Month of October, 2009

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