EXTRANET NEWS * Week of
Editors: Joel Orr and N'omi Orr
http://www.extranetnews.com
1. PROJECTVILLAGE: A NETWORK OF EXTRANETS
2. PLAN TO COME TO COFES2003
3. THE LIST
4. TIDBITS
5. QUOTE OF THE WEEK
1. PROJECTVILLAGE: A NETWORK OF EXTRANETS
The more you talk with Mark Bostleman, CEO of ProjectVillage, the more you realize you are talking to an honest man. He is straightforward about his company’s strengths--and its weaknesses. That's refreshing.
Bostleman, a software developer,
grew up in a family of real-estate developers in
"We explored project-management systems, but found them all too expensive for the number of seats we needed. And our commercial client/server (non-Web) system couldn't scale to what we needed. So we spent about $50,000, and built WebPM--a Web-based logging system.
"It was great for us, and allowed us to complete the Kohl's project on time. But it actually made more work for all our partners.
"That's what made us decide to build ProjectVillage."
I asked Mark what was special about ProjectVillage. "Our 'Enterprise Community' model lets different companies share information between ASP subscription accounts in a peer-to-peer organizational architecture," he said. "As far as I know, that's unique. Nobody else in the AEC industry does it."
What
does that mean? "Simply that multiple organizations can
share information with each other, while each organization controls access to
the information in its private area. I see this as the third stage of
Web-based project-management technology:
1996
- Project-specific Web sites, one project at a time.
1998
-
Today
- Our 'Enterprise Community': One application scales to the whole supply
chain."
Another
uniqueness of ProjectVillage: Pricing. "In our
pricing model," said Bostleman, "we only
charge for actual concurrent users. In other words, we determine at the end of
the billing period how many people were on the system at one time. And of
course, if the customer is about to move from one price bracket to the
next-higher one by having one more user log in, we have a provision for preventing
that from happening accidentally."
The
system has a well-thought-out security and permissions arrangement, and an
easy-to-learn workflow management feature. It incorporates Informative
Graphics' document viewer, which supports hundreds of document types, and
Crystal Decisions' powerful report-writer.
Our
take: The "network of extranets" and billing practices of ProjectVillage set it apart from other extranet vendors. I
like the design of the user interface, and the fact that the company sprang out
of the real estate and construction industry. It is small, but soundly
structured, with an excellent product. One to watch.
2. PLAN TO COME TO COFES2003
The fourth Congress on the Future of Engineering Software
will be held
Go to http://www.cofes.com to learn more.
3. THE LIST
Total companies: 252 (see who's on The List at http://www.extranetnews.com)
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4. TIDBITS
* Please fill out a graduate student's survey. Luke, H-J Chien, is a PhD student exploring the following hypotheses:
"The
Go to http://www.glam.ac.uk/hjuchien/ to learn more and respond.
* Nielsen Norman Group Report: "Intranet Usability: Design Guidelines from Studies with Intranet Users"--222 pages PDF format. Download report: $248 for a single report, $468 for the report and the right to make copies within your organization and place on your intranet.
From the site: "While website designers can look to the
Web for good examples, intranet designers are limited to their own
imaginations, or maybe out-of-the-box intranet development tools, for
inspiration. The gloomy fact is intranet designers have no role models. It is
amazing, however, the similarities in design and content between the intranets
we have studied. What's equally amazing are the great
differences that occur when there are no public intranet examples to influence
the design, and how an organization's culture influences the intranet
design."
EXTRANET NEWS holds the Nielsen Norman Group in high regard.
We are sure this report is well worth the price. How applicable is it to
extranets? Our guess: 80%. More info: http://www.nngroup.com/reports/intranet/guidelines/
* IW: Motorola Gets a Boost from Extranet. Motorola Inc.'s rollout of an employee portal built on technology from Epicentric Inc. has proved so successful--generating $5.2 million in cost savings during 2001 alone--that the maker of wireless phones is rolling out global extranets for its network of carriers. See the full INFORMATION WEEK article at:
http://update.informationweek.com/cgi-bin4/flo?y=eIkM0BhvYn0V20BhkJ0Aw
* EXTRANETS III -
* Creating the Real-Time
* Project World 2002, December 10-13
5. QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"Your enthusiasm will be infectious, stimulating and attractive to others. They will love you for it. They will go for you and with you."
- Norman Vincent Peale
Entire newsletter copyright (c) Cyon Research Corporation 2002