Craig's Lemonade

Enterprise RSS and the new Attensa Feed Server

Today we formally announced the first iteration of our Enterprise RSS Server - The Attensa Feed Server. It is an appliance offering and can be installed very quickly. While the press release does not state it I think it's obvious that we will offer it in whatever form customers want...we just started with the appliance because it was the simplest, least costly, and quickest way for customers to get a RSS proxy server into their data center. That said, and this is not an announcement, but we will offer the Attensa Feed Server first as an appliance, then as installable software, and later as a service (SaaS.) BTW we also today announced the open public beta of our Attensa for Outlook 1.5.

Though we are the new kids on the block having just announced our server, our experience with pilot customers has been different than our competitors it seems. Really different. Both Greg and  VC Brad Feld have commented on their customers not wanting an appliance - or at least "preferring" installable software. Hmmm. All of the pilot customer installs of our appliance, coincidentally, have come on the heels of their rejection of conventionally installable software. In some cases these customers had fiddled for weeks, not days, attempting in vain to install the software and just "get the damn thing to work." The Attensa appliance takes a scant few hours to set up and get running...not days...not weeks...hours.

Also worth noting is that our appliance is far more affordable since we use Linux and open-source technologies, so there is no need for the customer to have to buy other software or tamper with their current software investments to get our appliance easily, quietly, and rapidly  into their data center. TCO baby, TCO. From the press release:

"The turnkey appliance is deployable in less than three hours and resides behind the firewall ensuring all data is kept private. It is a Linux-based system utilizing Java, TomCat and Apache. The appliance uses an open source database for its data store and can be optionally integrated with Microsoft Active Directory for user and group information, and with Microsoft Exchange for feed delivery via Outlook and other Exchange clients."

While it is not my personal style or our company's policy to articulate in detail our "roadmap" publicly, like Greg has posted a few times now for NewsGator, we do share it in depth with important partners and prospective customers under NDA. As one might suspect there is considerable overlap with our product line and NG's and thus there is similarity with our roadmap. Our technology approach is very different, however; utilizing a single code base across clients, an un-tethered RSS aggregation engine, and all of it buttressed with deep infrastructure based on handling massive amounts of transient attention meta-data - in real time. Further, RSS is just another data type to us, not the end-all. So, there's a hint to where we're going I suppose.

Short term we are in fact competing with both NewsGator and KnowNow, although probably more directly with KnowNow from a focus perspective since we both target business exclusively (as opposed to publishers through private label offerings or that of the general consumer like NG, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc.) What about competing with Microsoft on the RSS front? Not so much. Microsoft will be handling the basic plumbing sufficiently we believe (as I am sure my contemporaries do) but more important than this is their impact on RSS acceptance. Microsoft will no doubt radically raise the awareness of RSS and slowly gain loyal users of RSS through Vista/IE7/Outlook07 on a massive scale. The need for enterprise solutions will quickly become obvious far beyond the early, but rampant, interest of F500 customers we are already seeing today.

Tags: Attensa, Attention, Microsoft Outlook, Enterprise RSS, RSS, KnowNow, NewsGator, Attensa Feed Server, RSS Appliance

Outlook 2007 not for home or student use?

Microsoft made several announcements today - which includes the omission of Outlook from the "Home and Student Edition." Huh? Our key offering, Attensa for Outlook, of course requires Outlook, so I watch these developments closely. I always figured students and families liked having Office for calendars, phone numbers, and email more than they needed to do PowerPoint pitches. Go figure. Here is a table summary of which applications are in which suites.

Also, yesterday "Office Live" was turned on. While the name suggests it, "Office Live" is not online "Software as a Service" (SaaS) offerings for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or Outlook. Still interesting and useful stuff however and you can learn more for yourself here.

From the press release here are the details with quotes and fluff pulled out:

"On the desktop, the 2007 release will include new and improved software suites and applications for volume license and retail customers. Major productivity advancements will be experienced through a new, results-oriented user interface. For volume license customers, Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007, the new name for a significantly updated release of Microsoft Office Professional Enterprise Edition 2003, will deliver improved information management and teamwork solutions through integration with new Microsoft Office SharePoint^® Server 2007 capabilities, as well as inclusion of Microsoft Office Communicator. In addition, a new offering called Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007 builds on the capabilities of Office Professional Plus 2007 by extending collaboration and mobility scenarios through inclusion of Microsoft Office Groove^® 2007 and Microsoft Office OneNote^® 2007. Retail customers will also have a new option for bringing the power of Office productivity into their homes. Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007, an updated release of Microsoft Office Student and Teacher Edition 2003, will be available for home users.

Two new product offerings in the 2007 release will help address common organizational needs. Office Groove 2007, an updated release of Groove Virtual Office software, will enable teams to work together dynamically inside collaborative work spaces regardless of location or network connection. Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007, partially based on Microsoft Office FrontPage^® 2003 technologies, is part of the next-generation Web design tools that will help customers create and customize Microsoft SharePoint Web sites and build workflow-enabled applications using SharePoint Technologies.

Building on existing Microsoft Office server-enabled capabilities, the upcoming release will expand the system with new solutions for sharing, analyzing and managing information. As part of the 2007 release, Microsoft is introducing a full range of new and improved servers that will integrate solutions across collaboration, enterprise content management (ECM) and forms, business intelligence (BI), and enterprise project management (EPM) scenarios. Office SharePoint Server 2007 will become the single server that unifies portal and content management, business insight and business process capabilities to enable customers to collaborate more effectively, make more informed decisions and control content across line-of-business applications. Specialized servers such as Microsoft Office Project Server 2007, Microsoft Office Project Portfolio Server 2007, and Microsoft Office Forms Server 2007 will deliver project and portfolio management and electronic forms management solutions, respectively. In addition, Microsoft Office Groove Server 2007 will provide the centralized management, data relay and data integration capabilities customers need to deploy Office Groove 2007 across the enterprise. For smaller deployments, Microsoft Office Groove Enterprise Services will provide cost-effective, hosted management and data relay services."

Tags: Outlook, Microsoft, Office Live

Live Live Live! Enough already...

Mary Jo Foley’s Microsoft Watch has a great post entitled Microsoft's 'Live': Another .Net Disaster in the Making? 

To paraphrase from the story…“After running the .Net moniker into the ground, Microsoft backtracked and undid its branding mistakes. Will history soon repeat itself?” The warning signs are mounting fast and furiously. Microsoft's "Live" branding campaign is in danger of succumbing to the same fate as its .Net one.

I read this article and the first thing that came to mind was a resounding “No Shit!” So much of the new web 2.0 “Live” work is interesting, useful, and hell even cutting edge in some cases. But Sheesh, ease up with the "Live" monniker folks!

P.S. See just SOME of the Live branded stuff here.

Mary Jo Foley’ Microsoft Watch is a no-brainer, do-it-now, “must subscribe” for anyone in a software company CXO seat. Virtually all of the posts are product focused but I thought this post was timely and insightful.