forward and with Version 1.2 we are going to close the final open gaps: Just glimpse into the future with our Founder and CTO Franco Dal Molin.

If you are interested in contributing further to Collanos’ success, we have come up with four examples of things you can do:
1. Use Collanos Workplace with your teams
2. Talk , write, comment about Collanos to others (users, bloggers, analysts, journalists or investors…) about your team success and experience, and, of course, share it with us
3. Motivate and help others understand the value of Collanos-based teamwork - by becoming or nominating an ambassador
4. Invite friends and colleagues to use Collanos
We highly appreciate your help. Collanos Workplace 1.1 is a major milestone in the history of Collanos and a great point to start spreading the Collanos word out to all team-based professionals.

Many thanks to all of you who supported us over these first months, following the launch of Collanos Workplace.”