After over a year of effort we are approaching the release date for our enterprise messaging and collaboration application, which we have named Kezmo (how and why that name could be the topic for a couple of posts on itself).
There are a number of reasons why we believe we may have something to add of value to the enterprise collaboration and content management market segment, among them our experience as consultants implementing SharePoint solutions for years, and later implementing leading mobile client for that platform.
The enterprise collaboration market is huge and is going through massive changes, which spans risks and opportunities. Some of the conceptual foundations we’ve been building on are the following:
- Group chats are ubiquitous. Whatsapp has managed to change how the world communicates, it’s become a game changer. User experience expectations in the workplace are changing accordingly to their consumers day to day experience.
- The group chat dynamic has been proven useful in the work environment. There are several high profile collaboration applications, Slack, and HipChat among them, that are making clear that the conversation centric collaboration model is here to stay.
- The pendulum is swinging far to the chat side of things. Currently in most systems everything is a chat message which creates a number of challenges, such as: finding content, avoiding misunderstandings, staying up with the latest status of things.
- Offline and nearby support is being overlooked in most collaboration solutions out there. Data entry and even collaboration capabilities without connectivity is key to a lot of business scenarios. The technology is slowly getting there for nearby networking.
- There’s a backlash to the massive migration to the cloud based on security concerns. Corporations need more control over where and how their data is storaged. A cloud only application does not make the cut for big companies.
- The information overload is such that we need new, more visual ways to navigate shared content.
- Mobile has taken over the world. Enterprise information systems must be mobile first, and have mobile clients as first class citizens.
About a year ago with these ideas in mind we set out to build a state of the art real time messaging platform for the enterprise. We are about to launch it, initially in a invite only private beta. If you would like to try it feel free to subscribe.
We are looking forward to having you on board.