Craig's Lemonade

Attensa Feed Server 1.1, the first of many announcements coming your way

Our folks have been busy down in engineering, and in marcom too for that matter, and today we have begun a flurry of announcements. First up, Attensa Feed Server 1.1, and Scott's post on it here. The biggest news is that the 1.1 release is available as an appliance as always, but we've added its availability as software, and as a hosted solution. Pricing is not yet available. Anyone comparing our offerings to others I encourage a close examination of TCO, and to give our sales folks a call, our stuff is nimble and can be up and running in under an hour. Stay tuned for new product announcements, technology announcements, and more over the next several weeks.

Also note our positioning shift at Attensa. Like our contemporaries NewsGator and KnowNow, and with more evidence of enterprise adoption of web 2.0 technologies such as FastForward's appearing daily, we are backing off the "information overload" message. "RSS for enterprise 2.0. Putting web feeds to work" is where we are going with our marketing message.

At first I thought NewsGator's recent press release about the impact of Microsoft's Vista/IE7 and RSS technology on the potential of RSS was a big "duh" but I must admit Greg is spot on - and a well done release too. Read it. Then there's Outlook 2007. If anyone out there is trying to put a few hundred RSS feeds into Outlook 2007, be prepared to be disappointed. Ugh. And this is before one even starts to think about the impending .pst bloat that will follow soonthereafter. Attensa's new Outlook 2007 savvy version is around the corner, has been rewritten, and the new attention features and performance are indeed impressive. Look for the public beta soon. I'll bet one of the biggest discussions enterprise IT folks will hear once this thing gets deployed will be "how do I turn Outlook's RSS feature off?!" Yes, Microsoft's RSS related announcements are great news for all of us in the space. Apple is doing the same of course, and the mail app has very basic RSS integrated into it too.

Technorati Tags: Attensa - attention - Attensa Feed Server - EnterpriseRSS - Enterprise RSS - Microsoft - Outlook 2007 - Microsoft Outlook - Enterprise 2.0 - KnowNow - NewsGator

"BlackBerry Orphans" in Wall Street Journal

I am Guilty. Big Time. This "BlackBerry Orphans" article today is spot on and had a profound impact on me. Other than the shower I never let the damn thing out of my sight. I think I just found a new year's resolution that will also serve as a kind of Christmas present to my wonderful daughters (and probably everybody else who know me well or with whom I work.) Girls, please forgive me.

So, it's official, I am cutting way, way back. (Especially while driving, which my eldest will appreciate.)

P.S. One thing that makes it somewhat easy to cut back is that as a long time treo user I foolishly decided to switch to a windows mobile device last week so I could take advantage of the new Cingular 8525 which has a 2 megapixel camera with flash, WiFi, and more.... Ugh, what a UI disaster. Apple...are you there? We need you on this one.

Technorati Tags: Blackberry - Treo

I love being second (and can't believe I just wrote that)

A few weeks back I posted about the proverbial rising tide raising all boats in the enterprise RSS market, garnering a bit of attention in our little corner of the world for recognizing our competitors and (gasp) actually linking to them (NewsGator and KnowNow) as well. I even cheesily referenced the business classic "Coopetition." I am on a plane now returning to Portland after a quick trip to San Francisco and an overnight visit in New York with my lead investors. I met up with our VP sales Rich Rudolph who had been on the east coast all week meeting with current and prospective customers. Wow, what a week he had! These long flights back are always a great time to not only catch up on email but to reflect upon what larger trends the overall market appear to be experiencing- and of course their affect on our particular business.

So, here's what is coming through to us here at Attensa loud and clear;

1. Enterprise RSS is here NOW and the traditionally sluggish enterprise customer is anything but.
2. RSS for Blog posts and news headlines are cute but not driving RSS in the enterprise - business/competitive intelligence, wikis, rss enablement of enterprise apps are.
3. Microsoft's IE, Vista, and Office 07 are raising awareness big time but IMHO won't deliver what the enterprise needs - client OR server side, so far our customers and prospects agree btw.
4. RSS Enterprise Servers such as ours are a new category altogether so be prepared to do a pilot (and make sure your product actually works...this is a big one!)
5. One must smile, and contain one's excitement. It's not that often that big businesses (en masse) are at the forefront of a technological shift that we are witnessing today with RSS - with checkbook in hand no less.

So, what about the title of this post? Anyone who knows me (and my team) are acutely aware of our LOVE for winning. And, yes, being second still sucks in most situations. Earlier in my career I started and guided two smaller software companies into leadership positions. At both of these companies, Extensis and Now Software (sold to Qualcomm), we were frankly not first at anything - just better when it counted. Better products, Better technology, Better performance, Better execution. Being better matters, being first doesn't.

Enter Attensa.

We're not first, and in some instances on customer visits not even second - BUT- we're batting 1000 as the chosen solution for the enterprise customers we've touched so far. Attensa is admittedly just getting started, but things are eerily and wonderfully familiar to me.

Why?

Here goes my top 10 in no particular order in what's resonating for us with Enterprise customers;

1. Make sure your product actually works and can be installed in hours. Not promises, today.
2. LDAP integration is required by the big boys and we actually even make it easy. Go figure.
3. Be able to support multiple Exchange servers.
4. Have a mobile strategy, so far BlackBerry is key.
5. Sync. sync. sync. It's not a product, it's a feature, but you should have it...we sync with the new MSFT common feed store too. It's not rocket-science, but it matters.
6. Have analytics, IT cares. Bonus for "attention" analytics.
7. Make sure users can read RSS offline, a web only client solution is just lame...so have multiple options, the customer decides desktop by desktop what works best for their users.
8. User experience counts, and is often overlooked.
9. Have an enterprise legacy application strategy (our is Attensa Connect) and ...drum roll....
10. Don't drop your prices just to get the business, it just makes you look like a chump.

P.S. After all that show them your attention technology so their users don't drown in 1,000 or so RSS items they'll be getting per day. It will blow them away. ; )

 

Technorati Tags: Attensa - Attention - RSS - Enterprise+RSS - NewsGator - KnowNow - IE7 - Common+feed+store - Extensis

Common Feed Store Sync...it's a feature not a product

So, like any exec who monitors competition and the category in general (using RSS of course), over the past several days a lot of hay has been made over the syncing of RSS to Microsoft's common feed store. My thoughts are, it's useful, but it's just not a big deal.

Attensa has had this capability for some time now, since IE7 beta 2. And the only reason it took that long is because we were waiting on the C++ APIs from Microsoft to enable it. NewsGator and others use the .net APIs and too many of our customers don't want (or flat out won't allow) the overhead that uses the .net framework on the desktop.

This bring me to another point, we've had fully functional IE and Firefox toolbars (windows) for some time too. Also, no .net, they're small and fast, and are just another thin interface that accesses our engine. You can read fully sync'd posts from the toolbar without any other clients installed if you want too. It is also probably the simplest interface and quickest means available for creating and viewing del.icio.us tags. Lastly, the autodiscovery is best of class too...finding all of the RSS feeds on a given page vs. just one.

Feed store sync is a simple, obvious feature, not a product, and I am genuinely happy for NG users that they have this now too. Outlook users that give NG and Attensa the Pepsi challenge will find other decisions obvious too - and not just because the new Attensa for Outlook is free.

Microsoft talk on RSS eye opening

Last week I was invited to speak to 30 or so folks across several groups at Microsoft about RSS and what we are learning about its introduction and usage in the enterprise. I spoke for about 40 minutes and how our perspective at Attensa is assuredly different than our contemporaries in that "attention" (real attention) is central to our technology and our value proposition. I did however focus mostly on our observations as they related to our customer's interest in our deep work with attention, recommendation, analytics, and more as it relates strictly to business use. It is resonating, we are never first into an account but so far winning every one in head to head comparisons. And it's because of 1) our clear vision and 2) we are focused on business solutions (as opposed to consumer readers, private label, content offerings, or other media-based plays.)

I took several questions and then several of us went off for a long lunch and continued...Some at Microsoft (and elsewhere) at first believe we are or will be competitive with Microsoft. Attensa is not and will never be competitive with Microsoft. They (and some of our competitors) are focused on the handling of the basic plumbing of RSS, and simple synchronization across locations including consumer level web-based RSS readers. Well, that is not Attensa. We have to do some of this now of course for our solutions to work but long term we are delighted to let MSFT, Apple, or whomever take care of the plumbing. By the way our Attensa for Outlook 1.5 (now in public beta) syncs with the new MSFT RSS stuff. That said, and given how many businesses are only now rolling out Office 2003, I have a feeling we and others will have to do some of this basic plumbing for a long time to satisfy enterprise wide RFPs for our solutions even with strong adoption of Vista, IE7, and Office 2007...I'll call it VIO.

I have been thinking about this a lot, this whole VIO thing as it relates to RSS - and of course our business. I shared some of my thoughts with folks at this meeting. They may seem obvious to some but from the looks on people's faces in the room, perhaps not. A few things are very clear to me as I write this in late August 2006.

• VIO is going to make RSS HUGE...because right now it isn't. Adoption is very, very small.
• VIO will force IT to redeploy new hardware (client and server) and RSS will be standard issue
• RSS for getting news feeds and blog updates is minuscule...business has bigger fish to fry
• This of course leads to information overload like IT has never experienced as RSS is used for competitive intelligence, for internal blogs/wikis/collaboration, and by enterprise applications

Yes thousands of items per day via hundreds of feeds. This will dwarf email volume and rest assured it is already happening in the more technically progressive companies. What was eye opening to me was that many at Microsoft seemingly have no idea the impact RSS embedded in their next wave of offerings will have. The way I look at it is that millions of business users will cut their own throats with RSS unless their forward looking IT departments realize that their Exchange servers will not be enough to handle their users individual or collective use of RSS. NO wonder some of the biggest companies in the world are already testing out our stuff...some of them see this RSS tidal wave coming. RSS is still for geeks now, but in business it will again transform the enterprise just as significantly as email has over the past twenty years.

Tags: Attensa, Attention, Microsoft, Microsoft Outlook, Enterprise+RSS, RSS

QuarkXPress 7 and a brief walk down memory lane

It has been a while since I paid attention to whatever Quark or Adobe or even Canto were up to - until today. I founded and ran a company that lived this market called Extensis in 1993 and sold it in 2000. I don't really miss it to tell the truth, the market leaders are intellectually lazy and creatively bankrupt, but the work Apple has done in recent years is refreshing I'll admit.

Today I discovered an article today by Sandee Cohen (who my previous company Extensis used to work with frequently and is a well regarded industry guru) all about Quark's launch event in NYC and her first impressions. Interesting, and glad to hear Quark is still in the game. Their staying relevant keeps it interesting. That said it sounds like Adobe's CS3 is around the corner and it may be still too little, too late for Quark. We'll see. Ever since Adobe applied the "suite" model to their core apps (a la MS Office) I think most saw it as the beginning of the end for Quark.

As we all suspected back in 2000 or so, if Adobe ever pulled their head out they could crush Quark. Not sure what took them so long. Over the past several years wall street and others have ignored the graphics software sector even though it is a large and very profitable sector of the industry. Even Microsoft has gotten in the game with their "Expression" line. It will likely take them 5 revs to get it right ....but NEVER count out their relentless approach (nevermind how slow and how long it takes them.)

Adobe owns this market it seems with the elegantly integrated InDesign/Illustrator/Photoshop trio, but I do wish Quark well. Both will lose to Microsoft in the long run if the 800lb gorilla decides to really go after the creative professional. Will they? No. It's too small. the TAM for these apps plus Quark is probably about $1.2B, maybe $1.5B. Too small for Redmond to care unless a strategic argument can made to elevate its importance with the powers that be. That's my $.02 anyway.

Tags: Adobe, Quark, Extensis, Canto, InDesign, Creativepro

Apple's "Hot News RSS Headlines"

Like many, I visited apple.com today to see the new TV ads. Which are great by the way and worth a peek. I've used Macs for about 20 years now and as far as I'm concerned it's about friggin' time! They are simple and clever, classic Apple.

Then I noticed that "Hot News" actually now reads "Hot News RSS Headlines."

Since they are clearly drinking the RSS kool-aid at Apple, it will be interesting to see what they do with RSS in the OS and with apps such as mail. Guess we'll find out at WWDC in August, but you can guess that with the Vista/IE7/Outlook2007 and platform strategy out there as common knowledge that there will at least be some level of interoperability between OSX/Safari/mail/.mac.

Tags: Apple, RSS, MicrosoftRSS

Macintosh & RSS in August

It's spring break in Oregon this week and I am with my daughters today. After a brief stop at Cinnabon we found ourselves at the Apple store at Washington Square in Tigard. Are these Apple Stores ever not busy?! The stores (all sizes) are like exhibits at MOMA and top to bottom they are just a joy to visit. Both of my daughters found the small spherical upholstered balls and in no time were (quietly) content playing games while I discussed and then bought a new MacBook and some additional ram for it. What a great machine.

It's been a while since I paid close attention to Macintosh. Since You Software morphed into Attensa last year and spun off our Macintosh assets to the newly revitalized "You Software" I have been heads down in Outlook. I have a long history with Macintosh as a founder of The Tartan Group (Publishing the first graphical user interface builder "Prototyper",) then Now Software (Now Up-to-Date/Now Contact), and more recently Extensis (Adobe Plugins, XTensions, Suitcase, Portfolio MaskPro, etc.) So, now that the mini-resume is done, let me just say, Wow! It's nice to be back. (P.S. You Software has been truly revitalized and my brother, Eric Barnes, and an engineer I have known and worked with for a dozen years or so, Colin Gray, have teamed up and are back at work making these award winning products top-notch once again!)

The Apple WorldWide Developer's Conference is later this year than normal I'm told. August! Microsoft has talked a lot about RSS (Vista/IE/Office) and while they have demonstrated much and early versions of Outlook, IE7 and Vista are all functional - don't expect Apple to sit on their hands. I am guessing something very similar to NetNewsWire in standard issue in a bevy of features to be rolled out at WWDC. RSS will probably get a dedicated new app but given Jobs' direct involvement in UI design and the obvious nature of reading RSS I'll bet that it will go into the mail application and into .mac online in the same way - as an activity consistent with email. Power Users will no doubt still want the other benefits of third party apps like NetNewsWire, Endo, NewsFire and others I am sure.

What sucks about it is that these announcements usually come with no warning. Remember Sherlock and Gadgets. Apple blindsided those guys. At the end of the day though, and you have to admit, Apple has included so much basic capability into the OS and the defacto apps that it is becoming more and more compelling to new users. And folks like me who just got back.

Tags: Apple, Macintosh, WWDC, WWDC06, NetNewsWire, NewsFire, Endo, RSS, Attensa, Extensis, You Software, YouControl

P.S. Apple's links on RSS

Outlook 2007 (literally) and RSS in business

Like most in the business world (save for Macintosh), and the focus internally on Attensa for Outlook, it feels like I live in Microsoft Outlook. Like most I also am really looking forward to using it on a daily basis. There are a lot of new productivity, connectivity, and other valuable features that I think will be the reason people will want to upgrade to Office 2007 altogether. As we now all know, Office 2007 has joined Windows Vista 2007 in being delivered in 2007.

Next enter the increasing developer excitement and end user awareness of RSS. And we are not talking just for news and blog updates - but for "heavy lifting" in the enterprise. It wasn't just the persistent buzz in the hallways at last week's Mix06 in Las Vegas, even Bill Gates said to an attentive audience:

We think its very, very important. We've got the simple list extensions that make feeds better particularly for structured data. We think the amount of RSS going on is going to skyrocket. It's already very significant. It will move up to new levels. ... When you think about RSS as the start of a programmable Web, as you expose APIs to your Web sites, amazing things can happen.

So the 800 lb gorilla is communicating now with increasing frequency and consistency across its business units the overall importance of RSS. A most recent post from Charlie at Moonwatcher sums up recent activity at Microsoft stemming from the enabling of their CRM application with RSS. Read it and see the links there too to various Microsoft employee blogs.

So what does all this mean? Crazy momentum for RSS. Microsoft is communicating the importance of RSS to millions but only IE7 is helping facilitate its use. Vista and Outlook wont be here till January - and that is when it "ships." Companies will take a while to bite off both a new Office and a new OS, especially since most will likely try to do both at the same time - which will undoubtedly be an even more daunting, more expensive task than the last round of upgrades. Oh yeah, hardware upgrades are in this mix too. New Exchange server? It will also require new 64 bit boxes.

Attensa, NewsGator and others will no doubt see considerable interest in their respective client and server offerings over the next couple of years just to handle the "basics" of RSS. Once folks do start adopting Outlook 2007, beginning in mid 2007 for the more progressive companies, will Outlook 2007 be sufficient for the "RSS savvy professional?" No. Though it will help the rank and file knowledge worker come up to speed and it will introduce RSS to the work environment. A year from now substantially more folks will be aware of RSS even if just through their desire to receive simple news and blog RSS feeds through online tools  - which will be AJAX laden offerings from the major portals and select startups such as NetVibes. Also certain is the growing "information overload" as more and more feeds become persistent subscriptions. Daily RSS items delivered (not feeds) already dwarf the volume of email messages for most users that have discovered RSS, and, its worsens hourly.

Simply, RSS fosters efficiency in business and therefore makes users more productive and informed. Just like email did for businesses of all sizes. We wonder how we ever got along without email. Email also gave us spam and transport for viruses. RSS will create new opportunity for users AND new headaches for IT. And companies like Attensa will be here to enable the former and mitigate the latter.

Tags: Microsoft Outlook, Outlook2007, Outlook12, Attensa, NewsGator, RSS, EnterpriseRSS

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