An igloo is a shelter made of ice.  The ice acted as an insulator and provided warmth due to the air pockets trapped in the snow.  When I think of igloo I normally think of the popular brand of coolers that accompany anyone going on an outdoor excursion or camping trip.

Well now I can add IGLOO to the growing list of cloud based SaaS solutions that are popping up to help drive collaboration and a social infrastructure for business.  In 2005 the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) launched an initiative to create International Governance Leaders and Organizations Online or IGLOO.  Several noted Canadian technology innovators were involved in the initiative including Tom Jenkins of OpenText (OTEX) and Jim Basillie from Research in Motion (RIMM).  More info…

Beginning in 2008 IGLOO began its journey towards a commercially available software platform in accordance with CIGI’s agreement with the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation.  More info….

More recently IGLOO improved its position in the Gartner Magic Quadrant as an emerging Niche player of the Social Software in the Workplace and Externally Facing Social Software reports.   More info…

Headquartered in Waterloo, Ontario the company has seen a 388% year over year growth in 2011 focusing on B2B in the US and EMEA.  The ideal target customer is the mid-market with organizations <2,500 employees.  The product is described as an IT friendly business social software that is different from public social networking and file sharing sites.  Those public sites are designed mainly for fun, they are free and adopted for personal use.  The question is who owns the content, you or the free service provider?

In contrast IGLOO is for work, it is secure (LDAP, AD, Kerberos) and gives you the ability to brand and design websites, team collaboration spaces, blogs, forums, wikis, document spaces and photo galleries.   You build team sites and web pages using a drag and drop widget bar.  Once your widgets are placed each one has a tabbed configuration settings page that makes it simple.  Now managers and power users can create sites that are useful and powerful.

On top of the entire platform is a killer social layer that supports trending, messaging, commenting and sharing.  This gives each user and workgroup the ability to interact with content in a social and meaningful way.  Add a universal search function and user, content and role based security and you have a very capable cloud based platform fully accessible from your desktop browser.

Everything inside IGLOO is predicated on a version control paradigm so whenever you add content, update a page, write a blog, or comment each action is recorded as a new version so there is never any worry that you will overwrite or delete important files or data.  In addition there is a desktop integration feature that gives you the ability to drag and drop documents and related content directly to a secure folder on your desktop.

IGLOO uses an agile development methodology that allows 50% of all new features to be driven by the customers and users in very short cycles.  The company boasts 3,000 customer communities worldwide and has widgets for connecting Salesforce.com and SharePoint.

It’s important to note that IGLOO is running in a SaaS 70 Type II compliant data center so you know your content is safe and secure.  I think Daniel Kube, IGLOO Sales and Business Development VP summed it up well by saying “You can never make software to easy to use”.

Check out http://cloudpwr.com

We have launched a design campaign for the CloudPWR logo.  The contest is healthy with 46 entries currently.  We have guaranteed an award for one of the designs.  This has been a very positive experience and I highly recommend 99Designs for anyone looking for a progressive alternative to producing graphic designs.  Over the years I have worked with several outside firms and in house designers.  The drawback to both of these approaches is twofold.  First the scope of designs are limited to only one or two designers working on your project.  With 99Designs we were able to work with half a dozen solid artists and provide feedback virtually.  Secondly it requires coordinating schedules to review designs and provide feedback.  Because you work in the cloud with 99Designs we had the ability to collaborate on an as needed basis without needing face time to go over designs.  In my previous experience it would take weeks to get a simple project like this completed.  This process will take only 7 days with daily and almost hourly progress.  Last but not least is the cost factor, hands down working with 99Designs is way more affordable than a high end design firm or in-house staff.

Check out some of the top entries here:

logo for CloudPWR | 99designs

Also thanks to everyone for the enthusiasm and support.  It has been great meeting with contacts all over Puget Sound looking for cloud based alternatives to on premise computing and software platforms. Stay tuned for the launch of the website and follow @CloudPWR on twitter (logo will be replaced soon:).  Direct message us on twitter If you are interested in attending our October 4th Kick off at Century Link field for the US Open Sounders game.  We will pick one lucky winner to join us in the exclusive club level suite.

Check out http://cloudpwr.com

Over the last week I have been using a cloud based service called Huddle.

I had a chance to sit down and chat with Andy McLoughlin, co-founder and all around great chap.  His background implementing legacy ECM software solutions in the Insurance and Finance verticals gave him great experience and inspiration to embark on building a whole new way of sharing and managing documents and content.

The company is 4 years old and based in the United Kingdom.  Over 90,000 businesses are actively using Huddle to share large files, get document approvals faster, and keep projects on track by giving users the ability to access files from mobile devices securely using an intuitive and agile interface. The company describes their tool as the number one SharePoint alternative in the cloud.

Great for project managers, wikis, team discussion threads and task based document approval processes.  It can greatly reduce email traffic and confusion over what is the current version of a document.  With built-in audit, workflow and version controls teams can always be sure of what they are working on and what changes colleagues have made or suggested.

When you first register for Huddle you are required to accept the terms of use and license agreement.  Now most of us do not actually read these documents, we click accept and start happily using these types of services.  I did take a few minutes to read through the documents and found several areas of interest.

• Huddle accounts are given on an individual user basis, you can have only one login
• You must indemnify Huddle for the content use & rights you upload
• You may not provide third party access to the service
• There is an API that can be used to integrate Huddle with other platforms or services
• If you do embed or integrate a commercial service using the API you must include a “Powered by Huddle” logo
• Jurisdiction for legal authority is England / Wales

After subscribing to the service Huddle does a good job of communication and follows up with automated email notifications and personal calls to make sure you get familiar with the service.  No kidding, they actually call you and say hello.  It was actually a very nice experience and it showed a significant focus on customer service.  I believe this is smart and that it builds in brand loyalty and a sense of belonging to the Huddle community.

Huddle uses a familiar Dashboard approach when you login to the site.  The interface is laid out with dockable widgets giving each user the ability to show or hide details about items in their Workspaces, Tasks, Notifications and your Calendar.  It also gives a quick chronological view of activity in a ‘What’s New’ list.  By quickly clicking active Workspaces you are taken to a tabbed interface so you can start Huddling.

The tab interface will be easily navigated by new users.  The tabs also provide easily clickable green + signs that are nested above the main tab.  These allow for quick access for adding new files, inviting people to workspaces, scheduling meetings and create tasks or whiteboards.

Document sharing is all about people and the need to work collaboratively with each other.  Whether its colleagues or business partners everyone needs to share content for review, comment, edit and to complete the document authoring or content creation process.  So it is not surprising that no matter where you are in the Huddle interface you get a very handy ‘People’ tab to the left of the user interface.

Accessing and viewing ‘Files’ in Huddle is very straightforward.  The ‘Files’ tab presents the user with a list of documents that can be viewed in detail or as thumbnails.  Thumbnails do show a snapshot of PDF and TIFF files as an image icon but Office document thumbnails show only as a logo placeholder.  After uploading scanned TIFF files I was unable to launch the viewer.  So I contacted Huddle support and they quickly determined that an update to the service was needed to resolve the issue.  This is a prime example of how newer agile focused software development tools and groups can win over the legacy waterfall methods used by most software giants.

Standard metadata and version control fields provide for elementary control and identification of documents within a workspace.  In addition comment fields allow for ongoing communication threads for each participant in a workspace.  Custom metadata fields are not supported at this time; this would be a great enhancement for organizations wanting to add things like customer, patient or account number.  New files or entire folders can be uploaded very quickly; the performance for uploading files is very fast.  In addition a drag and drop interface allows for uploading of 50 files simultaneously in one easy step.

When I accessed the ‘Whiteboards’ tab I took the name of the tab literally and was expecting to be able to jot down notes and draw network diagrams to show Workspace users graphical illustrations of a particular topic or project.  The tab name is more aptly described as a simple wiki for collaboration on text between Workspace users.  The tab is useful and additional features should make this an even more exciting area for collaboration in the future.  There is also a discussions tab that provides a bulletin board-style tool for threaded discussions.

The ‘Tasks’ tab is where Huddle really starts to give you a glimpse of what it could become.  The concept of tasks is based on a simple approach to collaboration for approving documents.  The interface is laid out quite nicely in a list that allows for rolling up task items or creating new ones.  If Huddle were to add some linear workflow capabilities for conditional routing based on status flags or boolean logic it would be a big leap forward.

In order to keep your colleagues and team members on the same page just access the ‘Meetings’ tab. This gives users the ability to schedule online meetings in a Workspace or by invitation only for team members you specify.

Meeting setup is very simple and will be familiar to anyone who has used other web conferencing services.  Huddle meetings can include teleconferencing features in a ‘pay as you go’ model.  Do not confuse Huddle with a full featured Web Conferencing service; you will still need to use your preferred service for desktop sharing features.

I found that Huddle was easy to use and the company really cared about its customers and prospects.  Not surprising for an up and coming cloud based service provider but uncommon for a traditional software company.  If you are looking for document collaboration that is more than just a file sharing service Huddle is a great option, I encourage you to check them out.

Check out http://cloudpwr.com 

SalesForce.com was founded in 1999 by former Oracle executives.  SalesForce kicked open the door to show that a subscription based SaaS computing model could generate millions of subscribers and helped to legitimize the Cloud as a viable computing platform.

Now the Cloud has become the buzz word of the moment and a place where great software can help real business get done. For the past several years new content management software options have begun to make headway as an alternative to expensive on-premise document management and collaboration software products.

In early posts I touched on some of the companies leading the pack in terms of subscribers, customers and technology.  Each has its unique approach in terms of licensing, technology vision and usability.  When an organization is evaluating some of these newer technologies they must still consider that in their business the underlying methods of processing a business transaction remain unchanged.  An organization has several key business functions that must occur whether they sell a product, service or a combination of both.  We can think of this as the widget revenue cycle.

• Sell your widget
• Deliver the widget
• Bill for the widget
• Collect the revenue

99% of the time when you implement ECM technology on-premise it plays a supporting role to existing systems and operations.  Most organizations have a financial management or ERP solution like JDEdwards, Oracle e-Business Suite, SAP, Dynamics, Syspro, Sage, Epicor or some other niche market alternative.  These are the systems that drive the business.  ECM solutions on the other hand will support these systems by providing access to unstructured information not contained in the ERP records or datasets.  The supporting documents become very important when exceptions or inaccuracies in a transaction occur.  Examples of the supporting documents can include both paper documents and electronic files such as invoices, claim forms, emails, checks, bills of lading, contracts, correspondence and so on.  In addition these records continue to provide value after the widget revenue cycle is completed for audit and legal retention purposes.

In my experience most organizations see a substantial benefit from connecting or integrate the ERP data with the content stored in the ECM system.  This connection provides and easy method for toggling from the transactional ERP data and user interface to the supporting documents stored in the ECM system.  CFO’s who are looking for tangible return on investment benefits before green lighting an ECM project should consider this as a key function that can help reduce errors and trim the labor costs associated with exception handling.  CIO’s will want to consider how this is accomplished and make a determination between the use of a tight integration vs. a loose integration and the pros and cons of each.

It is typical that any mechanism requiring programmatic code changes to existing systems is costly, may not be supported by the vendor or is not a priority for IT departments.  It can be preferable to use a lose binding method for keeping the existing systems in synch with the ECM information and still achieve the automation required to increase user access and ease frustration by making it easy to find associated supporting documents using the transactional ERP data and user interfaces.

When you are evaluating how to implement or select a Cloud based model for ECM an important question to ask is: “how are you going to integrate the solution to provide for seamless connectivity between the our existing systems and the supporting documents and records”?

I don’t want to go to deeply into the technical aspects of unique record id’s, data cleansing, data mapping and integration API’s as you may find yourself nodding off.  Let’s just keep it to a high level diagram and take a look at a technology product that may help you bridge the gap.

In enterprises large & small, end users are spending their time performing their primary job functions (e.g. taking orders, placing orders, administering payroll or personnel, admitting patients or students,   etc.) with the aid of existing information systems or line of business applications.  The predominant method for performing the functions is through Windows desktop or legacy host applications.

If a Cloud based or hosted (SaaS) applications is to be considered as an option for the enterprise we must understand that the vast majority of users are still bound to on-premise applications to run the business.  What’s more they trust the data and where it is stored.  That is why the Salesforce.com example is so important; it helped prove that you can rely on software services and data being hosted and stored off-premise.

Getting access to documents and unstructured content from a Cloud based repository could require copying & pasting of metadata to execute a document search or workflow step.  This creates lots of clicking and keyboard shortcuts; this takes time and often requires repetitive steps for the user.  This results in more work and frustration for the users in order to service their document retrieval needs.

What if you had an automated mechanism which binds the business application at the user’s desktop with the content in the Cloud?

A very simple method of automating this process using repeatable methods is Karora AppConnector.  This product uses a lose binding method to take application data from application screens and automates the steps required to execute searches, workflow steps and metadata indexing through the use of a floating button bar.

Comments welcomed.

Check out http://cloudpwr.com 

Hermes wore winged boots to run in the clouds, serving as the personal agent and herald to Zeus.  Today many companies are exploring the benefits and challenges of cloud based platforms, services and technologies.  I had the chance to visit with Chris Riley at CloudShare.  My objective was to uncover some real world knowledge that could be applied immediately to help you find your wings.

CloudShare offers a free 14 day trial, using the QuickStart guide you can be up and running in the cloud in under 15 minutes.  When reviewing the site you initially see a strong focus on SharePoint with several pre-built templates.  It is very simple to spin up a SharePoint instance and start configuring document libraries, collaboration sites or start testing custom developed web parts.  This can give an organization a great sandbox for implementing test cases to eliminate some of the risks associated with deploying SharePoint.  A great post outlining ways to avoid things like SharePoint sprawl can be found in an AIIM blog recently posted by Nick Inglis

As you dig deeper you find that many applications or platforms that you need to spin up for Testing, QA or Development purposes can be supported by CloudShare.  Imagine all the costs associated with hardware, product licensing and labor you could save.  Several use cases have been very successful for Independent Software Vendors (ISV’s), Training organizations and Enterprise class customers.

ISV’s are using this for fast and affordable customer test sites.  This gives them an immediate, template driven method for creating ‘Try & Buy’ virtual work spaces to showcase their software.  An ISV can setup repeatable templates with completed software install, configuration test data, site content and user access in minutes.  It is so straightforward most software product sales professionals could spin up virtual work spaces for customer prospects without a sales engineer.

Professional training organizations are setting up pre-built environments complete with training labs.  A trainer can share a copy of an environment with a class and provide ‘over-the-shoulder’ instruction without actually being over the students shoulder.  This type of collaboration usage portends some of the exciting new features you can expect to see from CloudShare in the very near future.

Enterprise customers are leveraging the benefits of this solution to augment the expenses of providing physical server farms for software development QA and testing.  The ability to roll this solution out to support near shore and off shore development teams is another area to be considered.  With hardware, software licensing and labor a business could easily spend $20K to setup a SharePoint 2010 development environment.  With CloudShare ProPlus this could be done for as little as $49 per month.  Ready. Set. Cloud.

I setup a Microsoft Office 2010 machine as my first virtual machine (VM).

As part of the CloudShare ProPlus offering you get a single login with up to 6 VM’s 10GB RAM, 300GB HD, 10 CPU’s.  Currently a single login is tied to a single environment, in the future the ability to have multiple environments accessible from a single login will be provided.  Chris eluded to several really hot new features that are planned and you will need to keep a close eye on CloudShare, they use an agile development methodology so new updates are often made bi-weekly.

You can access your environment and VM’s using either a remote desktop plug-in (RDP) or a fully web-based VNC Console.  The RDP requires a java runtime that you will need to plug-in to your browser.  I am using Chrome and found no issues and the speed of the RDP was very nice, hardly any lag in cursor movement.  I experienced more lag with the Console interface, switching back and forth between RDP and VNC was seamless.

Overall the user experience is very straightforward and the time that it can save an IT department, Sales Engineers and Training professionals is substantial.  With a little upfront planning and work to create your own templates the return on your initial investment is substantial.  As an ISV the benefits to the sales cycle are clear, this is a killer app that will put you in position to close more sales with less technical effort.

Some things to think about using CloudShare ProPlus for:

• Educating yourself or employees on what the Cloud is and how it can be used
• Application development and testing
• Server Hosting to reduce upfront hardware investments
• Training / Classroom virtual work space  and labs
• Personal PC in the Cloud – Microsoft Office

Comments welcomed

Check out http://cloudpwr.com