Craig's Lemonade

A quick visit with Jeremy at Trumba

It is an uncharacteristically hot day in the pacific northwest and a beautiful one to travel by train between Portland and Seattle. I spent a few hours today in the emerald city with Jeremy Jaech, founder and CEO of Trumba. I got know Jeremy years ago when I convinced him to join my board of directors at Extensis, and have tried to stay in touch over the years since selling Extensis in 2000 (to a bunch of knuckleheads unfortunately, but that's another story completely.)

Jeremy is not as well known as other Seattle based entrepreneurs but he is certainly one of the most accomplished high tech execs in the history of the software business. There are a lot of former Microsoft execs up there who are smart, impressive, rich, etc. but not many have built successful software companies from scratch. If you haven't heard of Trumba, you will, but I bet you've heard of two other companies he co-founded, namely Visio (now part of Microsoft) and Aldus (the PageMaker folks that Adobe gobbled up years ago.)

Since leaving Attensa I have gotten involved in some fun and interesting projects, and since more than one discussion recently raised the idea of sophisticated calendar technology, I decided to give Jeremy a call. Jeremy gets things quickly, pays attention, and asks smart questions...I wish he was on the board of my last few companies. Maybe I can convince him one more time when I spin up the next one.

Regardless, check out Trumba. While they are not targeting consumers, it's a full featured offering and quite impressive.

Technorati tags: Trumba, Attensa, Visio, Extensis, PageMaker

Onward

After three plus years as founder/CEO of Attensa last month the board and I decided it was time to make some changes....and I've stepped down. I've started and run software companies for nearly 22 years now, it's all I've ever done since dropping out of Carnegie Mellon in the mid-eighties, and I can honestly say I love it! Macintosh enthusiasts may remember Now Software in the early nineties, or others may recall Extensis, which is an ongoing concern that I remain very proud of to this day. Obviously, I have a vested interest in Attensa's ongoing success, and have nothing but positive things to say about the experience. So, all the best and thanks to everyone involved!

Early on at Attensa we made big bets on deep technology rather than acquiring market share via popular and solid consumer clients. History will determine if NewsGator's acquisition approach was a smarter move than Attensa's R&D focus on its attentionstream and related technologies. I believe Attensa's future is bright, especially given it's exclusive focus on the enterprise. Consumer RSS is already a commodity and Google, Yahoo, etc will own it - or one could argue they already do. NG and others may make some money from powers users wanting more but the business opportunity is clearly behind the firewall. To date and for the next several quarters businesses that actually are looking at enterprise RSS are essentially just looking for basic "plumbing" to enable RSS workflows and/or standardize on solid RSS clients for support peace of mind. It's not rocket science, or all that interesting actually, but it is where the market is today, IMHO.

Attensa will shine when information overload arrives in big business. My prediction is that this will start happening in 2008 even though I personally started talking about it in late 2005/early 2006. For now though, its just plumbing, and NG and Attensa will battle that out over the next year or so. I believe Attensa will win deals when there is a thorough technology evaluation, NG will win many due to market awareness and the multitude of RSS readers they have built or acquired for a variety of platforms. Both can succeed and thrive - this is a very, very BIG market.

So, what's next for me? It's called Pump Networks. Yes its web 2.0 (whatever that means) and has some RSS components. Look for a late summer "alpha."

I can be reached at [email protected]

Technorati tags: Attensa, PumpNetworks, NewsGator, Extensis, Enterprise RSS, Web 2.0

I love Feedburner, except for one (minor) thing

I started using FeedBurner over a year ago and love it. I don't blog as often as I should (or promise) but when I do have the time it is enjoyable - and I believe this is mainly because I can measure readership, actions, and examine incoming/outgoing links. I use Typepad now and see no reason to change, and I pretty much ignore the simplistic stats they provide. Typepad's own widget capability made it easier to quickly add FeedBurner to a blog, but you can use it with any feed simply by typing your URL on their web site and giving them a credit card. It's only $5 a month to get all kinds of metrics both for your feed and recently for your blog too. They should have multiple versions and charge more, it's worth it, and who knows what else is coming to add value. Check out the site to see all of the features, most folks I've discussed this with agree that if you are going to take the time to blog, it's no-brainer.

I really like a couple of things about FeedBurner, and they are worth calling out.

1) FeedCount - You see these all over the web, these little dynamic chicklets that inform the user how many folks are "subscribed" to your feed. I must admit, it is the first thing I look at even before the latest headline on TechCrunch....it amazes me how its grown. 

2) FeedFlares - This is what FeedBurner calls its Open API, and its very useful for developers to add capabilities both in their feeds and on their sites. There are basically two kinds of "flares." Their site describes them as follows:

• Action Flare allow you to "do" something with or to a piece of content: tag it in del.icio.us, mail it, seed it as a story at Newsvine, translate it into Finnish, and otherwise bend it to your will.
• Meta-Data Flare tell you things about how other parts of the web perceive this content: how highly linked this article is in the blogosphere, where this content originated on a map (e.g., a photo in a feed with its geographic data could be plugged into a mapping API), and so on.

You have probably seen this capability in feeds in the past and not even known FeedBurner was probably enabling you as a reader of RSS feeds to "act" on an article. Other do this, but again, feedburner makes it so simple.

From Feedburner's site, some "Fast Facts and Stats":

• According to Nielsen/NetRatings, FeedBurner is growing faster than MySpace and Digg with 385% traffic growth.
• Total feeds: 663,294
• Number of publishers: 393,805 [so I guess monthly sales are approaching $2 million?! Wow.]
• Number of podcast and videocast feeds: 103,868
• Number of subscribers across all FeedBurner feeds: Too many to fit on this page. Email us for the most recent stats and pretty graphs.
• Percent of FeedBurner employees using Macs: 39%, PCs: 58%, Other: 3%.
• Number of made-up words on this site: 3

My only gripe is that a company that gives me so much information about my RSS Feeds should actually use them to deliver the information to me! I want to subscribe to my burned feeds, not log in to a dashboard! Maybe this is possible, but I sure could find any information on it or figure out how to get a feed of my stats.

That's my only gripe, otherwise kudos to the product, business model, and of course the team.

Technorati tags: feedburner, feedflare, typepad, feedcount, techcrunch

Web 2.0 and the IT Pro - they clearly think it's all B.S.

Last week I was invited to sit on a panel at a fun, exclusive event at Microsoft put on by the IT Pro group (TechNet) for industry experts, press, IT executives at major organizations, MVPs, etc.

For a frame of reference, this is how the invite read;

Microsoft would like to cordially invite you to attend an exclusive, one-day event on Wednesday, April 18th 2007, with Steve Ballmer, Chief Executive Officer, and other Microsoft executives at the Microsoft Corporate Headquarters in Redmond, Washington.
You have been identified as one of the influential leaders in the IT Professional community, enabling IT Professionals to reach their full potential every day. And we want to hear from you!

Join us at this all day event where you will have the opportunity to engage with other community leaders, and provide your input to Microsoft senior executives through intimate panel discussions around key industry trends such as:

• Next generation of the Web and its implications on IT Professionals; both as consumers and in the enterprise

• Data Center trends such as Virtualization and Managed Services

• Evolution of the IT Professional community with new online and offline capabilities

This so-called IT Pro Community Leaders Town Hall Event was held in the elegant executive briefing center and they took some creative license by clearing out the typical tables and chairs and gave the entire audience the same comfy leather living room chairs that us panelists had up front on stage...I've never seen such a thing. Even Ballmer, who was there for an hour commented on never seeing the room so nice so "Microsoft must think all of you are important!" There were only about 50 folks from all over the country and MSFT paid for it all - airfare, shuttles, hotel, and a dinner reception at a winery (which unfortunately I had to skip.) The goal was to encourage a "community dialogue" and well, it was fun and worked well in my opinion!

I was on the first panel of just three for the day, all of which were moderated by John Rymer, VP at research firm Forrester. The panel was just myself and Chris Jones, Microsoft CVP for the Windows Live Experience. Nice guy, we chatted for about 5 minutes before stepping on stage.

The "dialogue" started with some IT guy in the back complaining that we were the wrong people on stage and wanted to know "what is Microsoft's specific web 2.0 strategy?" and that this whole dialogue thing is bogus. Most of the crowd looked at him with a "dude its not event 10 a.am. yet, sit down, grab a cup of joe and shut up." People love to slam Microsoft, even to their face as they are gifted a trip to company headquarters for a close up and personal with senior management. Another guy starting complaining about the "bait and switch" in the last cycle of licensing fees for SharePoint. Go figure. The Microsoft executive of course handled it appropriately and we moved on.

The key learnings for me, having also just spent some time the past prior few days at the web 2.0 expo in S.F., are threefold; 1) Smart, key industry folks still can't define what "web 2.0" means (and this was the bulk of our panel's discussion along with identity/reputation/authenticity issues), 2) IT Pros say - emphatically - "nobody in our organizations are asking for any of this Web 2.0 stuff" - which we all heard repeatedly, and 3) Web 2.0 is just a bunch of marketing hooey made up by both the media and the companies hawking what they call web 2.0 solutions. This was loud and clear.

There is a big disconnect, in my opinion, between the consumers and cutting edge technology companies living this web 2.0 transformation and the old IT Pro guard that don't believe there is any such thing as web 2.0 that their constituents in the enterprise want or need.

Perhaps its just still really early for enterprise adoption of new web 2.0 technologies - a.k.a "enterprise 2.0". Roaming the Web 2.0 event, most of the activity was around consumer facing web 2.0 such as widgets, search, online apps, etc. Intel had trotted out their "Suite 2.0" (which some have called a "Franken Suite" and I tend to agree), Jive Software seemed much busier with their ClearSpace solution, and Lotus was just absent near as I could tell with their "Lotus Connections" which is an impressive suite (except that for some insane reason there is no RSS capability!

Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, whatever you wish to call it, we are still at the starting gate but eventually no business will be able to function without it to remain competitive.

Technorati tags: Microsoft, IT Pro, TechNet, SuiteTwo, ClearSpace, Lotus, Lotus Connections, Web2, Web 2.0, Intel, Enterprise 2.0, Forrester, John Rymer, Jive Software, Steve Ballmer

RSS and Web Analytics in a 2.0 world. Its attention.

A few weeks back a gave about an hour talk at the annual Software Association of Oregon (SAO) annual retreat. It was frankly a last minute addition to the agenda, but seemed like a poignant time in our association's history to jostle the old guard about what it means to be a software company in 2007. Great examples of new web 2.0. software companies I discussed included SplashCast, Jive Software, Aboutus.org, and others. There are no doubt dozens of budding new software companies that have yet to be discovered. Unfortunately, the SAO is the last to learn of them, in fact I learned about SplashCast from TechCrunch (which most folks at the retreat wrote down as if they had never heard of it.) So, what about web analytics in a 2.0 World?

Thinking and talking about this paradigm shift at our annual retreat, combined with my job as CEO of Attensa (where we have our own analytics component for the enterprise), it got me thinking. I believe the web analytics space is one of the more interesting established software markets to be profoundly impacted by web 2.0 than any other. I firmly believe this for three reasons;

1. RSS is a serious marketing tool for businesses of all sizes and industries and will become significant. More progressive emarketers are already seeing the benefits both for replacing/augmenting email programs and for distributing information to customers by broadcasting (rather than requiring a return to a marketers web site for information.) I believe companies will demand integrated measurement tools for RSS as through as those for email, advertising, and web site analytics.
2. Delivering the analytics TO the customer just makes sense. Currently, essentially all of the major players in this space require going to a dashboard/portal user interface. This is so 2005. Users at all levels, consumer and business, are proving that push vs. pull is the preferred means of discovering information. Industry watchers are already wondering why RSS feeds aren't used yet by the major players in the web analytics space. Using RSS as a means to distribute Web analytics updates/reports is so obvious it is inevitable, and perhaps new standards such as Microsoft's SLE, will be the best way for companies to deliver this type of information easily. I for one would like to get my FeedBurner stats this way, and I'm not alone.
3. Measuring the user is changing, and in the future its 'attention' not click residue. What is important for marketers, then and now, is getting the best read on their current or prospective customers habits. And, of course, to get them to buy. Clickstreams and clickthroughs are not the end-all, just a tiny part of the whole. Consider the phenomenon of end user tagging, which last month's PEW Internet & American Life Project report confirmed that already 28% of online Americans have used the Internet to tag content. This is pure "attention" and far more useful overtime than clickstreams or clicks.

Simon Wakeman, an industry consultant, discusses his experience using Google Analytics, StatCounter, and FeedBurner on his blog. And of course points out that he cant get RSS feeds from any of them. Steve Rubel has discovered a new service called Clicky that may be a peek at web 2.0 analytics. I have not tried it yet. Also worth noting, Google announced it will publish stats on its Google Reader and there is some chatter on the labs blog. I have a feeling all the major services will publish these stats over time and, accordingly, marketers will care.

As for Attensa, our Enterprise Server (AFS) has an analytics component, but it is focused primarily at behind the firewall use of RSS feeds for business users. We have no current plans to offer RSS for large companies that are adding RSS as a medium for communicating to customers. At least not yet.

In my opinion, the conventional web analytics software firm of the future will need to focus on the interactivity of customers across all media, not click residue. Thoughts?

Technorati Tags: SAO.org - Attensa - Attention - Attensa Feed Server - Web Analytics - RSS Analytics - Web 2.0 - Web2.0 - Splashcast - Jive software - Microsoft SLE - FeedBurner - PEW - Google Analytics - Google Reader - Simon Wakeman - Steve Rubel - tagging - StatCounter - Clicky - RSS - RSS Marketing

SAO confirms that Oregon's Software Industry is the real deal

This morning the Software Association of Oregon (SAO) issued a press release and announced the availability of an economic impact report. I've been involved in starting and running software companies in Oregon for over 21 years now. I love it here. Many others do too. Intel, based in Santa Clara, CA, has more employees here than anywhere else in the world - and a large percentage are software folks.

This is a GREAT place to start a software company of any kind. There are significant resources and talent in engineering, sales, marketing, and more. However, there is not a lot of access to capital, so you'll have to plan on a lot of travel to raise early rounds(but that's another story.)

I am chairman of our association's advocacy committee, and serve on the executive committee, and know that with the SAO's new leadership, market opportunities, and strong support infrastructure our state offers, I am really looking forward to 2007. This will be a big year for the SAO and for software companies in Oregon. I can feel it.

-----------------------------------------

OREGON’S SOFTWARE INDUSTRY MAKES STRONG GAINS; FURTHER JOB GROWTH FORECAST IN NEW STUDY

PORTLAND, Ore.—February 8, 2007 - Oregon’s software industry experienced employment gains of more than 11 percent in the two-year period ended in 2005 and is positioned for even greater job growth over the next decade according to an economic impact analysis released today by the Software Association of Oregon (SAO).

In 2006 SAO retained the respected consulting firm of ECONortwest to measure the economic contributions of the software industry to the Oregon economy through 2005.  Included in the findings of the study are the following:

• In 2005 the software industry generated over 51,700 jobs in Oregon.  These jobs produced a direct economic impact of $9.2 billion to Oregon’s economy, including $3.2 billion in personal income, and generated more than $834 million in state and local tax revenues.

• Employment in the ten software and computer-related professions profiled in the study is expected to grow by approximately 18.7 percent through 2014, faster than the overall employment growth rate projected for Oregon across all occupations in the same time period.  Importantly, only software and computer-related professions and health care related professions are expected to have growth openings that exceed the number of replacement openings over the next decade.

• Improved or very improved business conditions were reported by 62 percent of SAO members who were surveyed for the study and 44 percent of respondents expect to see stronger or much stronger hiring in the next year.

SAO president, Harvey Mathews, detailed the findings at a press conference held at the Oregon State Capitol February 8^th, where Mr. Mathews also addressed SAO’s advocacy agenda before the current session of the Oregon Legislature.

“The findings of the economic impact analysis confirm what SAO members have long assumed: software and technology companies are key drivers of the Oregon economy,”, Mr. Mathews said. “When the economic impact of the software and technology industry is fully considered, it is obvious that the continued prosperity of our state is heavily tied to the success of our member companies. 

“Despite what you may read about software jobs being shipped overseas, the data clearly shows that, to the contrary, we are one of the fastest growing sectors in Oregon’s economy.  This industry imports wealth that ripples through Oregon’s economy, creating many other jobs as a byproduct.”

“We intend to be active in the current session of the Legislature and on an on-going basis with policy makers across a range of subjects, but particularly to encourage creativity and thoughtfulness in how Oregon invests in its educational system and economic development programs,” added Mr. Mathews. "We want legislators to keep in mind the impacts their policy decisions can have on software companies and the industry as a whole."

The economic impact analysis was made possible in part through a grant from the Oregon Economic and Community Development Department and the support of SAO members.  The report can be viewed on line at www.sao.org.

ABOUT SAO: SAO is Oregon’s largest and only locally headquartered technology trade association, based in Portland, serving over 500 member companies located throughout the state. SAO's mission is to sustain a healthy and strong software industry cluster in Oregon by: Helping companies start, creating an environment where companies and entrepreneurs want to move, and supporting company growth. 

Technorati Tags: SAO - Attensa - Oregon Software

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

Enterprise RSS in 40 minutes. Phenomenal!

Today I got some great news from the field. We are now deploying our Enterprise Class Server appliance in under an hour. Yep, our reps left the building in time for lunch with Attensa Feed Server quietly humming away in its new home of an exciting company that services the pharmaceuticals industry. So, to the folks at headquarters here in Portland...phenomenal job!  

Here is the memo from our field rep I received a short time ago and I just had to share it!

"Craig, I have to tell you about today's install of our newest AFS release. These proof-of-concept 'bake-offs' versus our competition are really getting fun. Our consistent technology advantage has been that we have are able to install and deploy the server with blazing speed! I mean BLAZING!!!!

Today at XXXXX, we were able to connect to their Active Directory (LDAP)  and install and deploy the product in under 40 minutes!!! This is insanely fast. We were then able to train the project lead on the Administration Console and Attensa Connect. Our system engineers showed up at 9am in the morning in 10 degree weather, and left the building at 12:30pm.

The customer was completely amazed and I quote their CIO: “I have never seen a solution that could be installed and deployed with this speed and stability, I am completely amazed.”

TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) is critical for IT departments. Not only are there no additional licenses to buy or install (such as Windows Server, SQL, etc etc etc) but as this company grows their use of our RSS server will also impress. We have learned that our competitors' solutions will need up to 10 times the processing power to scale - especially when deployments run into the tens of thousands. So, if you are an IT professional evaluating options, ask about hardware requirements and licenses. TCO matters, right? Evaluating competitive enterprise offerings such as NewsGator or KnowNow? Ask the questions! Take the Pepsi challenge...we love being second.

We are going to be talking a lot more about TCO in our marketing materials and in educating customers about their options in general. But, in the meantime, an enterprise server installed in 40 minutes and we're out the door? That's just phenomenal!

This company will no doubt become a strategic partner, hopefully once we get through a few legal hoops we can disclose their identity!

Technorati Tags: Attensa - Attensa Feed Server - EnterpriseRSS - Enterprise RSS - NewsGator - KnowNow

Lotusphere 2007: Is Lotus Connections the real "Enterprise 2.0" McCoy?

What a difference a year makes, especially in LotusLand here in Orlando at Lotusphere 2007. Yesterday IBM formally introduced "Lotus Connections" to an enthusiastic and even surprised crowd. Here's the press release, the web site, and ZDNet's coverage. There were other announcements of course and there are breakout sessions on everything IBM/Lotus including Notes, Domino, and WebSphere. But, the excitement and focus is clearly around Connections. This is the first true "Enterprise 2.0" Suite. Focused around Social Networking, it is integrated from the ground up, very simple to learn and use, and can be used a la carte. The Five components are; Profiles (people), Communities, Blogs, Dogear (tagging), and Activities. I think it's really well done.

So, is this Lotus Connections vs. Suite 2.0?

Intel's Suite 2.0 (to be fair this is Intel Capital, not the software people at Intel behind it) will have a tough time against this offering - IMHO. While the two offerings are different, there is considerable overlap. The most important distinction is that this suite was built as an integrated solution from the get-go and even more importantly is built on one platform. S2 is from 4 or more vendors, cobbled together by SpikeSource, and contains components utilizing both LAMP and .NET platforms. And will reportedly run $150 - 200 per seat. I have no idea what IBM will be charging.

So why is our company here? Attensa is showing some exciting new things publicly for the first time. We are also seeing some faces light up to our attention-laden (auto-prioritizing) "river of news" aggregator sitting inside of Hanover (Lotus code name for next version of Notes) as well as inside of Lotus SameTime (their enterprise IM product) that has some 15 million users in the enterprise I am told. We've also seen strong interest in our Outlook 2007 savvy version too. More on all of this soon.

Technorati Tags: lotusphere+2007 - lotus+connections - suitetwo - attensa - attention - sametime - social+networking

"Blog Schmog" got me thinking about it all

OK, so I am already off to a pretty good start with some of my new year's resolutions. Its been well over a month since my last post, which incidentally addressed one of my new year's resolutions of backing off the annoyingly persistent use of my phone. Another resolution is to post here with more regularity. I am on my way to Orlando, Florida to participate in the 2007 IBM/Lotusphere annual shindig, before I left I decided to buy a book I stumbled across in the Portland airport about a contrarian view on the value and "truth" surrounding the blogosphere - and more specifically the ROI of blogging for business.

I write this at some thirty eight thousand feet having just finished Robert Bly's 2006 book entitled  Blog Schmog and it got me thinking. I guess that's the point, right? As CEO of Attensa, this Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 space is literally ground zero for drinkers of the "blogs are a marketing revolution" kool-aid. Bly's book calls BS on it as a direct marketing expert, and he has some good reasons why. I think he is a too negative on blogging, as most direct marketing purists might understandably be, but the book got me thinking about the ROI of blogging, setting clear goals for my blog, and not giving up on traditional, proven direct marketing techniques for the software business. As an aside, the style in which Bly writes reminded me of shooting it with my Father, so it kept my attention from take-off until I finished. I enjoyed the rose colored glasses view of the blogosphere via Naked Conversations last year, but for a contrast and with author Bly's cynicism set aside, I DO recommend reading Blog Schmog to understand a perspective through the more pragmatic eyes of the ROI focused direct marketer.

I need to digest it some more but for 2007 I have decided that I am going to focus more on the starting, financing, running, strategizing, competing and selling of software businesses on my blog - and probably less on attention and RSS. This is my fourth time through a software startup journey as a leader and I have learned and gone through a lot already with Attensa and we are just getting started!

Though not at the top of my list, I think this particular New Year's resolution of being more regular with my posts should make for a more useful and interesting blog. So drop me a line, and here's to a great 2007!

Technorati Tags: naked conversations - blog schmog - robert bly