Month of March, 2009

With all the hype these days around Cloud Computing, it is hard for people to remember there was a time before Amazon, Google, and Salesforce with their huge data centers and application hosting. It is also hard for people to believe there will be something after Cloud Computing.

Cloud Computing is not the solution to every problem. Users must ignore their inner voice and trust these remote applications and data centers are secure with their precious, private data. Users of Cloud Computing must accept they can only use the service when they are online. And one of the biggest flaws in Cloud Computing is the incredible power of the desktop being wasted by hosting a plain, old, kiosk browser. What we need is a way to bring the cloud to the desktop - to make it Fog Computing.

Content Circles enables Fog Computing with a rich-internet application (RIA) that integrates with your native applications to enable seamless content collaboration on documents. Instead of moving your favorite office, engineering, and creative applications to the cloud, Content Circles shares your local updates automatically with the other trusted members of your circles. Everyone gets a copy of the latest documents without having to download from the cloud and the files are stored locally so even when you are offline you have the most recent content with you. The service works both within and outside of corporate firewalls so there are no restrictions on who can participate in your circles for file sharing. And since everyone has a copy of the content, there is built-in backup/restore whenever someone loses their computer and must rebuild their circles.

For cases where not everyone is online at the same time, you can install Content Circles on a desktop that is always on as a store-and-forward. With this store-and-forward node as a member of a circle, it will always synchronize the latest content and will make it available to other members when they come online. In doing so, you still maintain complete control of your content without having to let it be hosted in the cloud, but still get the benefits of immediate synchronization when members of the circle come online.

By blending the best of Cloud Computing with the strength of the desktop, we feel Fog Computing with Content Circles is the best solution for team collaboration around content. Long live the Fog!

I can’t find my files.

My files, such as a design document, usually start on my hard disk. Then I email the document for my colleagues to review. After several revisions from my colleagues, I share the file online to a centralized server for the project that I am working on. My files usually have 3 different versions, and reside in 3 different locations. My CFO keeps even more copies, like for my expense reports. He usually keeps my scanned receipts on his machine and an additional hard copy. We can’t find our files.

Content management services and workflow systems are supposed to address my needs to find my files easily, and allow me to keep my content in a single location. I don’t mind following the steps to use a content management server and track my documents, but most of my colleagues don’t want (to be more precise, hate) to do that. They send their large file revisions back to me as email attachments, forcing me back to the email world. And if I store the file in the internal content management repository (such as SharePoint, Documentum, or FileNet), everybody hates me because my colleagues prefer email attachments.

Content Circles connectors allow us to move online content (from a CMS such as SharePoint) back to your machine, bring your document back to one location inside Content Circles, and keep better track of your files. Content Circles still allows you to have files in multiple locations, such as to copy document from Content Circles to your local hard drive, SharePoint, or FTP server. When you make a copy, for example an FTP server, Content Circles remembers the location and shows you a link to that location. Once you have a new version of the document, the link will show up as "outdated", and a single click can update the outdated version with your latest version, for example replace the version on the FTP server.

When I ask my colleagues to review my document, I do not need to worry about security because only members of a circle can access my content. My colleagues might still resist using Content Circles, but if they receive the files from my circles, it is just 1 click to open the document, and a click away to save a new version. They can certainly export the content, make the changes, and send email attachments, but I bet they would rather just click open and save instead. They can find their files easily in Content Circles.

In addition, Content Circles tracks whether a user opens or receives a file. You can keep track of your document and review whether your colleague has received your document or not. Obviously Content Circles can’t tell whether your colleague actually READ the document, but at least you get the sense that the file was delivered.

It saves me time to find my files and keeps me from getting sidetracked when there are more important things for me to attend to.