This is one person's story of upgrading to Windows 7 and how Content Circles came to the rescue.

My computer was slowing down dramatcally. Application behavior was weird. Either my machine was infected or the C:// drive was destined to fail any moment (after three years). In either case, I took the machine to my local computer store (Fry's for you locals), bought the Windows 7 upgrade and a new SATA drive for a fresh install. Not knowing that my desktop machine had room for a third hard drive, I came back to the store expecting the data to have been moved to the new drive. Instead, I now had a third hard drive in my machine with Windows 7 and nothing else. The data migration service was an extra upcharge that they didn't tell me about when I dropped off the system. Not wanting to have to come back, I figured I could do it myself.

In comes Content Circles. While I don't store all of my documents in CC, I had several gigabytes of important files in Content Circles. At first I thought I would just move the directory from the old drive to the CC data folder on the new drive. In comes dozens of alerts from Windows 7 saying that the file name is too long. Huh? It turns out that in Windows 7 Microsoft created a new file hierarchy and buried all the application data one folder deeper in a new folder called 'Roaming'....Whatever...

Many of my thousands of documents ran into this problem. Windows suggests that you update the file name or move the files to a different directory. Of course the Windows 7 alert message doesn't give you any way to find the offending files, other than writing down the file name in the message and then searching on them individually. Sure, that sounds like fun!

Why don't I just let one of the core advantages of Content Circles work for me? I did a quick, simple, clean install of Content Circles on the new C:// drive, logged in and all the circles, folders and files immediately began to replicate onto the fresh drive. Files were being replicated from all the members of all of my Circles that were online, including my laptop and the Content Circles Store and Forward Service. I didn't have to do anything other than log in.

I don't want to keep my files in the cloud. I have confidential documents that I share and collaborate on with other members of the team and outside agencies. I want the files to move directly from my computer to the recipient's computer. I don't want the data sitting on remote servers where I have to upload and download my documents.

This Windows 7 upgrade experience was a crystal clear example of why Content Circles is so valuable. Lose a hard disk? Have you computer stolen, get a virus that corrupts your files? I didn't have to worry for two seconds. Login and the process takes care of itself, all in the background. This enormous value comes even before you use the sophisticated collaboration and content management features of the solution. You don't pay for a dime of outside storage or data transfer fees.

It couldn't be easier.

Technology executives worldwide have convinced everyone that their products aren't really supposed to be reliable. If you disagree, read the warranty documents for almost any computing hardware, software or online solution. This has been going on for years. Microsoft Word, for example has been buggy since the day it was launched. It hasn't mattered what platform, operating system or version the application is running on top of.

Of course anyone paying attention has known this all along. From the massive power consumption of infinitely expanding server farms, to security breaches in bulletproof systems, we have all been chewing the technology gristle while the marketing guys told us it was steak. And as Lemmings, we just followed the technology talking heads….right off the cliff.

If I were reading this post from someone else, I would immediately go look at our warranty documents. Yep, similar to a lot of other companies out there. The standards for creating legal protections for your company are such that we would be foolish not to adopt the same language. Nonetheless we did not swallow the cloud hook.

"Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Screen"

We have all heard glowing stories about how customers are flocking to Gmail and Google Docs and running away from Microsoft Outlook and Office, because it was a flight to safety, security and reliability. The cloud-based applications were supposed to save us all because we no longer had to worry about the buggy operating system, PC or the applications that were installed on our machines. (psssst. All mobile, wireless and Internet Services Providers (ISPs) never go down, right?)

What the T-Mobile outage means for consumers

Google Postini Customers Fuming Over Outage

Google Outages Damage Cloud Credibility

What, hello, problems in fantasy land? In yet another example of "too big to fail" (see financial industry collapse of last year), it turns out there are storm clouds in cloud computing as well. And even though Larry Ellison ridicules Google's messaging around cloud computing as "nothing new" (he has been talking about "network computing" for years), the cloud computing hype cycle is running white-hot.

We don't buy the hype and we are not willing to settle for spin-therapy. Where are your key documents? How reliably can you gain access to them?

At Content Circles, we help companies take advantage of real team collaboration; and we don't pretend to do it for you. We help facilitate teams to share and track documents but we don't store the documents on our servers. We create and track metadata on what is happening to the files, such as sending, receiving, open, edit, check-out, check-in, etc. That information is always available to our customers and the documents always stay in your hands.

So let's review….Documents on your computer, on the computers of authorized members of your team, and your store and forward server……or uploaded to somewhere, mirrored to many other sites and all quite "secure"...Really?

You should have higher expectations and your vendors should follow through. We encourage you to give us a try if you haven't already.

Have an opinion? Let me know.

Sri Chilukuri
CEO
Content Circles

Ever wonder where your data really goes and who has access to it in cloud-based applications? The reality is that you can never be sure. Take the recent fiasco with Microsoft, T-Mobile and the Sidekick data that evaporated out of the cloud (pun intended). This episode reminded me of the famous Abbott & Costello routine of Who's on First: a true example of the blind leading the willing.

On a more serious note however, cloud-based vendors want everyone to believe that their applications are bulletproof and secure. With all of the examples of identity theft and corporate data loss out there, few actually believe this fantasy. If you don't control your data, you don't really know what is being done with (to) it.

That's why we took a completely different path at Content Circles. We believe that the most reliable place for your data to be is under your control at all times. We use peer-to-peer technology to move data directly between members of a work group. We don't take our customer's data and upload it to a random cloud-based application that then in turn gets mirrored to some unknown number of sites around the world.

Customers don't have to pay for someone else's bandwidth or storage, because they simply use the resources that are already available. Content Circles customers don't need IT support because the application is incredibly easy to use. Don't take our word for it: read what our customers have to say.

Give Content Circles a try with our free Personal Use Edition.

What do you think?

Sri Chilukuri
CEO
Content Circles

Our customers keep telling us we got it right.

It's actually pretty simple. Don't pay to store your documents somewhere else; always control your own files.

The Vicious Cycle of Content Management (VCCM)

The economics and the capital structures of cloud-based content management solutions just don't make sense. If you have a cloud-based system, you have to pay someone to host your data. Server farms aren't free, no matter how cheap the costs of storage. The more people that use your system, the more you have to pay and the more you have to charge. You have to charge for storage overall, storage per user, bandwidth overall or bandwidth per user. Because the bottom line is you have a variable cost of goods that scales with usage. So the more content customers put on the system, the more they have to pay.

Your numbers have to look better to attract investors, but you have a high operating cost structure. Either you have to buy your own servers and bandwidth and incur high Capital Expense (CAPEX), or incur high variable costs for ever increasing server and bandwidth requirements as customer usage and content grows. Your business model is a VCCM.

Talk about value-based pricing. The value is in the size of the disk on the server? Actually, no.

For traditional ECM, here come the in-house servers, IT staff and Support

Want to run a sophisticated ECM on site? You had better have a large organization and a budget to match. Traditional ECM solutions can be great for enterprise organizations, but the costs and limitations can be serious impediments. In this case, you not only pay for licenses and ongoing maintenance of the software, but you have to buy the servers and hire the IT staff to deploy, maintain and support that software.

What if the content management solution doesn't store the files?

We love this. The Content Circles philosophy is very simple. We don't want your files. We provide customers the ability to share, collaborate, track and manage files that are already stored on their systems. We don't charge for storage because the files are already on your desktop. It's just that simple! We don't charge for bandwidth because you are already using your existing network.

Content Circles simply maintains an index or metadata that contains information on registered users, workgroups and the disposition of all files that are placed in and shared with the workgroup. We keep track of who has opened the files, edited files, and/or created new files, and who has been added to, or removed from a circle. With a layer of powerful security developed by experts with decades of content management experience, your files only go where you want them to go and nowhere else.

Yes, it really is a great idea! For customers, the files are dramatically more secure because they never go to a third party.

Redundancy can be smart, fast and efficient….or not.

You choose. Utilize a system that uses your existing network and existing disk storage, transmits files over your existing network. Every member of the workgroup has a circle that is always in sync and replicated. Someone goes offline, no problem. Up to date data can come from another workgroup member or from a store and forward server that operates as a member of the workgroup. If your laptop ever crashes, no problem. All of your files will magically re-appear when you login to Content Circles on your new laptop.

And what about our company financials?

Even the structure of our company is more efficient. Our value-add is the ability to offer all of this capability with a low overhead. Since we only track the metadata and never the actual files, our server load and IT costs to run Content Circles are an order of magnitude smaller than vendors who take, store and hold the files. This makes us extremely capital efficient and allows us to effectively compete and thrive even in this recession.

Do let us know if you have any questions or comments.

Sri Chilukuri
CEO
Content Circles

Content Circles leverages many of the qualities that are popular in social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Invitations, micro-blogging, chatting, content posting, tagging, and email notifications provide the key ingredients for online collaboration.

However, unlike these social networking sites, the goal of Content Circles is not to establish a large group of friends and openly follow each other's activities. Rather, the focus is on specific project collaboration with a restricted set of participants.

For example, Content Circles makes it easy to establish new workgroup circles for each of your projects. Just invite the members you want to each circle and they will receive an invitation to join. If they already have Content Circles, they can accept the invitation in the client and immediately receive the circle. If they are new to Content Circles, they'll receive your invitation message and instructions for how they can download, install, and get started.

This two-phase invite/accept for members to join a circle ensures both parties have accepted the responsibilities of membership and have established trust. This is similar to Facebook friends but unlike the one-way follow in Twitter. And unlike both Facebook and Twitter, these circles are private so only the members of the circle have access to the content, comments, and activity tracking for the circle. Finally, instead of everyone having open access, the rights for each circle member are restricted based on the role assigned by the circle owner.

By applying the key qualities of social networking with the controls of content management, Content Circles provides the best platform for team collaboration.

Peer-to-peer technology has great potential. It enables the fastest content delivery possible, insures everyone has the content locally on their desktop, and leverages the full bi-directional power of the internet beyond the client-server design of the web.

From day one, our goal with Content Circles has been to develop a peer-to-peer Content Management system which complements existing Enterprise Content Management systems and guarantees the content shared amongst peers is secure. However, there are several challenges we faced:

• P2P needs connectivity between peers - Regardless of whether each machine has a direct internet connection or is connecting through a firewall, peer-to-peer requires each to be able to discover a route to be able to send messages and content to each other.

• P2P requires both parties to be online at the same time - When someone makes an update, that change can only be sent to the other peers that are online. If one of the peers isn't available, they can not get the update until they are online at the same time as someone who already has the update is online.

• P2P has a bad rap with IT - The historic problems with Napster and other P2P technologies which violated copyright law has caused some in IT to not trust any use of P2P.

With Content Circles, we have worked to address these areas of concern to deliver a solution which fulfills the promise of P2P:

• Support direct and web service assisted connections - Peers which can directly communicate can take advantage of fast messaging and transfers. For those peers which can not be reached directly, our web service hosts a forwarding service which can shuffle blocks between the peers across firewalls. All of this effort is hidden under the hood--users just add content and send messages without having to consider how it is being delivered to peers on the other side.

  Note the use of blocks for passing data between peers enables arbitrarily large files to be sent. Small files or messages are sent in a single block while larger files are broken into several blocks which are reassembled into a single file upon receipt.

• When not online together, use a Store and Forward node - We have purposely stayed away from hosting content for our customers to provide that extra level of security--nobody other than the members of the circle have access to the content in the circle. This does create a problem for teams spread across timezones where they may not all be online at the same time. Out solution is for someone to host a Store and Forward node which is another copy of Content Circles running on a machine that is always on. When configured as a Store and Forward node, registered users can add this node as a member and always know their content is being hosted for other members even when they are offline. In this way, you get the benefits of content hosting without the security risks that go along with pushing your content to the cloud.

  This Store and Forward node does not have to be on a fast or dedicated machine. Content Circles works in the background and can co-exist with web servers and other applications on the machine. The key is having the Store and Forward installed on a machine that is always on. If IT wants to have a role in support of Content Circles, hosting this Store and Forward node is the perfect way for them to help maintain the infrastructure for a robust Content Circles implementation.

• Full auditability - Content Circles tracks every action taken in a circle and provides Content Status so each member can see what each other has done. While traditional P2P systems try to hide as much history as possible, Content Circles captures this detail to help give members the complete view of their circles. This also reinforces that any actions taken in Content Circles are auditable so proper business rules must be followed.

By addressing the risks of P2P, we feel Content Circles provides the best solution for Content Collaboration without barriers.