Category: SaaS

Feb 29 2008

FTP security hole

By Paul Wilkinson in Collaboration, Extranet/CDE, Internet, Legal, SaaS
29 February 2008

Particularly in the early days of marketing construction collaboration technology solutions, we used to get occasional suggestions that online solutions were unnecessary as “our IT department has set up an FTP site for us to manage all that file-sharing”. Hopefully, those days are long gone, but for any construction businesses that may still be contemplating reliance …

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2008/02/ftp-security-ho/

Feb 28 2008

Not a wiki – Google Sites

By Paul Wilkinson in Collaboration, Functionality, Future, Internet, SaaS
28 February 2008

And so it came to pass…. As rumoured in December (see my post Google to target collaboration), the Google-acquired JotSpot has been relaunched as Google Sites, part of Google Apps (see Cnet post: JotSpot reincarnated as Google Sites, and Rafe Needleman’s Don’t call it a wiki: Google Sites finally launches). The Google Sites overview doesn’t use the term Wiki, …

Google, Google Apps, Google Sites, JotSpot, wiki

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2008/02/not-a-wiki-go/

Feb 28 2008

StoreData stagnating in 2007

By Paul Wilkinson in Business/Financial, Collaboration, Extranet/CDE, SaaS, Vendors
28 February 2008

Interim results last September from the retail fit-out specialist contractor Styles & Wood showed that its StoreData division – which competes in the UK construction collaboration technology market – did not have a good first six months in 2007 (see post), but the second six months were a little better. Overall, however, StoreData fell short of …

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2008/02/storedata-stagn/

Feb 27 2008

Delivering my first webinars

By Paul Wilkinson in AEC, Collaboration, Functionality, Future, Internet, Marketing, SaaS, Sustainability, Telecoms
27 February 2008

The flow of posts to this blog slowed slightly this week as I spent time preparing for, and then delivering two webinars for BIW Technologies [my employer]. The first of these online seminars related to use of online collaboration platforms to manage construction contract processes – particularly those associated with the New Engineering Contract (NEC); …

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2008/02/delivering-my-f/

Feb 26 2008

Business Collaborator now part of Agresso

By Paul Wilkinson in Business/Financial, Collaboration, SaaS, Vendors
26 February 2008

The final stages of Unit 4 Agresso’s takeover of Coda plc, parent company of UK-based collaboration technology vendor Business Collaborator, are now being played out. A London Stock Exchange announcement today says that Unit 4 Agresso had declared its offer unconditional. As a result, an application had been made for Coda shares to be delisted …

Business Collaborator, Coda plc, collaboration, UK, Unit 4 Agresso

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2008/02/business-collab-2/

Feb 22 2008

Lurking in the shadows

By Paul Wilkinson in AEC, Collaboration, Extranet/CDE, Functionality, Future, Internet, People issues, SaaS, Telecoms, Vendors
22 February 2008

Shadow IT is a term used to refer to those people performing IT functions within an organisation but who are not actually part of the official IT department. It can take many forms – from innocent reliance on advice from the unofficial Excel expert at the next desk, through use of work-arounds to bypass corporate systems, to the …

aaS, AEC, blogs, broadband, churn, collaboration, Construction, document management, email, feature bloat, intranet, IT department, SaaS, Shadow IT, Software-as-a-Service, wikis

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2008/02/lurking-in-the/

Feb 21 2008

More on Australian collaboration

By Paul Wilkinson in AEC, Collaboration, Extranet/CDE, Functionality, SaaS, Vendors
21 February 2008

I was looking at the Australian market last week (see INCITE = ThinkProject!), so this is a bit of a follow-up. In the May/June 2007 issue of Architecture Australia, architect Anthony McPhee looked at project management software and ranted about the inappropriateness of email – “email is BAD, email is EVIL. … Basically, email creates a …

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2008/02/more-on-austral/

Feb 20 2008

AIR – taking web applications offline

By Paul Wilkinson in Functionality, Future, Internet, SaaS
20 February 2008

MIT’s Technology Review has published its 2008 list of emerging technologies that it thinks are most likely to change the way we live. One of them is “Offline web applications”. The article profiles an Adobe system: Adobe Integrated Runtime, AIR. The premise is that ‘Cloud computing’ has drawbacks: users can’t save data to their own hard drives, …

Adobe Integrated Runtime, Air, cloud computing, emerging technologies, Google Gears, MIT, offline web applications, Technology Review

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2008/02/air-taking-we/

Feb 18 2008

CADaaS continued (2)

By Paul Wilkinson in AEC, Business/Financial, Collaboration, Extranet/CDE, Functionality, Future, Internet, Marketing, People issues, ROI/benefits, SaaS
18 February 2008

My musings last week (here and here) on CAD-as-a-Service have stimulated some interest, including a SaaSblogs post, and a comment from Rami Hamodah, who, quite rightly, suggests that “offering CAD-as-a-Service is much harder to do than offering business software-as-a-service such as CRM” and wonders how demand might be stimulated. CADaaS: not if, when To respond to …

AEC, Alibre, AutoCAD, Autodesk Inventor, bandwidth, BIM, CAD-as-a-Service, CADaaS, collaboration, Construction, interoperability, Pareto principle, SaaS blogs, Sinclair Schuller, SolidWorks, TCO
6 comments

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2008/02/cadaas-contin-1/

Feb 14 2008

CADaaS continued

By Paul Wilkinson in AEC, Business/Financial, Collaboration, Extranet/CDE, Functionality, Future, SaaS
14 February 2008

Further to yesterday’s post, I (and several others) have commented on Brian Seitz’s initial article, and the comments and Brian’s responses make continued interesting reading. Scott Boutwell echoed my view about who might develop a CADaaS solution, asking ‘where are the major CAD vendors in this area of product development and future committment?’ As I commented, …