Category: Extranet/CDE

Getting Won Over

There is a good case study on the use of ‘extranet’ technologies (aka construction collaboration technologies) in the latest issue of UK industry weekly Building magazine. Getting Won Over, by Stephen Kennett, details the experiences of UK-based property developer Hammerson, supported by Gleeds Collaboration Services, in using the collaboration platform from BIW Technologies [my employer]. Hammerson’s previous …

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Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2008/04/getting-won-ove/

MBA teaching

My wife and I both went down with flu last week, spending most of the four-day UK Easter holiday weekend taking it in turns to be bed-ridden, and I only really returned to work properly a couple of days ago. No easy return, however, as I was already committed to delivering a couple of lectures …

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Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2008/03/mba-teaching/

Sword Group 2007 results

Sword Group, the France-based IT group that late last year acquired UK construction collaboration SaaS technology vendor CTSpace for just £6.5m, announced its annual results for the year ending 31 December 2007 yesterday. The group turned over €179m [£138m], up 26% from €142m [£109m] in 2006, generating a net profit of almost €19m [£15m], up from £16m. …

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Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2008/03/sword-group-200/

Investing in a dot.com/SaaS business: a history

In the late 1990s and into the first year or so of the 21st century, the dot.com boom say billions invested in new online ventures across great swathes of industry and commerce. The global architectural, engineering and construction (AEC) industry was no different. Millions were pumped into new start-ups by venture capitalists, business angels and …

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Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2008/03/investing-in-a/

New CTSpace product “soon”

The US version of CTSpace‘s website had brief details of a user group conference it was holding, 6-7 March 2008, in Las Vegas, Nevada. The event was programmed to include a preview of a new CTSpace product, an opportunity to meet Sword executives, and the results of a US user survey. I understand from CTSpace that …

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Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2008/03/new-ctspace-pro/

BuildOnline revisited

In the absence of any updates regarding Sword Group and its recently-acquired construction collaboration technology business still branded as CTSpace (formerly known as BuildOnline and Citadon, formerly known as Cephren (formerly known as BlueLineOnline and E-bricks) and Bidcom, which also incorporated Cubus – and that’s just the short version!) or even a new website (see post), …

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Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2008/03/buildonline-rev/

FTP security hole

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 …

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

StoreData stagnating in 2007

  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 …

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

Lurking in the shadows

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 …

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

More on Australian collaboration

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 …

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

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