Orange Couch

2011 is gone… Traditional systems integration should soon be gone too!

We ended 2011 on a high note. We signed a solid OEM partnership with Moxie Software. They are using our technology to integrate their customer service and enterprise collaboration products with other enterprise solutions. Moxie and its customers need flexible, cost-effective, and quick-to-deploy integrated solutions… basically everything traditional systems integration does not offer. By leveraging SimplyBox, they can now easily integrate parts of their solution set with different applications (Saas or On-Premise) enhancing the consumption of their solutions.

A key differentiator: SimplyBox delivers user-specific integration. Here is a scenario that highlights the importance of user-specific integration. Jimmy (Sales) and Bob (Finance) have different information needs, even if both interact with the same applications. Bob may only need a few things from the CRM system, while Jimmy may only need a few things from the ERP system. A rigid pipe is not flexible enough to deliver the ever-changing needs of different users in different roles, even if they are in the same department. Users’ needs are constantly changing; rigid pipes can’t keep up.

With SimplyBox, Moxie users can bring parts of Moxie solutions into the context of different applications, and also bring parts of different applications inside Moxie solutions (allowing bi-directional read and write). Here is an example: Moxie’s knowledgebase solution living inside a case record in Salesforce.com or inside Outlook, with contextual awareness. Another example involves bringing a component (e.g. receivables list) of NetSuite inside Moxie’s Chat product. We are giving users the information they need, where they need it.

We are integrating information, not purely systems, and changing the way enterprise users consume and interact with applications/solutions. The result is simple and quite powerful: we are increasing user productivity and driving better business decision-making by extracting the information users need and letting them consume it in the context that makes the most sense to them. I think we should also mention that we deliver these solutions in days/weeks, not months.

Maybe in the next post we can tell you all about our Event Monitoring solution.

We are looking forward to a good new year.

“Snackable Bites”, “Contextualization Engine”, and More …

Things are moving. Here are a few things we have been working on in the last few weeks:

• Socialized Oracle ERP for the Healthcare Division of one of the largest companies in the globe … in less than 2 hours.
• Fragmenting MS Dynamics and JDA for an outsourcing project of one of the top consulting firms
• Fragmenting the solution of a collaboration vendor to enable them to socialize enterprise applications
• Helping the Oracle CRM OD team beat Salesforce in two opportunities in the Midwest 

We are very excited that our concept of fragmentation is gaining momentum. We knew that allowing users to consume enterprise applications through snackable bites made sense. But we are now seeing how fragmentation is giving Enterprises, ISVs, and consulting organizations an easier, faster, and more cost-effective way to make sure users have access to different applications from any context. Some are calling it “OnDemand Integration”.

The secret sauce behind both our Fragmentation and our Collaboration solutions is our Contextualization Engine. It gives users the power to place fragments or conversations wherever makes the most sense to them: on-the-fly and without IT. It also enhances traditional apps with the automatic creation of conversations tied to new records, i.e. Socialization of Apps.

We are happy with our traction and glad our solutions are delivering value out there. More to come…

Think Inside the Box!

Contextual Decentralization … Now for Business Apps

We’ve been busy!

Our unique approach to user-driven contextual collaboration is gaining momentum. We are starting new projects with three new enterprise customers. And we are thrilled that our competition continues to copy the Facebook approach of Activity Streams. If you think e-mail is difficult to manage, wait until you try collaborating via Activity Streams. We continue to believe that simplicity and decentralization are key elements in user adoption, otherwise users will just do what they have always done … use e-mail.

Now we are taking our concept of contextual decentralization to business apps. Got a nice review by ReadWrite Enterprise: http://rww.to/dhTGvC .

The App Remix idea is similar to what we do in collaboration but the ramifications are more profound. We now let a user “break” a piece of an app and place it in a different context, allowing the user to interact with that live fragment from the different context.  This WILL change the way users interact with business applications. The concept is being well received. In the last few weeks we’ve had excellent discussions with some solid vendors in the enterprise space. 

It looks like we will continue to be busy.

Think Inside the Box!

Socializing Is Different From Enterprise Collaboration

The success of Facebook has been amazing. But unfortunately, to many enterprise software vendors, Facebook has become THE solution to emulate, and in some cases copy. Socializing engages people, and Facebook is excellent at that. But in the enterprise, socializing and collaborating are two very different things . Unfortunately, enterprise vendors, particularly the ones with collaboration solutions, do not seem to get that (sorry Chatter, Jive, Quad and more). Emulating Facebook in hopes of delivering a solid collaboration solution is simply wrong and ineffective. Users do not embrace “enterprise Facebook emulators”. The reason: emulators deliver socializing and not effective collaboration.  And it is effective collaboration what enterprise users need in order to do their jobs.

A few more thoughts…

Cocktail Party vs. Collaborating:

“What am I doing now” is interesting when socializing with friends, but not very beneficial in an enterprise environment. Sharing pictures is cool, but virtually useless in the enterprise. 

Centralized vs. Decentralized:

Facebook Emulators force the user to leave whatever app or web page they are working on when it is time to collaborate.  Basically, if the app I am working on provides me with a lot of valuable context, why should I have to leave it in order to collaborate. 

Dynamic vs. Procedural:

Facebook Emulators force the user to come into the application every time, resulting in slow and procedural collaboration. Users do not embrace procedural collaboration solutions. That’s probably why the vast majority of enterprise users still rely on e-mail for collaboration.

All in all, we are thrilled our competitors continue to go down the path of emulating Facebook. We wish them the best in delivering fascinating “cocktail party” solutions. We will stay focused on delivering unique and effective enterprise collaboration solutions.

Think Inside the Box!

The Team  

Something Unique in Collaboration

We launched SimplyBox 2.0 late last week! And we are proud to say that our approach to enterprise collaboration is different from all other solutions out there. We combined our ease of use with some key enhancements on speed, contextuality, and decentralization. The result: users can simply collaborate wherever it makes sense to them – no need to be forced to go to one place to collaborate.

We wanted to thank Ray Wang from the Altimeter Group for clearly articulating our differentiators in his blog post from late last week.

http://blog.softwareinsider.org/2010/04/29/thursdays-tech-showcase-simplybox-2-0-simplifies-enterprse-2-0-collaboration/#more-4895.

Customers across different industries are validating the broad appeal of SimplyBox. Why? Because we designed it with the users at the center and delivered a solution that is appealing to them. It works the way they work – constantly dealing with different applications, teams, and topics.

With 2.0 we also decided to file additional patents. Just in case the other vendors in collaboration get jealous.

And we continue to strengthen our partnerships with major enterprise players … more on that soon.

It’s going to be a great Summer.

Keep thinking inside the box…

The Team

Back from CRM Evolution 2009

Had a busy, but solid stay in NYC attending the show. Congrats to Paul Greenberg and the folks that put this show together. The place was packed with folks that Get It.

Wanted to thank our friends from SAP for bringing us along. It was excellent to see the response our joint story got from some of the attendees and analysts present at the show.

Quick summary … SimplyBox enhances SAP CRM by driving contextual collaboration around structured and unstructured content. The result is a CRM system that is more useful, and popular with the users. Users then bring more content into the system and have conversations inside the system. With SimplyBox, SAP CRM becomes the “place to be” for users.

Great show. Great to have met some bright minds like Jesus Hoyos, Brent Leary, Ray Wang, and Esteban Kolsky.

 http://www.estebankolsky.com/2009/08/27/what-i-liked-loved-and-gotta-have-right-now-from-crme09/

Good to be back in the Bay Area though …

Think Inside the Box!

The Team

SimplyBox Wins Education Award

Exciting news! SimplyBox was selected by the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) as one of the “2009 Top 25 Web sites for Teaching and Learning.” According to the Association, SimplyBox delivers on a key Standard for the 21st-Century Learner: “organize knowledge so that it is useful”. This is award is wonderful validation of our value proposition for Education.

http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/aasl/aboutaasl/bestlist/bestwebsitestop25.cfm#collaboration

We continue to show great traction with educators and learners throughout the world. And as a response to a number of institutions that have contacted us lately, we are currently finalizing the packaging of our offering for school districts. This will, among other things, allow for on premise installation, centralized administration, and customization.

Well, our thanks to the AASL. We will continue to improve our solution, and we will keep on delivering value to Education.

Think Inside the Box!

The Team 

SimplyBox and Japan’s NEC BIGLOBE

Well, this past week was an important one for us. NEC BIGLOBE, one of the largest ISPs and Portals in Japan, launched our service in Japan. We have worked on this for a few months and we are glad we are finally live in Japan.

You can check it out at:

http://arena.biglobe.ne.jp/simplybox/

We got excellent press in Japan during the launch. The Nikkei article (print version) was absolutely fantastic and it had a tremendous impact.

We are working on putting the final touches on a couple of other partnerships with other large web players … stay tuned. We will be sharing the news on that soon.

Think Inside the Box!

Sharing, Japan, Enterprise …

It’s been a while since our last entry. We have been extremely busy over here. Let us share some highlights with you.

The design adjustments we made a few weeks back to our Sharing functionality have worked really well. Not only our organic traffic is growing at a faster rate, but we are now seeing solid growth in the number of items and boxes shared.  The “stickiness” of the site has also increased tremendously in the last couple of months. We’re happy with the metrics.

We are about to go live with our partnership with one of the largest portals in Japan. We will disclose the name of the partner around the 3^rd week of May. Lots of work went into making this happen, and we are looking forward to solid growth in Japan.

We just added the “SimplyBox in Business” page to our site. We are currently talking to many solid Enterprise Vendors that believe our solution can bring a new dimension to collaboration within the Enterprise/SMBs. We need to thank the folks at Gartner for the great support they have been giving us on this front.

We added servers in Europe and Japan. It has certainly improved the SimplyBox experience for our users in those geographies. We are currently working on some nice improvements to the service … more on that later.

As usual, many thanks for using and supporting us!

Think Inside the Box!

VentureBeat & More!

It was a hectic week. A lot of work trying to get our new release ready. SimplyBox will introduce, in February, a whole set of new features that will further simplify and enhance our Sharing capabilities.

On Wednesday, VentureBeat did an excellent review on us – basically stating that we were more “intuitive” than Google Notebook. That same day Google decides to kill Notebook! However, we are pretty sure it was not due to VentureBeat’s review…

http://venturebeat.com/2009/01/14/simplybox-lets-users-organize-info-images-snagged-from-the-web/

The last few weeks we have seen a lot of buzz about SimplyBox on Twitter. Here is a link to a Public Box where we compiled a sample of tweets on us.

http://simplybox.com/embedded/?cid=19908

We also wanted to thank a few individuals that in the last couple of weeks have put together videos that do a great job in explaining our solution, particularly as it applies to education.

Will Richardson at http://weblogged-ed.com

And here is Will’s video:

 http://www.screencast.com/users/Weblogged/folders/Jing/media/98f65cc1-f65f-4b3d-96ad-8d8d424d47e3

John Patten at http://eett.sylvan.k12.ca.us/wordpress/?p=525

And here is John’s video:

http://www.teachertube.com/search_result.php?search_id=Simplybox

One more link! Jerry Swiatek wrote a solid summary of our solution.

http://blogs.learnnc.org/instructify/2009/01/08/think-inside-the-box-with-simplybox/

That’s it for now.

Think Inside the Box!