Read/Write Intranet Idol
I believe that 2007 is the year when companies will start to understand that they need a read/write Intranet. Here is a list of some of the start-ups and large companies that produce systems that could be used to build a read/write Intranet.
Ideally, such a system would both help knowledge workers to get work done and help the company as a whole to work more efficiently. At this stage in the development of this new space, there are lots of different approaches. These companies are thinking about workflow, motivation, security, access control, and a range of other issues.
So, here’s a Zoho powered poll. If I am missing a company, or if you would like to explain why you think one company’s approach is radically different and therefore much better than the others, please do so in the comments below. There are good reasons to think that all of these companies offer something uniquely valuable. There is also good reason to think that some of these companies do not truly understand what Enterprise 2.0 end users really want and need.
UPDATE: Just as an FYI, each vendor is hyperlinked, so you can click on the name if you would like to go to their site and do some research.
UPDATE #2 If you run a blog, you can help improve the quality of the results from this poll by increasing the number of people who vote. Here’s the code you can use to post it into you site:
<iframe frameborder=’0′ src=’http://zohopolls.com/external/rboothby/break-out-read-write-intranet-systems-of-2007′ width=’500′ height=’720′></iframe>
Hmmmm - how does Brainkeeper get a score > 5? Is there an indication of how many votes have been cast?
Are we excluding anything that doesn’t have an on-premise offering? Wetpaint is quite good, and have plans for an on-premise offering - worth considering?
I’ll admit that I am not familiar with some of these products, so didn’t have an opinion … does that mean the poll will favour better-known software?
Hey Ric,
It looks like the Zoho polling engine is not totally hack proof. Hopefully people will be nice and not try to hack this thing.
I have added Wetpaint to the list. It certainly looks interesting. Thank you for pointing it out.
Each of the companies is hyper-linked, so you can click on the link and check them out, if you are not already familiar with them.
- Rod
Er, Sharepoint? You are SO behind the times. Companies have been using, en masse, Sharepoint since 2003.
The company I work for, VYRE.com with the product Unify just recently got an award for an intranet project. It has all those 2.0 thingies like blog, rss, collaboration and stuff…
Press release with detail
Hi Rod, we’re not so radically different but i think aprex.com.br could stand on this list. Actually, Aprex appeared on r/w here (http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_web_apps_in_brazil.php). We’re the first web 2.0 business service in Brazil, and i look forward to have english and spanish flavors soon.
Hi Rod, we’re not so radically different but i think aprex.com.br could stand on this list. Actually, Aprex appeared on r/w here (http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_web_apps_in_brazil.php). We’re the first web 2.0 business service in Brazil, and i look forward to have english and spanish flavors soon.
Thanks for the notes about Vrye and Aprex. I have added them both to the list.
Good stuff.
Hmm… SuiteTwo seems conspicuously absent, no?
Hey Anil,
I thought considering that the list already has SocialText and MT… but maybe the package is the deal.
I’ll add it.
- Rod
This might be another European app to consider:
http://factline.com/144808.0/lngchange/English/
You really need to include Adobe Connect in this list. It is by far the best web conferencing tool and I believe it will get rapid adoption in 2007.
Rod,
Do you actually expect this poll to produce useful results?
At best, they become a contest to see which vendor can get more of their customers to vote for them by blogging about it to their own users etc. At worst, they get completely ballot stuffed as protecting an online poll is near impossible if someone is determined.
Nothing wrong with this, it just makes for a pointless result. Customers vote with their $, not with a few clicks.
(IMHO these polls are almost always just clever attempts to gain blog traffic by bloggers. And credit to you mate, it worked ;))
Cheers,
Mike
Poll: best read-write intranet systems
Intranets that work - as opposed to those that just sit \ and gather dust - are near and dear to my heart lately.
Innovation Creators and Read/Write Web are running a poll to determine which are the best new read/write intranets:
One change I wouldn&…
Hey Mike,
I think you are right - in the market place, sales count much more than votes!
I tried to get around that a little, by specifically asking people for their opinion on which company would succeed. Even then, while Zoho’s polling tool is easy to use, it is also easy to hack.
The poll results have taught me one thing, though. It appears that the people who have voted in the poll think, on average, and so far, that wiki companies are going to have more success than blog companies.
Personally, I think there is need for both community created pages (wikis), and event centric sequentially ordered content (blogs). But, it also appears that companies are more afraid of internal / external blogs because they see examples of powerful bloggers causing large companies problems on the open internet.
I’ll add an update saying that people should take the rankings with a grain of salt.
- Rod
I suspect Atlassian should be on that list - Confluence is an ideal product for the read/write intranet, is winning stacks of awards, and despite being used by over 1,900 companies in 45 countries across Fortune 1000, public enterprise, academic and technology sectors, has plenty of room for growth.
Sorry, just noticed Confluence down there as ‘Confluence by Atlassian’ - there’s a bit of a muddle in the ordering (almost alphabetical) and in the definition - is it companies or products?
Rod, Just a small point, in your poll, you list Microsoft Sharepoint (recognising that it’s a platform and includes alternative blogging systems), however under the Lotus Notes software platform you only mention the one blog template -Blogsphere.
How does one register opinions about the excellent free blog template that has been bundled with Domino 7.0.2 or the many other excellent blog templates available on the Lotus software platform?
I am not indicating that I don’t think that Blogsphere is not an excellent example (quite the contrary), but there are other alternatives just as worthy of mention, so perhaps you should categorize your poll for the Lotus Notes platform in general rather than limit poll responses to a single (but very popular) open source blog template.
Hi Ian,
Thanks for the comment - it makes sense to me. Could you give a list of some of the top ones, and I will add them. As far as I am aware, Sharepoint only really has one type of blogging functionality.
Rod
The most common open source blog templates for the Lotus Notes platform are:
Blogsphere
DominoBlog
DomBlog
Blogo (from s3maphor3.org)
One of my clients is seriously considering Traction. Can you tell me why it isn’t included? The big chasm that they kept running into is that they needed heavy data management (e.g. tracking feature development in a new product) on the dev. side of things. Now I’m working for the same client on the other side of the marketing fence and Blogtronix seems like a no-brainer. I’m wondering, though, if anybody has crossed the “blogging function” with a wiki-based way to track threaded conversations (including an easy way to see updates… remember net news?), and a way to ultimately output some of your data into a word doc, to generate PRDs. Now THAT would be useful.
Hey Kate,
Traction is included in the list. The rate near the top if you check out the results. I have not had a chance to use their system, but from the demos I have seen, they have a very wide ranging set of capabilities.
For marketing, Blogtronix and iUpload both have capable systems. Cool idea about threaded conversations. In a crude way, you can accomplish that with comments.
- Rod
Hi Rod-
I agree about the wiki popularity but I do think having the blogging function included really adds to the ability to communicate internally and externally, with competent enough software doing either or both would be no sweat (try doing that with WordPress!) Inagine an RSS feed setup to filter posts from co-workers that cut through the clutter. From what we’ve seen Blogtronix aims for this but we haven’t really dug into it yet, but also (not listed) is Clearspace from Jive Software, it’s pretty impressive, includes live meetings, all that blog stuff and all that wiki stuff.
BTW- Kate - Clearspace sounds exactly what you’re looking for…
We’ll put your poll on our site…
Hello Rod,
a quick note to say Aprex (www.aprex.com.br) is the only Latin American website that was included in Business 2.0 list of the “31 Hottest Web 2.0 Websites From Around the Globe” (Aug 2007 edition):
http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2007/biz2/0707/gallery.web_world.biz2/31.html
And the list starts with Joost…
http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2007/biz2/0707/gallery.web_world.biz2
Here is the electronic edition:
http://mag1.olivesoftware.com/ActiveMagazine/welcome/BSN/BSN-2007-08fd98f8.asp
(page 74)
Cheers,
Guilherme Coelho
CEO Aprex
Hey Catheen,
why does he need to include adobe connect in the list you need to include that