InformationWeek

October 2, 2000

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Antidote For Information Overload

continued...page 4 of 4

More on knowledge collaboration:

sidebar: Vendors Upgrade Groupware For The Web

Keep Your Knowledge In-House (9/4/00)

EETimes: Need: Net-speed knowledge tools (9/4/00)

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"There's a tremendous amount of administrative overhead with managing documents via E-mail," Pino says. "NetDocuments eliminates that."

Pino says NetDocuments' security, in particular, attracted him. His group could have built a secure intranet to perform document sharing, but building the application and setting up encryption would have taken at least two months.

NetDocuments hosts a Web site that controls document sharing like a library. Only one person can check a document out, and users can attach specific access privileges to any document, granting others read-only, editing, or even deleting privileges.

NetDocuments stores both static documents (Web pages, signed documents) and shared dynamic documents in their native formats (unless encryption is selected). NetDocuments also supports URLs and user comments.

The services are free for individual users with up to 10 Mbytes of storage, or $5 per month for 100 Mbytes of online storage. NetDocuments is launching a business service in November that will be priced at $10 a month per user for 300 Mbytes of storage.

While NetDocuments' functionality attracted Pino, these Web-inspired collaborative tools are also beating their bulkier groupware ancestors on price.

For example, Halverson Consulting's Sekowski says his firm couldn't afford to purchase or maintain the software for any of the enterprise-grade groupware, or a standard intranet. HotOffice's price tag--$12.95 per month per user for up to 20 users--made Sekowski's decision easy.

While answering many of the problems facing knowledge workers, these products and services are highly focused, which is both their strength and weakness. They're easy to use and understand, but unlike many server-based programs that provide an overwhelming array of configuration options, there's little room for customization.

For example, Sekowski says he would prefer more flexibility to modify the interface on HotOffice, as well as having the option to create subfolders for related side projects and other document storage configurations. But because HotOffice is anapplication service provider offering, he has to take what he gets and hope that HotOffice integrates the changes he wants in its next version.

But vendors know that their products are still works in progress. For example, iHarvest still lacks formal collaborative functions--but CEO Rich Buchheim says they're planned for inclusion by the end of the year.

Early users such as Giss say these new offerings are already providing serious first aid for information overload. Says Giss, "Using iHarvest is definitely less overwhelming than the pile of information that was building up on my desk."