EXTRANET NEWS * Week of 28 April 2003
Editors: Joel Orr and N'omi Orr
http://www.extranetnews.com

1. KUBI DELIVERS
2. THE LIST
3. TIDBITS
4. QUOTE OF THE WEEK

 

1.  KUBI DELIVERS

Editor Joel Orr spoke with Nina McIntyre, vp of marketing for Kubi Software. Visit their Web site at http://www.kubisoftware.com.

Back in our pre-Atkins days, we lived in a neighborhood just outside of Domino's delivery zone. If we wanted pizza, we had to go and get it; they wouldn't meet us on the edge of the zone. When we moved to our present address, and were able to get home delivery, we really appreciated it.

 

Almost all collaborative systems require you to leave the application where you probably spend most of your day—email—and go somewhere else, to a portal or specialized client. And when you're there, you can't access your email address book or calendar directly (although some applications permit you to import and export addresses and appointments). You may even have to maintain a duplicate address book, just for the collaborative application.

 

Kubi is different. It snuggles into Outlook or Lotus Notes, and turns them into collaboration powerhouses. (The "k" is for "knowledge"; the "ubi" is from "ubiquitous"—"knowledge everywhere.") Like any good pizza store, it brings all the good stuff to you. And by using a proprietary SMTP-based protocol, it traverses firewalls with ease.

 

Perhaps it's the Lotus legacy—Kubi founder Julio Estrada spent years there—but Kubi shares a lot of terminology with Groove, which was created by Lotus Notes inventor Ray Ozzie. You create "shared spaces" in Kubi Client, similar in concept to Groove's entities of the same name. In a space, you can have discussions, documents, contacts, tasks, project timelines, a team list, a "recent activity" view, and a project home page that acts as a "dashboard."

 

But whether you're in Outlook or Notes, your standard email is available in Kubi Client, and vice-versa. You can even share data between Notes and Outlook.

 

Each Kubi user is protected by PKI encryption. Both the Web site and the user interface of the Outlook client are elegant.

 

Installation is simple. Download a 5-meg file, and it does all the work—even obtaining a certificate for support of the encryption. When you next open Outlook, the "at-u" symbol decorates various parts of the Outlook interface. (I'm guessing it's similar in Notes; I only tried out Outlook.) You can create a space and begin to invite people to it.

 

The product costs $149, like Groove; there are lower per-seat prices for multi-license packs. Annual maintenance is 20%.

 

You can download a 30-day-free-trial version that is the full product. If you decide not to buy it after 30 days, you will still be able to participate in spaces in which you were a member, in "guest" mode; you just won't be able to invite people to spaces. (Exception: You can't participate in spaces in your home domain after the 30 days.) This is powerful viral marketing, in my view.

 

You can't avoid comparing Groove and Kubi. Groove's been around much longer, and so is more highly refined. It has many more collaborative features—"tools" you can add to shared spaces—than Kubi, but Kubi has all the essential ones (and is sure to add more over time). Groove has "differencing"; only actual differences are replicated to shared-space members, not entire documents, as in Kubi Client; with big documents, this represents a major performance advantage. It has automatic "versioning," which must be done manually in Kubi.

 

Kubi Client's killer advantage is that it lives inside of Outlook or Notes. You don't switch apps to use it, when you are in email. You don't maintain multiple calendars or address books, or have to import or export them. "We're after the 500 million email users," said McIntyre. It works with both the POP 3 version of either product as well as with Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Domino.

 

A server version is coming in the summer; it will enhance performance in large systems, and maintain a central database. "Groove focused on peer-to-peer, avoiding involvement with the IT infrastructure. We like to sell to IT, as well as to end users," Nina McIntyre noted.

 

The other potentially competitive email collaboration tool is Zaplet. "But it is designed only for workflow, not full-scale persistent sharing and collaboration," said McIntyre.

 

"The real power of Kubi lies in its accumulation of corporate knowledge assets over time," she added. "By storing the shared spaces, complete project-oriented searchable structures are amassed, representing the communications and decisions of the organization. They are far more usefully structured than email dumps."

 

300 beta testers, including 11 Fortune-500 companies, gave Kubi Client a workout before it was released to the public last week. It works.

 

Our take: Is integration with your favorite computer applications a big deal? Will it make you more likely to use Kubi for collaboration than some browser-based or proprietary-independent-client-based system? My guess: Yes. I don't know how long it will take until third-party apps that integrate with Kubi Client begin to appear, but I suspect they are coming.

 

2. THE LIST

ADDED:

• Vudox, file-sharing and -viewing.

 

Total companies: 258 (see who's on The List at http://www.extranetnews.com/).  

 

 
3. TIDBITS

 

·     Kubi Webinar: Collaborative Email—Lowering the Barriers to Successful Collaboration. 7 May 2003, 2-3 pm EDT. Register at http://www.kubisoftware.com.

·        BuildOnline is selected by Aquadia to provide collaboration for the £130bn global water industry. http://www.buildonline.com

·        "Tipping Point: The Case for Owner Adoption of Project Collaboration Tools" is yet another outstanding white paper from Constructware, complete with well-written, straightforward arguments and three case studies. Get it (PDF) at: http://www.constructware.com/Common/Downloads/Tipping_Point_Owner_Collaboration_03-03.pdf

·        LCI (Lean Construction Institute) upcoming events:

o       5^th Annual Lean Construction Congress, Blacksburg, Virginia, 21 July 2003. Enjoy a day devoted to presentations by practitioners of lean construction who are getting exciting results in their organizations. Stay another two days to participate in IGLC, described below.

o       11^th Annual Meeting of the International Group for Lean Construction, Blacksburg, Virginia, 22-24 July 2003. This meeting will feature more presentations by practitioners and academics from around the world on the implementation and theory of lean construction. Details for both LCC and IGLC are available at http://strobos.cee.vt.edu/IGLC11/

·        Come to COFES2003. Keynotes: Alan Kay and Jeff Harrow. 15-18 May 2003, at the incredibly beautiful Scottsdale Plaza Resort, Scottsdale, AZ. Go to the website to see who has registered to date. http://www.cofes.com

4. QUOTE OF THE WEEK

 

"Security is mostly superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable."

--Helen Keller

 

 

Entire newsletter Copyright © 2003 Cyon Research Corporation

 

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