AVO Chief

As part of my Product Strategy Review of Central Desktop for the large Enterprise, I got to thinking about the benefits of a Central Desktop Collaboration Appliance. Now as far as I know this doesn’t exist and isn’t on the radar anytime soon.  But I am aware that some customers have asked for an on-premise CD solution. Listed below would be one possible solution to that request:

ABSTRACT

The Central Desktop Collaboration Appliance (CDCA) would be an on-premises collaboration solution suited to large enterprises. Within the Enterprise setting, the CDCA would be able to serve as the corporate portal and the departmental web sites, file servers and Content Management system, along with the future possibility of a growing list of other business applications.  The CDCA would then be able to be scalable, providing full features and capability for advanced customization. The CDCA would need to integrate well with enterprise Identity and Access Management solutions, in order to be able to ensure strong, document-level security features. “Connectors” would need to have available connectivity to a range of popular Enterprise Applications. If possible, there would be the ability to federate data across other CDCAs. CDCA would also feature an administrative API.

KEY FEATURES

• The CDCA would be able to provide robust features, minimal installation, minimal support overhead and predictable costs.
• The CDCA for the entire Enterprise would provide access to enterprise applications and content.
• The CDCA would provide a similar look-and-feel to CentralDesktop.com, or could be customized to the organizations brand and style.
• The CDCA would integrate with various Single Sign-On and authentication systems and could be customised and tailored to suit particular users and groups.

LOOK AHEAD

Central Desktop could extend the functionality of the CDCA over time by introducing more Content Connectors and partner offerings.

THE NEED FOR ORGANIZED COLLABORATION AND CONTENT MANAGEMENT

It’s known that a majority of the information required for business decision making and operational activities is contained within both structured and unstructured data sets, and these in turn are generally stored within siloed repositories and IT systems that are scattered across the enterprise. Furthermore, an increasing amount of actionable business information is now stored beyond the corporate firewall, either with partners and suppliers, or with customers and communities. Only through a centralized or federated application of Enterprise Collaboration and Content Management solution can information workers ever expect to be able to deal with all of the information required to complete a task and do their job in an organized manner.

The market for Enterprise Collaboration and Content Management Solutions has become extremely competitive in the last few years especially since the introduction of Microsoft’s Sharepoint product.  Businesses and institutions are looking to reduce the amount of wasted time and effort that is often part of the ‘information work’. With over 70% of salaries now related to information work, one doesn’t have to be an accountant to work out that, if spent wisely, an investment in Enterprise Collaboration and Content Management technology can offer significant benefits to the business. The search for a cost-effective Enterprise Collaboration and Content Management system has now moved onto the corporate agenda.

PRODUCT ANALYSIS

Getting the right information, to the right person (or process), at the right time is essential if organizations want to be agile and flexible. In the past, Enterprise Collaboration and Content Management solutions were the domain of ‘information experts’, requiring not only skilled knowledge of how to use the tool to best effect in order to get the desired results, but also significant amounts of administrative support for configuration, as well as server power. The CDCA would provide a solution for those organizations looking for a simpler alternative approach, which, for the most part, removes most of these issues.

The CDCA would provide a user-friendly and “universal” collaboration and content management tool for business, in that most of an organization’s content can reside in single or federated appliance. A single CDCA would provide the integrated capability of Intranets, Web servers, enterprise portals, file shares, databases, Content Management systems, line-of-business applications, Enterprise Applications, and Business Intelligence (BI) systems through the CDCA feature. And most importantly for the many organizations with SharePoint installations, the CDCA would be able to connect with any existing content. The CDCA would provide a SharePoint WebPart so that users can access CDCA features from their SharePoint portal. The CDCA should also be able to connect to Lotus Domino. Using a simple XSLT style sheet format, organizations would be able to integrate the CDCA into existing corporate portal framework.

A hardware and software solution, CDCA would offer sophisticated Enterprise Collaboration and Content Management features without the complexity that is traditionally associated with this technology.  Therefore organizations adopting this solution are likely to experience rapid uptake by casual users, while “Power Users” would also appreciate the more sophisticated facilities that are offered in the enterprise product.

The core technology of CDCA would undoubtedly need to be its ability to import content irrespective of source, location, or language. CDCA would be able to import over 200 file types, including HTML, Microsoft Office, PDF, PostScript, WordPerfect, and Lotus. With large amounts of legacy content stored in archives and proprietary repositories, organizations need to ensure that all information and data is available.

CDCA’s e-mail alert feature would enable users to subscribe to topics and documents of interest, and could also be used to populate corporate portals or online project workspaces via an API call or the e-mail route.  Alerts can be scheduled hourly, daily, or weekly.

The CDCA would offer a range of reporting features. The CDCA would enable systems administrators to set multiple user levels. CDCA would include an XML-based set of APIs to all administrative functions. Moreover, administrators would be able to manage a single appliance or a network of CDCAs. Also administrators would have the ability to federate CDCAs. Federation is an important feature for large, geographically distributed organizations. The CDCA would be able to integrate with various Single Sign-On systems, such as Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), NT LAN Manager (NTLM), and Windows Integrated Authentication.

DEPLOYMENT

The Central Desktop Collaboration Appliance would be delivered as a self-contained rack mounted unit. The unit would contain all of the dependencies and resources (for instance databases and storage etc) needed to support collaboration and content management. If required, redundancy and increased throughput can be achieved by deploying multiple appliances, and placing a load-balancer before them.

Each appliance would have a level of fault tolerance built in. For example, although the appliance may be a single node unit, it would have RAID architecture to provide tolerance against disk failures, and a second power supply unit built in. If additional levels of fault tolerance were required, multiple individual appliance units could be deployed in parallel. A single XML file configuration file would describe the entire configuration state of a CDCA. This could be version-controlled and exported to any additional backup units. The CDCA would be self-monitoring. If it encounters a problem it can alert administrators using standard protocols which can be integrated with popular system monitoring tools such as HP OpenView.

In comparison to more traditional Enterprise solutions, the CDCA would be very easy to install and configure. Once plugged into the corporate network, configuration would be performed via an easy-to-use Web interface. For integration with existing data sources which have complex security models, administrators would require knowledge of those data sources. A range of Central Desktop Partners would be available to assist in more complex deployments. Approximately two to three weeks would be the typical time frame for straight-forward Intranet deployments. More complex deployments could take up to a few months where complex security models and/or source systems are involved.

Software updates would be available from Central Desktop and would be uploaded using a built-in Version Manager component. These updates would contain new features and improvements and would be released typically in a six month cycle. Customers could choose if they wish to deploy the updates. The CDCA would provide a built-in testing framework for new updates, meaning that administrators could rollback or accept changes after testing it first.

Once running, the CDCA would be designed to need little or no maintenance. Any adjustment of the configuration could typically be performed by existing personnel with a manager role. The CDCA would come with enterprise-level support included in the pricing for the duration of license period. This support would be provided via telephone or e-mail, or via the Web. Additional support could be purchased if organizations require 24/7 or on-site support. If the CDCA was sold by a partner, then they provide first-line technical support.

PRODUCT STRATEGY

The CDCA’s target market would be very much horizontal, and addresses the requirements of companies of all sizes and industries. Although the CDCA would not, at first,  be aimed at any industry-specific vertical, Central Desktop’s partners could offer domain expertise to support deployments in particular industries or integration with specific applications.

Written by AVO Chief

Efren Duarte is Director of Products & Services and AVO Chief (Strategist/Evangelist) at Avocera Products & Services Consulting and principal of the AVMI Group, a market research based venture management firm. The AVO Chief provides 2-Week Money Back Guarantee Product Marketing/Management Services Trial for qualified Startups and SMBs with growth potential. Inquire at avochief@ymail.com for more details.

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