A Wiki for All Reasons

Just to keep you in the loop, this week we announced another new client. As always, I find it fascinating all the different types of enterprises and ventures with a wiki commonality.

This time, SamePage was selected by Growth Dynamics International (GDI) as the secure networking, collaboration and content-management platform for members of its online learning website, Lifelong Learning Community. Its global members will take online courses, complete private assignments, as well as shared work, and interact regularly with other members in groups and discussions.

It's kind of a self-help / motivational group with common goals and interests. Not an 'enterprise' group, by any means. Yet they should benefit tremendously from having a secure platform that allows them to share select information, collaboration worldwide and work together.

“We spent quite a bit of time researching potential solutions before we came upon SamePage and knew it was the perfect solution for our collaboration, security, information-sharing and content needs,” said Doug Fike, director of GDI, which founded L3Community.com. “Most CMS options didn’t allow for enough collaboration; more socially focused options didn’t have the structure and security we needed. SamePage offers the best combination for our virtual community, and it is easy to use for our non-technical members.”

Read more about SamePage document management and security features.

What do you use your wiki for?

Content Migration's a Snap

A couple of months ago, I spoke with a reporter from EContent Magazine about content migration. She was interested in learning about the process, however difficult or easy it may be, of moving content into a new and better software product. [The article is slated for the March issue, and I'll post it when it's live.] Of course, she didn't only want to hear from me about how great SamePage enterprise wiki features are, so we got in touch with a customer.

I put her in touch with Dave Collins, the founder of Penchant Software, which is now a division of 3PD, the nation's largest direct-to-home delivery company. I hadn't previously heard much detail about Dave's experiences with SamePage. I was thrilled when he raved about his migration to our enterprise wiki software, made easy with our Universal Import Tool. Dave had so much valuable insight into the process that we decided to interview him more and put together a case study about his process and experiences.


You can download the case study PDF from http://etouch.net/customers/testimonial.html.

Dave transitioned his massive HELP desk documents into SamePage a few years ago after learning about wikis in an MBA program. (Hooray for Web 2.0-savvy university professors!) His biggest concerns with a migration were that he couldn't have a lot of down time, and he couldn't lose ANY documentation, videos, hyperlinks or anything else. With the use of our tool, he didn't.

“I had no idea how fast it would be, but it was great,” recalls Collins. “With the next release, we modified our help URL to go directly to the wiki, and that was it. Being so easy – that’s what you always hope for.”

SamePage immediately made Dave's life easier.

“SamePage removed all of our choke points…. It’s a million times better process for managing and updating content," explains Collins. The sky's the limit. SamePage is an easy way to quickly organize a large amount of content. It doesn't need much training...”

Read more about Penchant's easy migration to SamePage.

It takes a village....or a community

There's a lot of talk these days about online communities. With the proliferation of social networks, these online communities are now so valuable for connecting with people we know or have known in our lives, people with whom we work and others we may not have ever met in person but with whom we share interests and other similarities.

It's a fun idea to think that someone in Idaho or Italy or Indiana can have the same challenge with a software or the exact same idea about how to do something better. And now, we can all share in that and learn from it.

That's a key reason we decided to make the SamePage online knowledgebase open to all users with the launch of our newest Community edition. Have you heard about it yet? SamePage Community is free and has many (but not all) of the features our customers love in the enterprise edition.

We think this is going to be a really valuable solution for small and mid-sized businesses, students, research groups, small groups within enterprises and others. Many groups like these struggle with some members of leaders not being confident about the benefits of an Enterprise 2.0 solution and all it can do for them. Now, they can try it with no risk at all. There's no time limit for use, so when they love, they can keep growing it and adding more users - expand it's use. And they can upgrade to the enterprise solution with full IT support at any time.

Highlights include:

• Ability to scale and grow as the group or organization does
• Operates from within the firewall, not from the cloud, providing customer full control of the deployment
• The same level of functionality available in the SamePage Enterprise Edition
• Ability to upgrade to the fully supported Enterprise Edition at any time
• Complete access to the SamePage knowledgebase, where users can discuss issues, bugs and other topics
• Free of cost

Our team is really excited about opening up our solution to many different users and groups. Try it! We think you'll like it.

SamePage News

We are coming full force out of the summer (the fog and chill-filled summer in the Bay Area). I wanted to share some fun and recent news from SamePage.

First, Dan Gelinas of Security Systems News wrote an article about how our new customer, DICE Corp. is benefiting from SamePage and sharing key advantages with it's own customers. DICE develops large-scale software automation for the security and alarm industries and created DICEWise Wiki as a knowledge management tool. It deployed SamePage to tighten up operations, cut down on wasted paper and postage and deliver up-to-date efficiency to its central station clients while saving time and money.

Cliff Dice, president of DICE Corp. praised the leap forward SamePage provides.

“In the past we moved from having paper for manuals to digital copies on disc. Nowadays, with our software being cloud computing based—anybody can access it through a browser anywhere in the world—the need for training and documentation takes on a new dimension. With cloud-based computing environments, which are deployable anywhere, you have embedded documentation, which takes us to the wiki,” Dice said. “People think of documentation as a living, breathing thing now that they can modify and add to … You want your customers to be able to add to it … If you’re using my product now and you don’t know what a particular field is, you can go click on the arrow and it will deliver the webpage with the wiki embedded. And it builds in the whole knowledgebase.”

Read the rest of the DICE and SamePage article.

In other exciting news, SamePage was voted one of KMWorld's TrendSetting Products of 2010.

"We are pleased to add eTouch SamePage to our list of truly innovative products that are helping to drive the knowledge management market," said Hugh McKellar, editor of KMWORLD. "In our eighth year of awarding trend-setting products, our judging panel assessed even more products than previously. Each product selected demonstrated clearly identifiable technology breakthroughs that serve the vendors' full spectrum of constituencies, especially their customers."

All this good news is helping put our team in high gear as we move into the busy Fall. Watch this space for more.

TMCNet.com Interview about SamePage

My colleague, Venu Shastri, was recently interview by TMCNet.com. Here, he tells Rich Tehrani all about SamePage, key features and how companies can put it to use.

Read more about SamePage version 4.3 at http://etouch.net/company/press_releases.html.

What is WebDav and how can it help you?

So, as promised, here's more on the latest release of SamePage version 4.3. If you're not technical, you likely won't know the meaning of WebDAV aka Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning. Consider it a cool new tech term to show off with to your friends.

What's important is what WebDAV support does for SamePage 4.3 users. Basically, if you want to edit a Word, Excel or Powerpoint file attachment that is located in your wiki, you no longer need to open the attachment, download it to your system, edit, save and then upload to your wiki. What a relief, right?

Now, you can edit attachments without explicitly downloading them. You can get the same "one-click edit and save experience" for files that you are accustomed to with all other wiki pages. The changes you make are saved directly the server.

Aside from saving you some time, energy and effort, this creates a more simple environment for collaboration and document management. Especially for our customers and prospects looking for knowledge management solutions, this is really an important product enhancement.

Watch this SamePage video which talks about this feature. If you're not yet a customer, sign up for a 30-day free SamePage trial.

Love a New Release

I just love a new software release! I love to be able to tell people about it, play with the new functionalities and all of that. And so I've been patiently waiting until I could rave about...drum roll, please...SamePage version 4.3.

Now it's out and I've got free rein. For starters, I want to talk about the new Explorer view. Basically, navigating SamePage is now as easy and comfortable as working on a Windows-based computer. Users can easily navigate through projects and pages, locate items quickly and manage attachments seamlessly in a familiar user interface.

We have a lot of customers using SamePage as a knowledge management and document management tool, and it's great for that. Now, we can better meet the needs of customers using the enterprise 2.0 solution for knowledge management, including content and document management. With a wiki user interface just like a desktop, KM workers can more simply do their work.

Before we launched the update, I had a stimulating phone conversation with Dan Keldsen, co-founder of consulting firm Information Architected and ranked as one of the Most Influential Enterprise 2.0 Bloggers by SeekOmega.com. Dan is a KM expert and had this to say about our software:

"For KM to succeed today, you need a system that allows the employee to simply do their work, wherever they would normally do it, yet provides them inputs and outputs to make KM as easy as sending an e-mail or saving to their desktop. The aim should be for the simple Active Management of Knowledge, rather than the complete chaos of unmanaged content that so many companies have. If your tools force you into a single way of work, even if it's the 'Wiki Way,' you should consider a more fully integrated solution, such as SamePage 4.3."

If you can't get a feel for this based on my words, this video will help. (If you get an error message in the video below, go to SamPage's YouTube page.



I'll write more soon on the new features and functionalities of SamePage v. 4.3. Can't wait to find out more? Sign up for a free trial or let me know if you have any questions.

Anonymous, But No Less Important

It seems I have been remiss about blogging recently. It’s not that it hasn’t been on my mind; it’s that I’ve been very busy, which is a very, very good thing.

I am proud to report that after setting a personal goal to get more customer feedback in 2010, I have accomplished it. We’ve just completed a customer case study with a US-based, publicly traded global brokerage and financial markets technology company that has been a SamePage customer since 2007.

It’s anonymous. That is, we can’t attach a company name to it. Unfortunately, that’s a common story in the world of software vendors. Customers may be pleased as punch with your solution. But if they publicly comment on that, they’ll have every vendor knocking down their door. So the high-profile customers often have no-comment policies.

So, we agreed to settle on an anonymous case study. And when we heard about how useful SamePage has been to this company, we’re thrilled we did. Because even though none of you know which company it is, we do. And there’s tremendous satisfaction knowing that this large, successful corporation is so happy with our solution. We’re busting at the seams to let you in on our little secret. But alas, we can’t.

The company’s manager of global development infrastructure proclaims that many people use the wiki every day and it is “extremely key to almost all of our development projects. We use it for collaboration on a daily basis.”

“We have lots of separate projects,” the manager added. “So we need what we think of as separate wikis. We have about 145 project wikis – not all of them are active, but they are so easy to create. SamePage really understood that need and offers great separation of projects. In our development process, project ‘owners’ set up wikis for individual projects or products.”

“We’d be lost without it,” he said.

Will you take a few minutes to read the case study? Read the rest: SamePage Financial-Technology Customer Case Study

New Year, Old Thank Yous

We've hit the ground running in 2010. There's good energy, excitement...a buzz in the air.

I always become reflective when we turn the page in the calendar to a new year. The other day, I started thinking about SamePage customers and how I always like to hear about how and why they're using our software. I want to know all about what their teams are able to accomplish with their online collaboration and knowledge management. It's not everyday that I hear about how our customers are using the enterprise wiki and what kind of specific successes they are having. But some SamePage customers have provided feedback to us in the past, including these below, and I thank them for it. I'm looking forward to hearing more.

"SamePage allows us to securely and efficiently share and discuss project information with our collaborators located across the US."

- Stan Burgos, Graduate Researcher, Caltech

"I can't imagine we could have made a better choice. This one did not take us a lot of effort to start up and work with. It's very well done; and works very well for us. We didn't do any training, but everybody can jump in and use the product with zero start-up time. It's that intuitive."

- Kevin Morningstar, Executive Director, SAITS, Cal Poly Pomona
Read a full case study about Cal Poly Pomona.

"We have been looking for an enterprise solution in the market to fulfill the collaboration requirements of our customer. SamePage met the criterion set by our client, i.e. to allow users gain access to information, resources, and enable them to collaborate, generate and share ideas and knowledge. SamePage's ease-of-use, intuitive interface and the WYSIWYG editing feature for the blog and wiki enabled user collaboration and ensured perpetual retention and extension of knowledge and experiences within the client's organization. The robust solution also allowed ease of deployment in a complex and high availability clustered infrastructure. Our working relationship with eTouch has been very good and the technical support is responsive and helpful in our journey in deploying SamePage for our client."

-Pee Yee Koo, Project Manager, Siemens

SamePage scores another touchdown!

Ovum recently published an enterprise 2.0 report, and it includes eTouch SamePage as a leading vendor. The report, entitled “Enterprise Collaboration 2.0: Connecting with the Global Opportunity” identifies the trends and market opportunities of enterprise collaboration and outlines some positive ideas for the future of the market. The best part - SamePage is included as a 'top specialist vendor.'

In the report summary, analyst Rhonda Ascierto writes:

“The market opportunity for enterprise collaboration is relatively immature within the broader spectrum of enterprise software. Despite factors that are inhibiting its adoption, the widespread use of enterprise collaboration seems inevitable and the potential upside for end-user organizations and vendors is substantial.”

The report also analyzes the market drivers and inhibitors that are driving demand for Enterprise Collaboration 2.0; details the future technology evolution of the enterprise collaboration and includes analysis of how software delivery models are shaping the market; and outlines go-to-market strategies of enterprise collaboration vendors.

You can read the full summary report at Datamonitor.com.

Year in Review

Just the other day, I was in a meeting with eTouch CEO Ani Gadre and some other teammates. We were talking about what a challenging year it's been in many ways, but how much the wiki and enterprise 2.0 industries have grown - new companies, products and game-changing ideas. Even amidst the global crises, incredible things and innovation have happened.

Ani gave me some of his thoughts. You can read the rest on his eTouch blog.

"The term 'enterprise 2.0' has become more widely used and accepted as a valuable business tool. Today, enterprise 2.0 is about companies truly encouraging and foster collaborative environments, whether through integrative wikis or Twitter-like tools for the workplace or even giving remote workers better access to corporate intranets."

"I remain quite optimistic about the business outlook for 2010," he added. "There are companies in a variety of industries starting out with enterprise 2.0 projects or deployments. We will continue to offer them services that meet their needs and product features that help them stay ahead of the game."

"We're excited about the potential for SamePage in the new year."

I will certainly raise a glass and make a New Year's toast to that.

Wishing everyone a joyous holiday season and a new year full of happiness, good health and success.

"A Wiki Wonderland"

"A Wiki Wonderland." That was the headline to the KMWorld article about the launch of SamePage version 4.2. You gotta love that....at least I did.

What makes it a wonderland? Several valuable features and enhancements to the product that will truly benefit enterprises of all sizes. Interested? Let me tell you more.

The features we've added will better meet the needs of a remote and social-media friendly knowledge management workforce, including business travelers and wiki administrators.

Changes to this version include:

- Dynamic portal-like dashboard with drag and drop widgets that can be personalized at company and individual levels, eliminating the need for a separate intranet portal product.
- Advanced email integration that enables remote workers to more easily 'wikify' content from any smartphone.
- A wide selection of new and enhanced plug-ins that can be customized for each enterprise, including tag cloud and project member plug-ins, among others.
- More detailed analytics, usage and content reports for administrators.
- Ratings on Blog posts and more blog analytics.
- Support for Microsoft Office 2007
- WYSIWYG enhancements to further simplify the user interface.
- Increased privileges for the system user or administrator to manage pages and projects.



Intrigued or interested about being a part of our "wiki wonderland?" You can start by signing up for a free 30-day trial from etouch.net, direct message (DM) us on Twitter @samepagewiki or email us at sales@etouch.net.

A Wiki for SMBs

Back in March, James Gaskin published an article in Network World in which he profiled a small business' successful use of SamePage enterprise wiki.

In the article, Gaskin quotes Armen Grigorian, a manager at Defoe Fournier and Company, and writes:

“We needed a way for people to collaborate on projects. All our projects have at least six people involved." In a company of a dozen people, half the employees work together on each project. The problem is, those employees are scattered around, between headquarters in New York City, Atlanta, Rochester, Pittsburgh, and even Armenia. Grigorian continues with a description that sounds like most small businesses. “There's no real IT department or money to develop a custom application. We rely on typical tools for small businesses, like Excel and Word from Microsoft. We're all finance and accounting people who can just barely use a computer.”

Now, it's even easier for small and mid-sized businesses to get started with SamePage. Last week, we announced that SamePage is now available on MYSMBStore.com, which is a one-stop shop, or marketplace of name brand, on-demand SaaS applications for everything an SMB needs to start or manage their business. It's a Renovatix Solutions' site.

“Online social and professional collaboration of open source content has quickly become the de-facto method for idea exchange,” said J. Scott Robinson, general manager, Renovatix Solutions. “We’re very pleased to work with eTouch to add SamePage to our suite of applications to provide SMBs everywhere a very efficient tool to collaborate with their teams and customers.”

Visitors to MYSMBStore.com can register for a free trial of SamePage. Purchasing options start at $100 per month for up to 20 users. Know someone who runs, owns or does IT for an SMB? Send them to mySMBstore.com!

Salesforce + Wiki = Better Salesforce

Have you ever noticed that there are no enterprise wikis on the Salesforce AppExchange?! That is, there weren't, until last week. But to me, it seems like a perfect match. And now, SamePage is part of the Force.com AppExchange on Salesforce.com.

Here are some things Salesforce CRM customers can do with a SamePage application:
- Collaborate and share knowledge and information online with customers, leads and prospects
- Easily import leads and contacts from Salesforce into the enterprise wiki
- Involve business associates in the collaboration process
- Use a ‘single sign on’ mechanism – users that log into Salesforce are seamlessly transported into their SamePage wiki
- Benefit from wiki, blog, forum, discussion board bundle by having a centralized destination for all Enterprise 2.0 collaborative activity












“The Force.com AppExchange offers an abundance of cloud computing applications that complement and expand the value of Salesforce CRM,” said Kendall Collins, chief marketing officer at salesforce.com. “Customers can use eTouch SamePage as a cost-effective and innovative enterprise wiki product that facilitates knowledge management and collaboration with both internal and external audiences.”

A GOOD Kind of Socializing at Word

Web sites, tech magazines, even mainstream papers are all writing about social media xyz. To say it's a hot topic is a great understatement. For example, the landscape of blogging has expanded, and the discourse in the comments can often be as valuable as the original blog post. Also, Facebook, Twitter and similar sites are becoming more valuable to companies, as people realize how to maximize their use for business purposes.

All of these 'social' tools help create a more comfortable online discussion; they help to make things more friendly and personal. That makes people feel they have more at stake. And I think that's a key reason why social features are increasingly finding their place in enterprise tools.

Last week, we announced the release of SamePage version 4.1 that incorporates social elements and allows users to personalize their wiki experience and profiles. SamePage is an enterprise wiki, yes. Adding social elements can help to foster better, more comfortable relationships among colleagues.

Some of the social features of SamePage version 4.1 are:

• An integrated social directory with rich user profiles and people search that facilitates people-centric collaboration.
• User-created profiles to provide a well-rounded view to other users and become a source for a collaborative social directory.
• People search functionality.
• Page ratings
• Twitter-like status updates, e.g. What are you doing now?
• Display of the most recent wiki activities
• On-premise customers can also customize the user-profile for their instance, hiding SamePage attributes that may not be relevant within their specific organization.

You can read more about it: http://www.etouch.net/products/collaboration/features_social_directory.html.
Or try it free for 30 days.

It's THE wave of the future.

Changing Traditional Deployment Models to Meet Customer Needs

When the business climate changes, customers (both current and potential) are looking for new and better options. Software providers need to be responsive; think outside of the box of typical client packages.

Take multi-tenancy, for instance. As many already know, a multi-tenant solution is utilized by multiple groups of people but is based on a single, shared infrastructure. An application is built to partition each group's data so that it is private, while operating on a shared system. It is a typical deployment model for software as a service (SaaS) customers. It means the software provider hosts the product, and customers access an external server to use it. The customer doesn’t need the infrastructure; IT support is provided by the software company.

To meet customer needs and to be responsive to financial concerns of potential customers, the SamePage team has developed a new and evolutionary deployment model. This week, we announced that SamePage will now offer multi-tenancy for on-premise enterprise customers. It will be most beneficial to large enterprises, umbrella organizations and educational institutions.

With a SamePage multi-tenancy, on-premise deployment, customers will be able to develop customized wikis for each of their clients and track usage and activity. They will have increased flexibility and efficiency with horizontal scaling of the wiki within their organization.

At the same time, we’ve minimized the needs of IT management by centralizing and streamlining everything into one wiki instance for a company.

The bottom line is that consolidation of wiki services into a single, centrally managed infrastructure can translate to significant cost savings. Hardware, network and IT overheads can be dramatically reduced.

It’s out of the ‘box’ of typical software delivery mechanisms, but unique times call for innovative measures.

Read more about the features: http://www.etouch.net/products/collaboration/features_multi_tenancy.html

The Recession-Ready Wiki

Last week, I co-hosted a webinar with Aberdeen. The title of the presentation was: The Recession-Ready Wiki: Surviving the Economic Storm through Sales Collaboration and Knowledge Management. It is now available as a replay link on the eTouch site.

At its base form, it was a discussion about how Enterprise 2.0 collaboration and knowledge management tools can benefit sales organizations in selling more effectively in these challenging times. The statistics and findings presented by Alex Jefferies, senior research associate at Aberdeen Group, were pulled from two recent reports he published – Sales 2.0: Social Media for Knowledge Management and Sales Collaboration published September 2008, and Sales Intelligence: The Secret to Sales Nirvana, which he will publish at the end of January.

Alex says: “The recent challenges in the economic landscape have necessitated the urgent search for tools that immediately and effectively deliver a positive return on investments. Enterprise 2.0 tools present an evolutionary approach to improve the efficiency of processes and productivity of your workforce in these times.”

In his presentation, Alex pointed out that in these difficult economic times, there’s an increased need for better and more accessible sales intelligence and that companies can stay ahead by worker smarter, not necessarily harder. These are two driving forces behind the movement towards the use of wikis in the enterprise.

He also spent some time talking about what the best-in-class, or most successful companies in their fields, are doing and how they’re differentiating themselves in the market. More often than not, this includes embracing new technologies like enterprise wikis to push forward.

The webinar provides a lot of useful information, and I recommend you listen to it. You can also download the Sales 2.0 report. It’s worth the time. And if you have any questions about it, contact me.

Wikis and Intel

In business, it's important to align your company with strong partners. It provides added credibility, street cred and benefits. In the case of my enterprise wiki software, eTouch SamePage, we're now a part of the Intel® Software Partner Program.

Through its partner program, Intel offers tools, resources, technology and expertise to help drive top line growth; and by assisting partners from both the technology and marketing angles. From a technology standpoint, it enables a partner to get a better understanding of roadmaps and Intel’s view of the future. From a business perspective, it enables tons of Intel partners to discover and find solutions for their business needs – thereby providing valuable mindshare and exposure.

For these reasons, we believe Intel's technology solutions can further enhance our dynamic enterprise wiki product and help us accomplish goals in a timely manner. This will help to improve our competitive advantage. Plus, Intel is highly respected brand in the tech and business worlds, and we're proud to be associated with the company.

Wikis continue to charm and delight corporations worldwide with their intuitive, friendly, yet powerful approach to solving collaboration aches. SamePage’s partnership with Intel is yet another step towards realizing its potential in this exciting marketplace.

Some Things in Life Really Are Free

I’ve written before about wikis in academia. I believe deeply in the value of wikis in this area – for administrators, professors, researchers, as well as for students.

For students, in particular, it is challenging to find the budget for new software and applications to help muddle through the process. But students can benefit so much from using technology for research, group coordination, collaboration, project planning and more.

Plus, students who use and become comfortable with business software and applications while still in school will be more prepared when they enter the workforce. I wish I had a wiki to use to manage my projects while I was in college!

That’s why, although SamePage is an enterprise wiki, I was part of the team that put together the plan to offer SamePage version 4.0 FREE to university students with an .edu email address. All students need to do is sign up at http://samepage.spwiki.com. They can include up to five users in their group. It’s simple and straightforward. The interface is user friendly and utilizes a WYSIWYG editor, so students don’t need technical expertise. In addition to the collaboration features, there are discussion forums and a blog element.

Some things in life really are free. And when this phenomenon occurs, people should reach out and grab it. That’s exactly what we hope students will do with SamePage v. 4.0.

The Next Phase of Collaboration

This week, Cisco officially launched its new collaboration portfolio consisting of Cisco Unified Communications, Cisco TelePresence and a new Web 2.0 application platform. According to Cisco, all of these use the network as the platform to help enable people to connect, communicate and collaborate from any application, device and workspace.

The new portfolio products include Cisco Unified Communications System Release 7.0, TelePresence Expert on Demand and a Web 2.0 Applications Platform, which is Cisco WebEx® Connect, a new software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform. It integrates presence, instant messaging, Web meetings and team spaces with traditional and Web 2.0 business applications, including SamePage.

As a SamePage team member, I’m looking forward to experiencing the power of Cisco behind our dynamic Wiki. The partnership between SamePage and Cisco WebEx enables enterprises to combine the application mash-up capabilities of WebEx Connect with the collaborative content editing capabilities of the SamePage enterprise Wiki.

It truly creates a powerful new way through which businesses can share information with employees, customers and business associates. I've been using WebEx Connect for the past few months and find the interaction with SamePage is seamless and powerful.

The collaboration market, especially as it relates to Web 2.0 and enterprises, is coming into its own.