So, despite being off on another project since April of this year, I still get my RSS feeds and google alerts for anything touching the enterprise RSS space, attention (which is also gaining some steam), Attensa (which I and some pals co-founded a few years back), NewsGator, and KnowNow. I was surprised and thrilled to see that finally the media is paying attention to what has been going for years - yes years - in the enterprise with regard to RSS. There were no solutions until NewsGator and Attensa showed up with our respective Enterprise Solutions. It is a big opportunity.
So, in the PC World article entitled "Companies Tap RSS to Tame Info Overload", Juan Carlos Perez hits the nail on the head about what is going on. Finally.
"The first problem we see addressed regularly with enterprise RSS systems is e-mail overload. Most knowledge workers these days are just about completely fed up with e-mail," said Oliver Young, a Forrester Research analyst.
Also in the past week Network World's Jim Duffy informs his enterprise readers that "Web 2.0 inevitable in the enterprise...", and describes how that with rampant user-driven utilization of web 2.0 technologies, if they are not careful they are going to get caught with their pants down....
"Companies should establish strict guidelines for employees' use of social-networking platforms, RSS feeds, wikis and mash-ups, the panel participants said. Companies must consider the content and amount of information employees are sharing on easily accessible Web pages."
I have been pitching and explaining this for years, and unfortunately, the main people that don't get that this revolution is happening are 
INVESTORS. It guess now that is so obvious perhaps it will loosen up investments. But to be clear, e-mail is only part of the problem, RSS is in heavy use in pockets of enterprise companies already, independent of any e-mail overload problems. In the past I posted here a lot on the subject including this one about year ago about the "stellar demand of enterprise RSS." There are many other similar posts.
I am no longer affiliated operationally with Attensa, but with a vested interest I do keep my ear to the ground. Attensa apparently has finally closed a seven figure deal with a major company who will be deploying the enterprise solution to thousands of seats worldwide. Great job folks! Attensa beat out its competitors hands down...and it it only took TWO YEARS. Reportedly other purchase orders are now finally rolling in despite the lack of meaningful marketing spending by the company. This is a clear sign to the meek that the market is "real." That said, this may be a fast-paced, white-hot, changing-all-the-rules Web 2.0 world to many in the media and with the conference-going digerati, but conventional, proven, enterprise-wide sales methodologies are still alive and well - and are a long haul.
Still puzzling to me is Lotus and their new, strange and sometimes cool, Lotus Connections. While interesting they totally missed the mark. The research even says so, so not just my opinion. I wonder if they even spoke to any actual customers. How the hell did they decide to include tagging, blogging, and a wiki environment, and not enterprise RSS. Go figure. SpikeSource's Suite 2.0 got the feature set right, but it is a cobbled together "frankensuite" (as the folks at Jive Software called it.) Incidentally, s far as Jive goes, their ClearSpace is worth a look for installations who want a rapidly deployed, affordable suite for collaboration (though like Lotus Connections it is sans RSS enterprise capabilities.)
As far as Enterprise RSS via Suite 2.0, I dont see big business biting other than those early, early in the cycle that realize there is nothing else out there from one vendor that does just the critical stuff...that said, and to make matters worse, Suite 2.0 isn't even on one platform, as most of Suite 2.0 is apparently on the LAMP stack, Attensa competitor NGES is all .net. Ugh.
Looks like Enterprise RSS is here. Some of us already knew. But hey, ROCK ON!
