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Work media tools in 2012 and beyond

stoweboyd — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 16:15:48 +0000

Welcome to the fast-growing world of work media, a new class of social tools based on the principles of open social networks like Facebook and Twitter but oriented to the specific needs of businesses and professionals. This report provides a brief synopsis of the business context for work media technologies, with special attention on how businesses are confronted with a set of disruptive forces and how they are responding by heading in new directions, which we call disruption vectors. Work media is an element of those vectors, and work media products will be judged based on their utility therein.

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Citrix plans LEED Gold facility in Raleigh

Barb Darrow — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 14:00:14 +0000

Citrix aims to remake an old steel warehouse in Raleigh, N.C. into a LEED Gold certified headquarters for its Data Sharing Product Group. The group, which is rooted in Citrix’s purchase of Raleigh-based ShareFile last October, will also add 337 new jobs as part of a previously announced agreement with the state, said Jesse Lipson, VP and GM of that division. The facility is expected to be done next year.

Lipson, a Duke graduate, stuck close to campus when he co-founded ShareFile, a cloud storage company, in 2005, and he clearly sees the Raleigh-Durham area as a good place to staff up. Citrix itself is headquartered in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., with a big presence in Santa Clara, Calif.

“We see this as a startup hub. This is about job creation and bringing the up-and-coming tech scene to downtown Raleigh. There’s a great workforce, it’s affordable and there’s a big effort to bring companies downtown,” he said in an interview last week. Indeed, there is growing momentum among tech companies to locate in downtown areas– places like Kendall Square, Cambridge, Mass. and the South Boston waterfront, where walking, biking and mass transit are options which are increasingly important to prospective employees. The new Citrix facility is next to the site of the new Amtrak station, which will be part of a new Union Station rail complex in Raleigh.

New HQ of Citrix Data Sharing Product Group.

Another Red Hat. another local company, is moving its headquarters from the suburbs to one of the Progress Energy towers downtown. Nearby Research Triangle Park (RTP) where tech heavyweights IBM, Cisco and have a presence, is also seeing action: NetApp, which already has 1,400 employees in its RTP offices, is adding 460 new jobs there, according to The Raleigh Telegram. NetApp is based in Sunnyvale, Calif.

The refurbished Citrix facility will focus on energy efficiency and make use of recycled materials, including shipping containers which will be refashioned to work as conference rooms. A spokeswoman said plans call for the use of Low E glazing for all windows, high-efficiency HVAC systems. It will also feature a rooftop garden and yoga studio.

North Carolina, as GigaOM’s Katie Fehrenbacher has reported, has become a magnet for high-tech data centers for Google, Apple and Facebook. But while these projects goose the economy temporarily with new construction jobs, they don’t typically provide a lot of long-term high-salary employment options. This Citrix effort, however, promises the creation of at least 337 new, high-paying — and long-term — jobs. The company will fill all sorts of slots from sales and engineering to support and operations. Salaries will vary with the job, but the average salary will be 55 percent higher than the average annual salary in Wake County, Citrix said.

Citrix says it is investing $12.5 million in the local economy and will get much of that back via tax incentives. The new building’s floor plan will accommodate 560 people and can be expanded to 830, Lipson said.

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New challenges for the IT organization

Dow Brook Advisory Services — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 15:38:23 +0000

Cloud computing, mobile computing and the consumerization of IT are combining to create another force that is overwhelming many IT departments: complexity. This report, the second in a three-part series, examines several types of complexity in the business IT environment, including complexity of devices and applications, physical and virtual computing environments, and the related challenges for IT staff.

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Personal tools lead to practical business

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 07:55:00 +0000

Much of business communication activity still happens in email, but in this day and age that presents a problem. Easy access to and tracking of projects has become more critical as workers go mobile and teams assemble remotely, and right now, the pairing of large files and email takes its toll on speed and storage capabilities, lessening productivity. Simply put, it is essential for businesses to adapt to these changes and others by providing tools that are simpler to use. This report, based on a recent survey of business managers, highlights some of the problematic areas around business content collaboration, and it provides some options for working through them. Companies mentioned in this report include 39signals, Dropbox, IBM and YouSendIt. To see all companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial.

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NewNet Q4: Platform mania and social commerce shakeout

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 20:39:31 +0000

The fourth quarter may have lacked a dominating big-event product announcement like Q3’s Facebook platform extension or Q2’s unveiling of Google+, but the NewNet world continued to buzz along. In the battle for mind share, everyone wanted to be a platform. Meanwhile, consumer and social technologies continued to gain momentum, and new vehicles for content and service discovery presented both challenges and opportunities for NewNet companies. And it is hard to ignore the overcrowded but growing world of daily deals. This quarterly report analyzes these trends and others, and it also provides a near-term outlook of trends, technologies and companies to watch in 2012. Companies mentioned in the report include Amazon, Facebook and Socialcast. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial.

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ShareFile offers enterprise-friendly file sharing features

Charles Hamilton — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 11:58:10 +0000

There are a huge number of apps file sharing apps available including Box.net, Minus, FileShareHQ and Accellion. Another option in this very crowded market that is billed as being “exclusively focused on small business/enterprise features” is ShareFile.

ShareFile is worth checking out if you’re looking for a business-oriented file-sharing service, as it offers many features that you’d find in most of the other file sharing services, plus a few that won’t be found with more consumer-oriented solutions:

Security, user and file management

Files transmitted and stored with encryption
Tracking and alerts to confirm that clients have received files
Granular folder-level permissions
Bulk load client users from Outlook or spreadsheet
Activity reports showing who uploaded and downloaded files and when

File access and transfer

Upload individual files up to 10 GB
FTPS over SSL transfers, compatible with traditional FTP clients
Map a local drive letter to ShareFile account
Automatic resume of interrupted transfers
Access via the web, an Outlook plugin, and through desktop, iOS and Android apps
API and command-line tools
File versioning
Full-text search
Ability to request file copies on DVD or hard drives
Ability to send a DVD or hard drive for initial population of files

Customization

Custom branding
Tools for your website, including a login widget and an upload form

Not all of the above features are available with all pricing plans.

ShareFile told me how one of its customers, a worldwide restaurant chain, uses the service to make creative materials available to their franchisees. The same customer’s HR department uses ShareFile to send sensitive employment documents.

The company boasts data centers on the U.S. East and West Coasts, as well as in Ireland and Singapore, but provides telephone and email help from a U.S.-based support staff.

ShareFile is available in several pricing plans, ranging from $29.95 a month for two employee accounts and 5GB of storage, to $499.95 per month for 150 accounts and 150GB of storage. All plans include unlimited client users. A 30-day trial is available.

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