New Socialtext Microblogging Appliance Signals Increased Flexibility
Socialtext are making available an 'unbundled' appliance version of their microblogging product 'Signals' at an attractive $US1 per user per month, plus $1,000 per month server subscription. With the rapid increase in business use of Twitter, the hugely successful but internet based free microblogging platform, there has come an attendant focus on security concerns in business. Yammer have built a successful business around a 'Twitter for the Enterprise' offering with significant security baked in: this however is a standalone product and like Twitter is hosted on their own servers.
Socialtext have seen a significant increase in requests for their successful Signals product, which runs behind the firewall, and have chosen to deconstruct their suite offering into modular components in order to enable a greater level of flexibility for their clients.
The new Socialtext Microblogging Appliance provides security plus IT control in a cost-constrained package. It gives IT the option of quickly deploying secure microblogging and social networking company-wide, thus providing a viable alternative to ad hoc usage of other tools on the public internet.
The new Socialtext Microblogging Appliance features
• Socialtext Signals for microblogging • Socialtext People for social networking • Socialtext Desktop for real time microblogging and social networking from an Adobe AIR desktop application • Rapid, secure and scalable Appliance deployment • Automatic updates and upgrades, so customers get all the benefits of SaaS and on-site deployment combined • Optional integration with your directory system (LDAP/Active Directory) for single sign on with your other intranet applications and automatic profile population • Rapidly extensible with RESTful APIs, it is easy to integrate third party applications into a unified Activity Stream or make other applications social • The option to instantly upgrade to the full Socialtext Appliance for Socialtext Workspace, Socialtext Dashboard and SocialCalc
This last point is significant - by using the microblogging appliance as a 'gateway drug', Socialtext hopes to entice new users to upgrade to their wiki workspaces and user unique dashboards, socialcalc distributed spreadsheets and so on, to create the full Socialtext enterprise wide collaborative experience.
The 'unbundling' of the microblogging appliance is possible because of Socialtext's web oriented architecture; the presentation layer is built on their REST api using javascript but can be uncoupled to allow modularization. Extensive customization of the entire suite to meet an enterprise's specific needs is possible because of the same api and presentation layer logic.
Socailtext separately supply connectors for Microsoft Sharepoint and IBM's Lotus Connections - the intention is to make possible the injection of the microblogging appliance's functionality into these environments where appropriate to quickly make them more social.
Signals is enjoying significant success, and this move of offering an inexpensive appliance solution to a pressing IT security problem is a smart one: it may well help the same harassed IT people to see the value this brings to their enterprise and facilitate adoption of the broader Socialtext product line for greater productivity gains.