I've been waiting for this announcement for quite a while and now I can finally rave about it!
“We have designed the Kit to be as flexible as possible, and to leverage the power of the AfterMail platform. Customers can use multiple ways of accessing their AfterMail data, depending on their level of expertise and technical ability,” said Mike Upshon, Chief Technology Officer. “For instance, basic URL passing can be used to return lists of appropriate email messages, while our XML Web Services application programming interface (API) can be used for more in depth integration. We’re really excited about how this is already being used amongst our customer base.” read more...
"I think we're delivering the benefits of Kodiak today." - Rod Drury, CEO, AfterMail
This is the beginning of AfterMail's 3rd wave - EEI (Enterprise Email Intelligence) - for those of you in the knowledge management industry, working with business intelligence, this is what you've been waiting for - a way to work in a structured fashion with the most popular unstructured data in computing today: EMAIL!
I'm glad to say that at SalePlane we've already engaged our Solutions team to experiment with a variety of value-added utilities that will enable users of AfterMail to harness the power of corporate dialogue in a way never before possible on the Microsoft platform (NB. AfterMail is also available for Novell's GroupWise).
We've also been working closely with some very interesting software solutions businesses who have approached us to help them integrate AfterMail with their Microsoft .NET applications such as SalesCentric, the only CRM vendor that allows creation of adaptive frameworks for every customer interaction which seamlessly integrate with AfterMail's email archiving solution.
It's surprising none of the competition has provided this facility but I can only figure that with their offerings being built on a legacy architecture and approach to email archiving this has hindered the possibility of providing what customers want - a robust solution with flexible APIs - unlucky for them I guess as it will cost them dearly to re-architect their offerings to provide this level of functionality out of the box.
The event was held at the end of September at the late Alfred Nobel's villa in San Remo, one of the most aesthetically pleasant and charming places to spend a few days with fellow developers.
For most readers portal technology is something we're all rather familiar with and if you're interested in using RainbowPortal it's worth viewing the slides to get a feel for what has been developed. The latest release is due shortly, we anticipate next week after Hongwei and Dan have helped by squashing the last remaining known bugs. Update: download it here.
Keeping things succint I'll just share the takeaways:
- There is nothing quite like an open source community of developers - the atmosphere and attitude is refreshing and rewarding
- It's not the code but what people do with it:
- Marissa M. helped the Palestinian government enable rapid document sharing and policy discussion among various groups with different levels of access to localised (Arabic) content using RainbowPortal. This dramatically increased the productivity of the government that had access to few resources and tremendous problems meeting face to face due to the situation in Palestine with mobility and checkpoints.
- RainbowPortal has been implemented for a software-as-a-service business model providing a web based booking system: www.bokningsplatsen.se
- RainbowPortal has been used to provide a mobile device content portal for the Oil industry vertical targetting users working on/offshore (i.e. on the oil rigs)
- RainbowPortal has been used to provide a virtual clinic facility to a part of the NHS delivering vital information such as best practices for a micro-community of patients, parents, social workers, nurses, doctors and charitable organisations
- No one sold RainbowPortal solutions via the web, every single deal was done face to face - each sale was a solution sale not a product sale and required a combination of evangelism, education, relationship marketing and demonstration of competency - i.e. a proven ability to deliver
I was the last speaker to go on at the event and I dare say it was a difficult talk as I felt I had to share the doom & gloom view, remind the community of the reality of what is occuring in the marketplace with offshore competitors, open source alternatives, the importance of design and businesses looking for more appropriate pricing models which increases complexity.
Having conveyed that message I was then able to inspire the attendees to look to each other to collaborate on projects and support local client acquisition with a variety of solutions and competencies drawn from the entire community. I had the fortune in the Q&A of James Steward (USA) sharing publicly his interest in collaborating with Jeremy Esland (Portugal) as they're both targeting the travel & hospitality industry in seperate locations - this is exactly what I try to encourage in the community as a business development mentor - that is to know who is doing what and how we can support each other through collaborative business practices.
The slides for the event can be found here:
http://events.rainbowportal.net/site/3611/slides.aspx
Pictures here:
http://events.rainbowportal.net/site/3617/pictures.aspx (there's also a short film that conveys the spirit of the event and the people)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/67637444@N00/tags/rainbowportalgathering2005/
Thanks to Due Metri & San Remo for organising and hosting this event and Bill Howard (Former CIO, SUN Microsystems) for permission to share an email from our private discussions on the future of the software industry.