The Web Conferencing Blog

LogMeIn Acquires Bold Software for $16.5M

LogMeIn, the longtime maker of remote access tools, has acquired Bold Software, a provider of web chat and customer communications software. The company says it will use the technology to offer additional features and capabilities to its customers on LogMeIn Rescue, the company’s support product.

Under the terms of the deal, LogMeIn acquired all the net assets of Bold Software for approximately $16.5 million in cash.

A portion of the cash is contingent on retention-based bonuses and is expected to be paid over time.  LogMeIn expects the acquisition to be accretive to its non-GAAP operating results within twelve months and will provide more details regarding the financial terms of the transaction during its fourth quarter 2011 financial results conference call.

The acquisition is a part of a larger strategy to expand LogMeIn’s portfolio of web-based services aimed at customer care organizations, the company says, including call centers, external help desks, and customer service teams.

For those unfamiliar, Bold Software’s “BoldChat” product is a live chat and click-to-call customer service solutions that is used by thousands of retail, financial services, manufacturing, software, and telecommunications organizations. Meanwhile, LogMeIn’s customer care services are used by tens of thousands of helpdesks and call centers, including  50 of the world’s top mobile operators and support organizations like Best Buy’s Geek Squad and OEMs like Sling Media.

Post-acquisition, BoldChat will still be available as a standalone offering, while it will also be integrated into other LogMeIn products, in addition to LogMeIn Rescue.

(by Sarah Perez, TechCrunch)

Breaking into the Collaboration Market is Not Easy

"Collaboration," is a popular buzz word these days. It does not matter what industry you are in, it does not matter if you are in the public or private sector. Collaboration is hot and transforming how people communicate and conduct business inside and outside the firewall.

Breaking into the collaboration market is another story. It's not as easy as you think...and it's even harder to get Collaboration right.

Take Google for example, a company that I very much respect and follow closely from an innovative market leadership standpoint. Almost everything Google does, they do it right and they do it well. However, with "Collaboration," Google has had its share of mis-steps. Who remembers Google Wave?

Google Wave was launched in May of 2009. Some said Google Wave was designed for complete world domination while others said it was designed as a Twitter Killer. At its core, Google Wave combined the best of email, instant messaging, media sharing and wikis to create a platform for real-time collaboration and communications.

It's clear Google was going after the $28B Collaboration Market (estimated by 2013.)

The RESULTS...

Google killed off Google Wave last week. As more people began using this new collaboration application, more people just got more confused on how to use it. Some users said, "overhyped disappointment," "dismal usability," and "humans may not be able to comprehend."

For all the companies out there...when it comes to your Collaboration Strategy do these three things and do all three of them right:

1. "Think Big," and take action now while planning for the mid-term and long-term. Make sure your Collaboration Strategy includes the following INTEGRATED components built on a standardized collaboration platform: messaging, team collaboration, enterprise instant messaging, video conferencing and web conferencing.

2. Take a Phased Approach to minimize risk and "Start Smart and Scale Fast." Start with one technology area like web/video conferencing and then expand into other areas like team collaboration, instant messaging, or document management. You can also just start with 1-2 business processes and then add others or just start with one business unit before a broad-scale rollout. Remember the "scale fast" part?

3. Save time and money and invest your dollars in companies with Market Leadership in the Collaboration Market, companies that have proven technologies and continue to innovate collaboration tools that are standardized on a unified collaboration platform. The companies with the strongest infrastructure will always be the most secure, the most reliable, the highest performing and lowest risk.

Web Collaboration a transformational technology that is changing the way people communicate and work together. Either stay ahead of the curve by embracing web collaboration technologies or get left behind.

Plain and simple.

Cisco to Buy Jabber

Cisco plans to acquire enterprise instant messaging provider, Jabber, for an undisclosed sum. Jabber's IM technology is based on the open-source XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) standard. The acquisition will of course better position Cisco in the unified communications space against the likes of Microsoft, IBM, and possibly Google.

A Cisco continues to market their unique value proposition: the ability to deliver both hosted and on-premise collaboration applications with the Cisco Intelligent Network at the core, the plan is to integrate Jabber into Cisco's on-premise unified communications suite and also into is cloud-based WebEx Connect application which was officially launch in late- September.

Because Jabber is built on XMPP, it enables a Jabber user to communicate across many different devices or applications such as MSFT Office Communications Server, IBM SameTime, AOL AIM, GoogleTalk, and Yahoo IM.

The Jabber team will join the Cisco Collaboration Software Group ie, WebEx.

Other recent Cisco Acquisitions:

• WebEx: #1 web conferencing provider in the world
• IronPort: messaging security software provider
• Securent: security software maker
• PostPath: email storage provider

Thanks,
David Chao
The Web Conferencing Expert

Gartner Prediction on IM Technologies

Gartner predicts that by the end of 2011, IM will be the de facto tool for voice, video and text chat with 95 percent of workers in leading global organizations using it as their primary interface for real-time communications by 2013. The worldwide market for enterprise IM is forecast to grow from $267 million in 2005 to $688 million in 2010. (Today, WebEx has AIM Pro Business Edition that combines video, data, voip and IM in a single unified solution. Along with mash-ups applications, users will be able to manage multiple business workflows and applications via WebEx AIM Pro Business Edition.)

It's clear that IM is replacing traditional corporate communications like the telephone and email to some degree. Who wants to write a huge email string? “Although consumer IM use has been predominant in business, we expect penetration levels for enterprise grade IM to rise from around 25 percent currently to nearly 100 percent by the end of the decade,” said David Mario Smith, research analyst at Gartner.

The biggest challenge Gartner sees with enterprise IM is SECURITY. It's critical to ensure that IM traffic is secure behind the corporate firewall. External IM communications can be tracked and logged by applications like FaceTime, with is integrated in AIM Pro Business Edition.

“The business benefits that IM can bring are considerable,” added Mr Smith. “The ability to connect people in disparate locations by text, voice and video in one application is incredibly powerful and is equally well suited to an informal ‘water cooler’ atmosphere as well as more formal group communications.” Mr Smith also said that IM is increasingly being used as a vehicle for rapidly disseminating critical information to the entire enterprise, groups of users or individuals in cases such as natural catastrophes, health issues, network outages or schedule changes. In some cases, the IM network remains operational when phone or e-mail systems are down.

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Thanks,
David Chao
The Web Conferencing Expert

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Yahoo IM Plug-In

WebEx released a plug-in that enables Yahoo instant messengers to "co-browse" websites at the same time. My wife and I actually used it the other day when she was showing me some XMAS presents she wanted to buy. In the past, she would copy and paste the URL's into IM. I would then have to click on the URL's and navigate on my own until I found the product she described to me over the phone.

With the new WebEx plug-in for Yahoo IM, we browsed the sites together. She navigated and I simply followed along and saw everything she did on the browser.

You can download the plug in here: www.webex.com/go/yahoo

Thanks,
David Chao
The Web Conferencing Expert

Instant Messaging Mission Critical?

In reference to my Collaboration Predictions for 2006 back in February 2006, it seems as though parts of the predictions are coming true. Earlier this week, WebEx released the first enterprise-class on-demand application for enterprise instant messaging (EIM). EIM has more robust capabilities and compliance policies that the standard MSN, Yahoo IM, Trillian, Skype etc lack. (Instant Messaging has come a long way since the days of MIT's "Project Athena" back in 1987!!!)

With the AOL partnership, WebEx AIM PRO Business Edition penetrates a user base of over 70M active users, which is over 2 times larger than the Microsoft IM user base (29M active users) and Yahoo IM user base (21M active users), IBM Sametime (15M active users).

The Radicati Group, a technology market research firm out of Palo Alto, CA, has stated that instant messaging (IM) is utilized by over 135 million workers and viewed as a mission-critical collaboration application. Radicati expects this number to grow to 477 million users by 2009. This provides tremendous opportunities for companies that can integrate other collaboration technologies with IM: voice, audio, video, instant data sharing, calendaring.

With WebEx AIM Pro Business Edition, customers can now instantly communicate and share documents in real-time across the WebEx MediaTone Network. With end to end 128 bit SSL encryption, companies can feel confident that all IM communications are secure and compliant. The automatic file scanning and SpIM blocking dramatically reduces the concerns of computer viruses and worms. Cross IM platform communication is also a huge plus since no other EIM solutions allow this today.

Microsoft has their on-premise Live Communications Server solution and IBM just unveiled new instant messaging capabilities to their on-premise SameTime solution so we are seeing the convergent properties starting to merge into a unified platform. Though their is a push from these on-premise giants to compete with software as a service leaders like WebEx and Salesforce.com, the fact remains the same, the days of traditional enterprise software and siloed IT environments are numbered.

WebEx AIM Pro Business Edition Flash Demo

Thanks,

David Chao
The Web Conferencing Expert