Former UK BIM Task Group head Mark Bew, also co-founder of the PCSG consultancy business acquired by Bentley Systems in 2020, has stepped down as CEO of Bentley’s Cohesive group. The opening day of Bentley …
At an in-person London event, UK-based collaboration technology Revizto gave insights on efficiently implementing technologies. Today, Extranet Evolution is at the Institution of Civil Engineers in London, attending a briefing to learn more about Revizto, …
Thanks to mobile apps such as Buildiro, Skrap and now TeekIt, London streets are increasingly busy with deliveries of equipment and materials to construction sites, large and small. In late 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, …
UK Government is aiming to make open, standardised data drive an improved local plans system. Legislation will ensure data is delivered in consistent formats, and make some data publicly available and reusable. In June, I …
UK tech startup Yeme Tech partners with Esri to improve urban planning to create happier, healthier cities. It is the latest in a long line of community engagement or consultation platforms. Pioneering Yorkshire-based tech startup …
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Until last week, Gordon Ashworth was the ultimately somewhat less than permanent CEO of Asite. Today we learned (courtesy of a London Stock Exchange AFX announcement) that he stepped down as CEO in order to become Finance Director of the Parkmead Group plc, a London-based merchant bank (one possible factor: Asite non-executive chairman Colin Goodall also has the same role at Parkmead).
Among other things, Parkmead offers business turnaround services – helping the lenders and shareholders of ailing businesses….
Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2006/06/exasite_ceo_now/
In Construction Collaboration Technologies: The Extranet Evolution, I talked about file formats and the increasingly common practice of publishing drawings and other documents in the Adobe PDF format. That trend may be about to change, with another document format just over the horizon.
At AECnew.com, Randall Newton says: "the ability to publish directly to PDF format from within Microsoft Office 2007 has been removed from the about-to-ship beta version of the popular productivity suite. The removal of the software was at the request of Adobe, and seems to be a reflection of a relationship gone sour between the two firms."
In his analysis, he suggests an immediate beneficiary might be Autodesk’s DWF format, with Microsoft also rumoured to be developing a competing page description language code-named ‘Metro’ which will ship as part of the forthcoming Vista (nee Longhorn) operating system.
Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2006/06/microsoft_pulls/
Asite shareholder, CTO and blogger Nathan Doughty talks about the Hub Alliance, a joint venture between Asite, Causeway and Burns. During May he says the Asite trading hub handled "just over 497,000 live business transactions (order/invoice) processed – each representing spend and delivery of real goods on UK projects". With no comparable figures from the other partners or from other ‘hubs’, I can’t really comment on whether this is impressive or not, but perhaps his investment in Asite last week was a vote of confidence in relation to this aspect of Asite’s business.
Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2006/06/trading_hub_all/
Just received an email from Craig Molloy at BTC confirming the dates of the Construction Computing 2006 show. It will on 8th and 9th November at the Barbican exhibition centre, London. This year’s event will apparently be co-located with the Bentley User Community Conference; I expect this will ensure a good number of designers among visitors to the show (on the collaboration front, will they be subjected to messages about ProjectWise and/or ProjectWise StartPoint?).
Last year, five members of the UK extranet vendors group, the NCCTP, had a joint stand at the show – I am not sure if we will repeat the exercise this year (it may well be discussed at an NCCTP marketing meeting next week).
Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2006/06/construction_co-6/
The things you find when you do a Google search!
The entertaining Luke’s Pommy Trip describes the recent arrival in London of Aconex staffer ‘UK Luke’. It seems he finds our "supermarkets are weird" and "Adam (the legal guy) who last stayed in the Aconex flat is a grot". Naturally for an Australian firm, the Aconex flat is in the Aussie centre of London: Earls Court (there’s even a video tour of the Aconex flat if you’re interested!).
Meanwhile, in Shanghai, Gloria_yan7 has apparently been tempted to sing live on TV wearing an Aconex tee-shirt after meeting a TV executive at a restaurant party.
Those Aconex people certainly enjoy themselves, don’t they!?
Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2006/06/uk_luke/
The latest Contract Journal monthly insight of what working life is like within a well-known construction group looks at the Pearce Group ("We will be launching our new website soon…" it promises). The usual question about project collaboration tools prompts IT manager Dave Fox to eulogise to CJ business editor John Leitch about 4Projects:
"We have an extranet and use 4Projects – those who use it extensively think its brilliant for sharing information, both with the client and with our subcontractors. The beauty is that it is secure. Data is stored away from here and the provider ensures its integrity."
The first sentence has also been reproduced as a larger quote half way up the tabloid’s page. Maybe I am biassed, but I can’t help wondering if the selection of quote reflects the (too?) cosy relationship that exists between 4Projects and CJ, evidenced by the exclusive briefing of its financial results (see my 4Projects enjoys doubled profit post) and by 4Projects’ joint venture with CJ, CJ Collaboration, launched in March 2005.
Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2006/06/pearceing_insig/
The Bentley BE conference has now finished and various correspondents have compiled their reports, some mentioning the ProjectWise StartPoint product (previously covered here and here).
In the AECbytes newsletter, Lachmi Khemlani describes the new entry-level solution, saying it is designed for smaller, co-located teams rather than larger teams in multiple locations which full ProjectWise caters for.
"Like ProjectWise, one of the key features of StartPoint is its ability to integrate with Microsoft SharePoint, a portal and collaboration technology that includes features such as file access control with check-in/check-out functions, version control, powerful search features, calendars and message boards, and project websites with user-level customizations. …
"StartPoint is intended to be a cost-effective starting point for organizations that wish to grow to high-end ProjectWise capabilities, and the fact that the name selected for this product is so similar to "SharePoint" (to the extent that it’s easy to get confused between the two) again reflects Bentley’s strong desire to be aligned with the world’s leading software company."
By coincidence, I browsed Citadon’s website today and noticed that it too is to embrace Microsoft SharePoint for an entry-level product as part of a longer-term partnership with Microsoft. Its latest news release, entitled Citadon Announces Support for Microsoft SharePoint Server, SQL Server 2005, and Microsoft Outlook 12 and subtitled Citadon to Migrate Industry Leading SaaS Solutions to Microsoft Suite, says:
"Citadon’s initial step will be to utilize Microsoft SharePoint Services in Citadon Jazz – Citadon’s team collaboration/personal productivity tool that is currently in Beta testing. … Today’s announcement is part of Citadon’s continuing commitment to transform and simplify its users’ collaboration experiences and includes integration within familiar personal productivity tools such as Microsoft File Explorer, Microsoft Project and Microsoft Outlook. After extensive analysis, Citadon has determined that Microsoft SharePoint Services will provide significant architectural advantages for its clients. In addition, Citadon will leverage the new web services interfaces in Office 12 to more tightly integrate with Microsoft Office.
Citadon Jazz is essentially an email management tool (read about it here). It apparently organises emails and attachments automatically, scanning emails to find relevant key words and tagging them for easy access.
Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2006/06/sharepoint_firs/
This third consecutive post on Asite concerns its Stock Exchange announcement that Asite director Nathan Doughty (see his Free Collaboration blog) purchased 307,692 Asite shares at 3.25 pence per share on 2 June 2006. For his £10k investment, Nathan now holds approximately 0.298% of the issued ordinary shares of the company.
It’s an intriguing move, especially considering the previous poor results announcement. Looking at one of the City bulletin boards, there was some cynicism about the reasoning behind the buy – one writer even suggested it might be a "share boosting exercise" with someone "working a p’n’d on it on the back of the director buy, somewhere…". (I had no idea what "working a p’n’d" was until I asked a City mate – he told me it stands for ‘Pump and Dump’, defined on Wikipedia here. More cautiously, my friend pointed out that prices can change quite dramatically for low-priced shares that are only infrequently the subject of sizeable transactions – and Nathan’s buy was the most sizeable transaction for some months).
The value of Asite shares certainly grew as a result. Having remained pretty stable at around 2.5p for the past three months, they rose 1.25p during Friday trading and closed up a further 1.25p at 4.00p today. The number of Asite share transactions had previously been very low, but today saw a dozen trades.
Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2006/06/nathan_invests_/
Simultaneously with last week’s announcement of Asite’s change of CEO (see preceding post), was the Stock Exchange announcement of Asite’s final results for the year ending 31 December 2005.
Turnover was down 9% on the previous year at £1.529m (from 2004 figure of £1.674). Underlying trends were a little more optimistic – for example, the rate of losses stemmed somewhat during the second half of 2005, and operating costs were reduced – but the business has yet to return a profit and will, it admits, require additional funding to survive to the end of 2007.
The financial figures make depressing reading against other players in the UK collaboration market – last month, 4Projects, for example, declared a £270k profit on turnover of just over £2m (see post here).
And while the numbers of users of Asite’s collaboration product are growing – up 5,000 during 2005 – they are not growing at anything like the rate displayed by BIW Technologies. BIW added over 12,000 users during 2005, according to its January 2006 press release, and has since added over 7,400 further users – its website today gives a total user base figure of 59,697.
Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2006/06/latest_asite_re/
Less than six months ago, in Asite CEO goes permanent, I noted that Asite‘s Gordon Ashworth had been appointed CEO instead of acting CEO. It seems this move wasn’t particularly "permanent", as last week (see Asite announcement or Stock Exchange notice) Ashworth stepped down to be replaced by former sales director and then chief operating officer Tony Ryan, with effect from today.
Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2006/06/asite_ceo_chang/
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