sri's blog

Cardinal Venture Capital, a small Menlo Park venture capital firm (http://www.cardinalvc.com), recently decided to re-evaluate its IT needs and ended up generating significant savings by adopting Content Circles.

Cardinal was looking for a secure team collaboration and content management solution that was cost effective and simple to manage. Cardinal ended up selecting Content Circles because it allowed it to streamline its network, while maintaining complete security and allowing for easy team collaboration. The firm now maintains only one server – a Mac mini with Content Circles software running on it – for providing a secure, encrypted 24x7 file sharing and collaboration mechanism for all of its members without a VPN or firewall, and as a disaster protection solution.

In a thank you note to Content Circles, Cardinal’s Derek Blazensky praised Content Circles service saying, “Transitioning to Content Circles has transformed our small business, saving us at least $1500 per month in recurring costs and thousands more in server hardware, security software and other capital expenses. Not to mention that this system is easier to use and manage.”

We love to hear stories like this one - if Content Circles has helped your business, please let us know!

An interesting story was published by the BBC that discusses the increased use of cloud services for storage and collaboration. The story is largely positive and highlights many of the benefits of the cloud, including flexibility and backup. The story advocates for careful evaluation of what people decide to put into the cloud and raises the issues of security and specifically “trust” in the service. The story includes a strong quote from Computerworld.com’s Marc Elgan:

"Services say give us all your data and use the applications from the internet, and don't worry about anything, we'll take care of the security. It's a value proposition based on you trusting the provider," he said.

"What we've learned recently is that no matter how trustworthy the provider is, it's never as secure or bullet proof as you might think it is," he added.

We believe that Marc’s advice is sound and encourage users of cloud services to expect stringent security and a service that can provide access to data offline. The entire BBC story can be found here: http://bit.ly/aGSuFB

Content Circles users are covered when it comes to security and privacy. Details about the strong security built into Content Circles can be found here: http://contentcircles.com/solutions/secure-file-transfer. We also believe that the Content Circles “private team cloud"/p2p hybrid model alleviates many of the specific concerns raised in the BBC story. The “private team cloud"/p2p model provides all the benefits of the cloud, but also has the benefit of keeping data local and password protected. Quite simply, we’re not asking for the level of trust that cloud services require. Your data always stays on your machines and is 100% encrypted during transfer among those machines. Plus, we offer offline access in the event of internet downtime.

What do you think – are cloud services asking for too much trust?

There’s an interesting story in the March issue of eClinical Trials about using peer-to-peer collaboration technology in clinical trials. The article notes that the requirements of many clinical trials match well with the benefits of peer-to-peer collaboration: strong security; document versioning; and the ability to easily integrate with both internal and external organizations. Peer-to-peer solutions are also noted as cost effective.

We strongly agree. We’re seeing increased interest in our product in environments where security, versioning and external collaboration are challenges. Customers in pharma and biotech environments are placing an especially strong emphasis on security. Scalability can also be a concern.

eClinical Trials is a supplement to Applied Clinical Trials magazine. You can read the article online at this link.

Last night I was notified by a customer that he wasn't able login into Content Circles. I immediately tried to login myself and found out that it was true. Our engineering folks then looked into the issue and found that our SSL certificate (for secure authentication of Content Circles users) expired yesterday. Our internet service provider did not inform us that it was expiring but it was completely our fault for not keeping track of the renewal date. We sincerely apologize to all of our customers for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Fortunately, Content Circles has the "work offline" mode which worked beautifully under the circumstance. When my client failed to login, it offered me the "work offline" option. I just had to type in my password and voila, I had access to all of my files. More importantly, I was able to connect with other people and work as if nothing went wrong, thanks to the power of Content Circles' hybrid cloud/p2p architecture! In essence, the system switched to a pure p2p mode (after authentication via re-confirming password) and allowed me to work while the cloud was down!!

This is our first major outage since we launched Content Circles in early 2009. Needless to say, I'm not happy about it at all. However, I'm very pleased the "work offline" mode worked as envisioned. Tommy Tam, one of our engineers, actually covered this feature of Content Circles in an earlier blog posting titled Outage in the cloud when Google and others were having outages. I re-read it today and I encourage you to read it as well.

In the meantime, rest assured we are working hard here to re-enable our "cloud" portion as quickly as possible.

Update 03/29/2010 12:25pm: Our SSL certificate has been renewed and we are back fully operational.

Two weeks ago, I attended IDC Directions 2010 event in Santa Clara. It was a very good event with many interesting presentations and panels. Frank Gens talk on cloud computing was particularly interesting as it relates to what we do at Content Circles. I thought I’d share some of Frank’s thoughts here.

First Frank re-iterated what he said last year about cloud computing still being “in the chasm” and that it still has ways to go before it will be widely adopted, especially by enterprises. I think we all agree with this but the most interesting parts of Frank’s presentation were IDC’s enterprise survey results that give a clear indication of what enterprises expect from cloud computing. Key results are summarized below:

Top 3 “benefits” of cloud/on-demand model:

• Pay only for what you use
• Easy/fast to deploy to end-users
• Monthly payments

Top 3 “challenges/issues” of the cloud/on-demand model:

• Security
• Availability
• Performance

Top 3 “services” expected of cloud service providers:

• Competitive pricing
• Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
• Option to move ‘cloud’ offerings back on premise

I was pleasantly surprised at these survey results because finally a reputed research firm such as IDC confirmed what was behind our thinking – in fact, we took a hybrid cloud/p2p approach to implementing Content Circles service to precisely address the 3 “challenges/issues” listed above! Of course, we provide the "benefits" and "services" listed above as well.

I was also enthused to see “option to move cloud offering back on premise” (or what Frank called a “private cloud”) as a key service expectation of enterprises going forward. Once again, we envisioned this requirement as well and built the “Content Circles Store-and-Forward Service” for on-premise enterprise deployment.

Frank went on to predict big rise in demand for “private cloud” offerings going forward starting in 2010. I think Frank is right and 2010 is going to be the year of the “private cloud”. What do you think?

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

From nice-to-have to mission critical!

This is the ultimate challenge in the business software market for new solutions. ‘How do I model my customer base to both make my products unique, effective, affordable and desirable within a viral network’.

At Content Circles, we started with the idea that workgroup collaboration and content management happens today despite the available technology and not because of it.

Speed, agility, security, one-to-many and many-to-one relationships, the ability to add and delete people in a workgroup, low cost, TCO, ROI are all fundamental requirements that are limited by the artificial constraints of current enterprise systems. These systems are just not flexible enough in their ability to adapt to the needs of today’s distributed and mobile workforces.

We have cracked the code on all of these issues, and we are now seeing the viral expansion that comes from new users being exposed to new solutions and technology by trusted peers. An invitation to join an existing circle, brief experience on the ease of use, reliability and low cost of the solution, all lead our new members to quickly imagine new applications for Content Circles with completely fresh and unique use cases.

One such unanticipated new application is large file transfer. Although many of our customers are using Content Circles to share and collaborate on content as anticipated, many are just using it to send and receive large files as they find it easier and much more cost-effective than burning and shipping CDs and DVDs; maintaining and using FTP servers; or even using web-based file transfer services that are available today.

Another such unanticipated new application is secure file transfer. Many customers, especially CFOs and HR managers, are using Content Circles to send and receive highly sensitive files such as files with social security numbers in them. We are finding that many states have laws that require encryption of such files before they can be sent via email or other electronic means. The fact that Content Circles automatically encrypts all files and the fact that even those files are never stored on any computers other than the intended recipients' computers, makes it an ideal communication tool for these customers.

We would love to hear from you about how you are using Content Circles. So please let us know how you are using Content Circles in ways that we have not yet discovered.

Over seventeen months ago, we started Content Circles with a singular mission – To revolutionize the way people collaborate and manage content across companies.

It seemed silly to us that after spending millions of dollars setting up secure enterprise content management (ECM) systems, firms would provide nothing more than e-mail to their employees for collaboration with their extended teams. As we all know, e-mail is neither secure nor adequate for the purpose.

Addressing this extended team collaboration problem with a web-based content management solution, like many others have done recently, is fairly easy to do. However, we do not believe it is either economical or practical to ask any firm to entrust all of its documents, including confidential documents, to an outside service provider.

So, we chose a "distributed" content management approach to solve the extended team collaboration problem. Distributed content refers to documents that reside not only on enterprise servers, but also to documents which reside on individual computers within an enterprise and to documents that reside in other enterprises. Content Circles simply enables cross-company collaboration among trusted peers by providing access to distributed content in a controlled and auditable manner without ever having to store that content on its own servers!

The end result, as you are certain to experience, is a very easy to use, secure, scalable and cost-effective "Collaborative Content Management" solution that works the way you and your team members work – anytime, anywhere, right on your desktops! Please try it and you will start wondering how you ever got along without it.