Under the Radar: del.icio.us for the enterprise
At the Under the Radar event showcasing Office 2.0 (Work 2.0), two companies demoed enterprise social bookmarking and tagging services. Cogenz bills itself as del.icio.us for the enterprise, targeting companies with 1,500 to 2,000 employees with a desperate need to collaborate, according to company co-founder Niall Cook. The on demand service stores and shares online resources, and offers browsing, searching and tracking of the collective intelligence gathered from the bookmarking and tagging. The output of the service can be used to identify experts and communities of interest within a company.
The service has been in beta since July 2006 and goes into general release next month. The service is sold as monthly subscription in three editions: free for up to 10 users and $4 for additional users; $180 for 50 users and $3 for additional users; and $1070 for 500 users and $2 per additional user.
Connectbeam goes even further in self-categorization, calling itself del.icio.us and LinkedIn for the enterprise, said Puneet Gupta, CEO of the startup. Connectbeam is focused on large enterprises with an appliance to satisfy enterprise concerns about security and privacy, as well as an on demand service. "Large enterprises want to keep the data inside," Gupta said. They also need a safe environment to test out Web 2.0 services, he added.
Connectbeam combines social bookmarking, tagging, social networking, expertise location and live profiles. The social search aspect is based on information bookmarked and tagged by colleagues.
The LinkedIn part comes in providing a 360 view of an employee, based on the data stream, capturing the person's skills, expertise, projects and topics.
Connectbean is touting Honeywell, with a few hundred users, as an initial customer. The service rides on top of existing search engines, and integrates with LDAP and Active directories. The company has partnerships with Google Search Appliance and FAST Search, and an OEM relationship with a white box label, Gupta said. He did not disclose pricing.
Anything social networking or bookmarking or tagging is not an easy sell in the enterprise, but these two companies are at least attempting to build some awareness and businesses based on the benefits of Web 2.0 applied to large company productivity.