RSS aggregators
I got an interested email a few days ago from Prashanth Rai.
He asked me if I thought the “RSS / Reader/ Aggregator etc is becoming the key part of or center of the Enterprise 2.0 Universe?”
This is what I told him:
I think that RSS aggregators will be a critical part of any future Web Office solution.
However, in the short term, most companies first need to invest in tools to create RSS content within the enterprise. So far, the only large companies I have heard what make significant use of internal blogs are SAP, Google, Yahoo!, Sun and Microsoft. There are many other big firms that have 2 or 3 blogs set up by their senior executives. But 2 or 3 blogs do not require RSS readers. And 2 or 3 blogs by senior executives entirely misses the real value of blogs as tool for enhancing grass-roots level internal communication.
To date, there are very few vendors selling enterprise class blogging systems designed to create thousands of internal blogs. If a company has thousands of employees and thousands of customers, you can easily imagine a scenario where the company requires thousands of blogs; one for each employee and one for each major customer. Once the company has all those blogs running, RSS aggregators will be invaluable. However, today, the technology to handle the administration of that many blogs is not generally available. Companies like SixApart, Automattic and Blogtronix are working on it.
But, the market is still in its earliest stages. There are significant issues to work out, including how to efficiently administer such a large system, and how to deal with business requirements for audit trails, access control and integration into back end legacy systems through SOA powered mash-ups.
I think there is a company that is addressing the RSS needs of the Enterprise. It’s Attensa.
Providing users with the right information, at the right time, in the right context has been the holy grail for IT organizations.
At the same time users have been frustrated with either too much information, too little information, information that isn’t timely and information that isn’t relevant.
Attensa is announcing two new products that address these issues head-on.
For enterprises and IT organizations, Attensa is introducing the Attensa Feed Server, the first Enterprise Feed Server Appliance. The Attensa Feed Server is an appliance that can be easily installed behind the firewall and enables IT administrators to easily set up and manage feeds for groups and individuals enabling improved collaboration and knowledge sharing.
For knowledge workers, Attensa is announcing the public beta of a new version of Attensa for Outlook, the first RSS reader utilizing AttentionStream technology to automatically prioritize information based on the user’s behavior history so the most important feeds and articles rise to the top.
You can read the news releases here:
Attensa Introduces First Enterprise Feed Server Appliance - http://www.attensa.com/news/?NewsId=17
Attensa Announces Public Beta of the First RSS Reader to Intelligently Prioritize RSS Feeds in Order of Importance to the Reader - http://www.attensa.com/news/?NewsId=16
You can download a 60 day free beta of Attensa for Outlook 1.5 here: http://www.attensa.com
Thanks
Scott Niesen
Attensa
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