This morning at about 4 AM my 9 month old son, Roesevelt, woke me We call him Roe. He’s been sick, but don’t worry he’s getting better. After getting him settled again I hit the interwebs and discovered the following tweets from @SamJ.

Great questions! First let me address the “crippled” MindTouch core comment. MindTouch releases 95% of our source code under an open source license. We primarily use GPL2, but some components (MindTouch Dream) are released under Apache. I have written at length about Open Core (this thread in the forums is a helpful read because several posts cover this topic). Download here, access code repo, bug tracking (you must be logged in and to see bugs, but you can create an account here), community forums, wiki, dev blog. So, is MindTouch Core “crippled”? Certainly not. MindTouch Core should be thought of as an appserver that eases the complexity of federating systems and accelerates the development of collaborative and business automation apps. Thinking of MindTouch Core as “crippled” is the equivalent of calling JBoss “crippled” because not all apps built on it are open source.

MindTouch is a collaboration framework and a new kind of appserver that has been moved “up-stack”. The intent being the enablement of non-programmers to perform light weight application development and business automation (watch the videos in these: example, and another). Also, MindTouch provides a development platform that helps programmers accelerate development (example and another). Realizing this, it should be obvious that MindTouch Core is not crippleware. Anymore, that is, than JBoss, SpringSource or Apache webserver are.

What’s cloud about MindTouch? A lot in fact. The platform has a web oriented architecture (WOA); meaning, RESTful design applied to web technologies. WOA makes it very easy to scale on cloud infrastructures and extending the platform is remarkably easy.  An easy to understand example, “cloud” side effect of this architecture is the storage service. With the addition of an Amazon S3 key in the control panel MindTouch will store file attachments on the Amazon storage fabric. Another example is support for multi-tenancy. Even users of Core have large multi-tenant farms of MindTouch (here’s an awesome example).

MindTouch is a composition of decoupled REST web services, even the UI is a decoupled client that sits atop this composition (API Reference). Each service can be moved to remote servers. Similarly, remote services can easily be federated with MindTouch. The important components of MindTouch are the wiki-like user interface, the web-service orchestration engine, message bus, access control layer and the DekiScript language and runtime, which provides a secure and governable abstraction for writing custom logic.

MindTouch has been engineered to provide an easy to use environment for human collaboration. Equally important, however, is the ability to perform machine to machine collaboration and enable the creation of composite applications and mashups (dynamic reports) across systems. So, for the less technical reader, MindTouch provides an easy to use collaborative environment that makes a fitting “glue for cloud apps”, data source, etc.

What’s the difference between MindTouch 2009 OnDemand and MindTouch Cloud? Not that much. However, there are some pretty important distinctions.

1. Provisioning. You can launch a MindTouch Cloud in seconds. MindTouch 2009 OnDemand must be manually provisioned and it generally takes us a business day to instantiate it for you.
2. Server access. You do not have access to the server with MindTouch Cloud. You do with MindTouch OnDemand.
3. Customization. You can customize MindTouch Cloud via the control panel with predefined HTML regions and CSS overrides. Since you have server access with MindTouch OnDemand you can create your own site templates and skins.
4. Extensibility. You can not write custom extensions on MindTouch Cloud. If you know anything about MindTouch you know extensions are one of the most remarkable features of the platform. (about extensions, XML DekiScript Extension, C# Extension, PHP). MindTouch OnDemand, recall: server access. Go nuts.
5. Custom logic. With both Cloud and OnDemand you have access to DekiScript and jQuery. Again, go nuts.

Lastly, as you likely suspected, MindTouch Cloud is running on Amazon Web Services in a multi-tenant configuration.

I hope this clears up any confusion. The MindTouch.com web team is working hard to increase clarity on this topic. Please keep your questions and feedback coming.

Hi, I’m Liraz, co-founder of TurnKey Linux, an open source project developing a free virtual appliance library that features the very best server-oriented open source software. TurnKey Linux appliances are ready-to-use solutions that get you up and running in minutes on a virtual machine, bare metal or in the cloud.

We’ve been big fans of MindTouch for a while now. We use MindTouch Core internally and on our development wiki and love it, so we were excited when Aaron (MindTouch’s CEO) invited us to guest blog and spread the word about what we’re trying to achieve at TurnKey Linux and why you should care.

The project recently celebrated its one year birthday with a major release batch featuring:

• 25 new additions to the TurnKey Linux virtual appliance library, including a MindTouch Core appliance. This triples the size of the library to 40 appliances, and we’re just getting started!
• more build formats: appliances are now available as VMDK with OVF support, an installable Live CD, and Amazon EC2 AMI.

Read more about our 2009.10 release here.

Over the last year the project has grown by leaps and bounds and is still picking up steam. It seems like only a short while ago we were excited about our 10,000th download. Now we’re fast approaching our 100,000th download!

Let’s back up a bit. Here’s the story: the largest Linux distributions have over 23,000 packages which are free for both commercial and non-commercial uses, including updates. However, currently it can still take considerable skill and effort to cherry-pick the right components and glue them together into a compelling solution.

We’ve pre-integrated a collection (40 so far) of open source based solutions for nearly every need. Need a turn-key file server? Domain controller? Or maybe a web development framework (e.g., LAMP, Rails, Tomcat), content management system (e.g., Joomla, Drupal, WordPress), or a messaging solution (e.g., Zimbra)? And let’s not forget MindTouch!

Our top 10 most popular appliances last week:

Plus, if we don’t have just what you need appliances can easily be customized and extended using TKLPatch, a simple appliance modification mechanism that allows everyone to join in on the fun and satisfy the long tail of special needs. New appliances can be built quickly as patches to the closest starting point in the library.

It’s easy because even our most basic appliance, TurnKey Core includes all of the standard features such as SSL support, AJAX web shell, and a rich web administration interface. In just 110MB.

Sound good? Come on and give it a try. And tell us what you think. TurnKey Linux has a friendly open source community that’s ready to listen in and eager to help!

MindTouch just announced our first ever enterprise SaaS offering: MindTouch Cloud. I wrote briefly about it here at the MindTouch blog and included a snazzy new commercial video short of the offering, which I encourage you to watch and share. The reception afforded this new product by media, analysts and customers has been remarkably positive. There were about 60 blog mentions, hundreds of press release reprints and the twittersphere is still buzzing about the launch. Also, I am very pleased to report MindTouch Cloud has already generated a tremendous number of new customers.

Sam Ramji, previously of Microsoft and the current Codeplex Foundation chairman, said: "MindTouch has essentially built an open source, cloud-enabled SharePoint that is accessible to non-programmers. The more I look at what they’ve done, the more I realize they’ve built a business platform more than a technology platform." Sam recently joined Sonoa Systems as the Vice President of Strategy. Sonoa Systems is a company and technology I am personally very excited about. They are a provider of analytics, management and cloud governance solutions for APIs and cloud services. 

Some of the media coverage of MindTouch Cloud included, in no particular order and my apologies to the many I’ve missed:

MindTouch Cloud: The Open Source Alternative to Sharepoint and Salesforce.com? | via Alex Williams at ReadWriteWeb

MindTouch has the potential to compete with the large market players. Today they are announcing MindTouch Cloud, an open-source, SaaS service that integrates business data from any number of sources, including Oracle, Sugar CRM and Salesforce.com.

MindTouch Cloud is meant for a business community to create their own dashboards. It allows users to collaborate with a familiar wiki environment with the capabilities of an enterprise platform.

It’s also another example of how enterprise technologies are increasingly designed so the average business user may perform tasks that have traditionally been the domain of the IT department.

Sharepoint Watch Out - Mindtouch Goes SaaS | via Krishnan Subramanian at CloudAve

My Favorite Collaboration Tool, Mindtouch (Check out my previous coverage of Mindtouch here), has embraced SaaS wholeheartedly. In fact, in my previous post about Mindtouch, I characterized their platform as a glue to the clouds but, now, they have really embraced cloud computing by offering their collaboration tool as a service. No, they are not cloud washing by offering a Mindtouch instance running on AWS. This is a truly multi-tenant, usage based pricing, software as a service model.

…With Mindtouch, one can be assured that their data doesn’t lay dormant in one of the silos but, rather, plays a crucial role in gaining competitive advantage in the marketplace. With the ability to talk to legacy enterprise systems like CRM, Accounts Payable, ERP, etc., Mindtouch offers a powerful collaborative environment for the enterprises.

MindTouch Takes Its Enterprise Collaboration Platform to the Cloud | via Barb Mosher at CMS Wire

Using the MindTouch Cloud, organizations get a SaaS-based solution that enables them to bring together data from various sources into a single location to work on. This includes the ability to pull together data from sources such as CRM, ERP, support, Salesforce.com and more.

MindTouch Joins Google, Zoho in Collaboration Cloud | via Clint Boulton at eWeek

Second, MindTouch Cloud lets non-technical sales representatives or business managers pull business data from CRM and ERP applications, such as Salesforce.com, SugarCRM, and Oracle, and weave them into documents in team workspaces. Workers can then automate reports, build applications and run dashboards based on that data.

…MindTouch has a distinct advantage. Zoho, Salesforce.com and the others are not offering their solutions via the open source model, which will be attractive to businesses courting open source religion, or who just want a lower price point.   

MindTouch’s Open-source Collaboration Platform Sits on the Cloud | via Sebastian Rupley at GigaOm

…MindTouch Cloud, creates “a federated collaboration network” here.  MindTouch competes with Microsoft’s SharePoint, but can eliminate many of the inflexibilities of proprietary collaboration software, and MindTouch Cloud’s prices are being kept low.

…the company’s CEO, Aaron Fulkerson, did a guest column for OStatic on the future of collaborative networks here.

MindTouch Launches Cloud-Based Collaboration Platform | via Lisa Hoover at Ostatic

MindTouch Cloud has all the features and functionality of MindTouch Standard, including desktop productivity tools, full featured LDAP and Active Directory module, database adapters, and more. What sets it apart from other collaboration systems is the ability to use other popular enterprise systems atop this platform. Customers don’t have to give up the workflows and Web apps they’re already used to because MindTouch Cloud interfaces easily with support ticketing, ERP, accounts payable, Salesforce.com and other systems a company may already be using.

MindTouch launches its open source cloud | via Dana Blankenhorn at ZDNet

You might consider it an enterprise mashup service akin to Salesforce.com’s Chatter. But while Chatter is focused on social media MindTouch is focused on enterprise data — Chatter is about social and MindTouch about media.

Of course that last may be a comparison of sales pitches, not feature sets. MindTouch is launching its cloud just a week after announcing its Enterprise Dashboard,

In addition to the coverage of MindTouch Cloud, John Fontana (@johnfontana), of Network World, included MindTouch in his article “11 Open Source Companies to Watch”, which was reprinted at www.CIO.com. Other companies included: Talend, Cloudera, Likewise and Lucid Imagination.

In short, an excellent week for MindTouch in terms of customer acquisition and media coverage. Thank you all for writing about our new product. If you have not yet helped to spread the word, please do. Moreover, if you have not yet launched a MindTouch Cloud I encourage you to do so and share the service with your colleagues.

I am very excited to announce the first ever cloud based enterprise offering from MindTouch. We are calling it MindTouch Cloud and, other than MindTouch 2009, it represents the most significant launch of of the year.

MindTouch Cloud is built on MindTouch 2009. It is a user-friendly business platform for business collaboration and automation. You can connect CRM, databases and services from Google, Yahoo! and others to automate reports, create content workflows to increase efficiency and effectiveness. MindTouch Cloud differs from MindTouch 2009 OnDemand because, unlike OnDemand, you do not have full access to the server for customization and you can not write custom PHP plugins or custom extensions. And of course, you can launch a MindTouch Cloud site in seconds for very little cost. Furthermore, MindTouch Cloud does deliver full access to DekiScript, control panel based skinning and includes full access to all enterprise extensions.

The price per user, per month is as low as $7. This provides the easiest way ever to launch a MindTouch site. MindTouch Cloud is a great solution for users that do not want to maintain on premise installations or for those who do not have control over the IT infrastructure and network settings at their company or organization. Now–in seconds–you can launch a MindTouch site, query data from CRM, ERP and databases to create rich, real-time reports in an easy to use collaborative environment.

I recently attended Internet Summit 2009 in Raleigh, North Carolina. It was an entire day (a solid 11 hours) dedicated to discussing the current and emerging states of the Internet economy through panel sessions, keynotes and demos from hundreds of entrepreneurs, executives and marketers.

Keynote & panel sessions included talks from executives leading companies such as ESPN, Technorati, Viget Labs, Microsoft, Emma, Goldman Sachs and my personal favorite, The Body Shop. From listening to the executives of these colossal companies, my take away can be boiled down into a Top 5 List of Internet Marketing Must Do’s for 2010.

1.) Simplify your Web Experience:

This seems like a pretty straight forward point, but it’s astounding how many companies have a hard time simplifying their website information architecture and experience. ESPN Senior VP of the Digital Media Group, John Kosner, had a philosophy to simplifying their web experience on ESPN. He followed 3 principles/goals:

1. Simplicity.
2. Easy to find.
3. Easy on the eyes.

These points might sound too obvious but I encourage you to take a look at your website and its paralleled experience. Does it exist as a living, breathing ecosystem? Does it cultivate new visitors into knowledgeable, intelligent beings through efficient architectural flow, valuable content all while preserving simplicity? And finally, not only are you listening but are you ASKING your customers about their experience?

John Kosner explained that after truly listening to their community and incorporating suggestions into their homepage redesign, ESPN.com revenues jumped 35% last year! Just by simply asking your customers and simplifying your web experience, you too could save your company millions of dollars a year.

2.) Establish KPIs TODAY:

We’ve all heard it before. What are your key performance indicators for this initiative? What’s your measurement for success? What are your expectations of outcomes on this project? These are questions that every company, department, work group needs to answer and define before starting any project. Yet, it’s still a key piece that many departments fail to define.

Determining your criteria for success before beginning a project is your Number One most crucial component. If you’re going into a project without defined key performance indicators, you’re making a huge mistake. KPIs are critical metrics that measure actual performance against predefined goals and objectives and help you to remain focused on the issues that really affect the organization. Define your KPIs for every project from here on out. For more information on how to define KPIs and what measurements for success are applicable for your company read here.

3.) Cloud, Cloud, Cloud:

Big topic at the Internet Summit this year – current CIO/CTO hurdles and the future of the cloud. I sat in on the CIO/CTO Roundtable where executives from 1800-Flowers, SAS, Univision Interactive and DoublePositive discussed their biggest obstacles in technology of 2009. They are as follows:

• Scale
• Timely reaction to data
• Immediate gratification
• Funding

The issues CIO/CTOs are facing in technology introduced talk of the cloud and their plans on leveraging it. Technology executives are drawing closer to the cloud because these types of offerings deliver both a cost benefit and an organizational benefit in scalability, speed of deployment and flexibility. A challenge for anybody who grows rapidly is integration. Concerns arise with so many sources of data coming from mobile, social media, enterprise systems, browsers, etc. and how to unify and bring them all together? Hmm have you ever heard of a company called, MindTouch?

For businesses looking to get into the Cloud, Which part of the cloud do you want to take? You can’t have it all, so where will you focus? Only focus on one thing that you’re really good at, and look to providers for the rest.

The members of the Roundtable stated that within 2-4 years we will see significant investments by Microsoft & Google into the cloud. This is definitely a hot topic and something every Internet marketer, Website architect and IT executive needs to keep in the forefront of their minds in the months and years to come.

4.) Blast Those Emails:

Thinking that email is a dying breed for marketing communication? Think again. According to panelists at Internet Summit 2009, email marketing is still the most commonly used and open platform. Generation Y claims that email is their #1 route of communication. With email still positioned as the most common form of communication Marketers need to look at email as the entry point and all of the social tools the movement. Here’s a metaphor: Email is the casting of a stone in a pond and social media are the ripples. No, I didn’t come up with that one.

The way to go about email communication is to determine who in your database is truly an influencer? Reach out to those influencers and share your social media tools appropriately. By leveraging your key influencers to contribute content, share advice and seek out additional community members, you’ll begin to see your communities organically and healthily grow. Remember before you do any of this, you need to plan and map out your sales and marketing processes. Plan your goals. Don’t think in terms of activities but think of longer term marketing strategy. Continuously nurture your communities and provide valuable content and resources, otherwise key influencer contributions will be wasted.

Did you know that email delivers $45.06 for every $1 spent? This is by far the highest ROI of any marketing channel but remember this is not a magic bullet. These ROI numbers are based on best practices and continuous testing. Follow these 3 email marketing best practices to get the most ROI out of your email marketing initiatives:

1. Be relevant
2. Think long term campaign strategy
3. Segment audiences and personalize

Update: Here’s a great resource on 10 Tips to a More Effective Email Marketing Campaign.

5.) Juice Up Your SEO:

What’s your SEO strategy? Is it just that side project that keeps getting blown off because “more important” tasks come up? Well think again. SEO is by far the MOST important marketing investment you can make…ever. Remember your website is your biggest asset so why neglect to tell the search engines about it? You cannot wait any longer to juice up your SEO. Yes, it will be an up-front investment of time and money but the long term benefits far surpass. SEO has proven to be one of the most cost-effective forms of marketing available. Just ask The Body Shop who focused on SEO in house for an entire year. By the time the next year came around, The Body Shop saw SEO traffic and sales (the kicker here) increase 30-40%! This can be your company! Consider how profitable you could be if your prospects found your website through keyword search over your competition. Why let your competition reap all of the traffic benefits from your lack of SEO? Today is the day you need to start your SEO strategy. Learn more about how to get started with SEO here.

Overall the Internet Summit was an informative, useful conference. I would, however, like to see more women participating in the panels. It always amazes me how many women attend but how few actually take part on stage. I would also like to see the conference span over 2 days. There was not enough time to go to each session, tour the demo pit and talk to sponsors all in one day. By and large Internet Summit 2009 was an insightful 11 hours and the participating panelists came from a high caliber of companies and experiences. These Top 5 points are not new but still applicable to your existing sales and marketing efforts. Here’s a question, if I were to make a list of Top 10 what would you add? Maybe I will do a follow up…

As part of the MindTouch open source best practices survey, we asked European open source companies how non-European companies can effectively penetrate the European market.  Since the questions were not part of the main best practices survey (which will only be published to the participating companies) we can share with you our findings.    

For an additional perspective, I recommend you read Ian Howell’s (Alfresco) earlier blog on US and European open source differences. 

First Law: Don’t treat Europe as one entity 

According to the European open source respondents, every country needs its own entry strategy.  One highlight in particular, you can get away with selling English versions of their product to Germany, Austria, Netherlands, and the Nordic countries (unless it’s a consumer oriented product).  Countries like Spain, France and Italy do require language localization of product and documentation.    We recommend you work with local Value Added Resellers (VAR’s) or System Integrators (SI) to help understand the local market and to help translate the documentation to save on the expense. 

Tip: Leverage your open source communities for localization support via an external knowledge base then reward them for it.

Second Law: Entry strategy through a VAR channel is essential

Thinking of entering Europe with a direct sales force?  According to our research the answer is a resounding no - don’t do it.  In Europe, local partners matter – they matter a lot.   Hire one local employee focused on European channel development and strategically select channel partners that understand your business model.  Don’t waste time with SI’s or VAR’s that don’t have either open source or industry experience (both is best). 

Tip: Mash-up your community user base with Google Maps to determine your concentration of customers, then recruit channel partners in the nearby areas. 

Third Law: Don’t do territory exclusivity contracts

Unless you have a strategic and financial reason to do so, avoid exclusivity of any type.  Respondents have shared stories about channel partner resistance to investing in marketing and sales activities.  Some simply wait for leads from you before taking any action.   Remember that a monopoly is never a good idea for business unless you’re the monopolist. 

Tip: Exceptions can be made for exclusivity tied to performance.  Tread carefully here however due to complex laws that vary by country. 

Fourth Law: Share your channel partner success stories

Quickly build channel partner references that are successfully generating revenue and advertise it within the European community.  Because of the 5th law below, you’ll need to convince most channel partners that your solution has the potential to create significant profit. 

Tip: Develop a business strategy for partners that clearly illustrates at least  a 1:7 € Euro ratio of your product/solution to their packaged offering (e.g. for every € Euro spent on your company’s solution, they can make 7 with a customer).

Fifth Law: Educate the European market about open source

According to our respondents only 10% of the corporate IT staff in continental Europe are buying open source products.  In Germany, France, and the UK the figure may be as high as 15% – 20%.  Shockingly, corporate IT staffs in Europe still prefer and trust Microsoft products over Linux.  Clearly, the need for additional open source evangelism in Europe is needed to educate European decision makers on the advantages of open source.  Plan on spending additional time marketing open source along side your product/solution. 

Tip: Work with other open source companies in country to promote the benefits of open source solutions. 

Sixth Law: Find niche and local markets without the big proprietary players

For higher European revenue returns, find niche geographic markets that your larger proprietary competitors can’t afford to operate in.  It’s too expensive for most large companies to operate in the tier 2 and tier 3 cities so setting up shop in these areas will pay off.  Become dominant in these areas to lock out the competition.  Remember Europe is still dominated by local players that need local support. 

Tip: Europeans are still not used to the idea of webinars and webcasts.  Having local channel partners that can demo onsite is a competitive advantage.

To better serve our customers, MindTouch will be expanding its support hours to 9am Eastern to 5pm Pacific. This change will take effect November 2nd 2009. MindTouch also has an updated SLA for our customers which details what is covered under our support levels. The SLA is posted on the MindTouch website.

If you have any questions about your support level or the updated SLA, please contact support.

As part of MindTouch’s 2009 open source best practices research,  we asked C and VP level Open Source Executives who they thought are the most influential people in the industry today.  Over 50 votes from Executives in Europe and North America were cast to determine the 2009 edition (note: they could not vote for anyone in their own company).  What makes this list remarkable is that industry insiders were the judges.

There were a few surprises from outside of the open source industry.  For instance, Steve Ballmer was voted in because of his negative remarks on the open source industry and its subsequent positive impact.  Vivek Kundra was voted in because of his contributions to the industry inside the US Federal Government (in fact the Whitehouse.gov site was revamped with open source software).  Notably absent however are any influential women.

This list of the top influential Executives of the 2009 is ranked by the effect these individuals have had on the open source industry.  Not all are recognizable, but these leaders are the movers, shakers and thought leaders of the open source industry.   Want to know the future direction of open source?  Just ask a few of the people on this list.

Honorable Mentions

Mentions

Tom Erickson, Sam Ramji, Brian Gentile, Steve Ballmer, Doug Levin, Greg Schott, John Powell, John Roberts, Jonathan Schwartz, Roger Burkhardt, Tim Yeaton, Vivek Kundra, Walt Johnson, Zack Urlocker, Aaron Fulkerson, John Lilly

The accomplishments and influence of these executives highlight the story of the most significant changes in open source this year.  We will continue to publish this “insiders” VIP list each year as part of our comprehensive analysis of open source best practices in sales and marketing.

Please comment on the list or let us know who is missing.

Hi! This is Leah from Kaltura and I’m excited to announce the MindTouch + Kaltura Enterprise Collaborative Video launch here on the MindTouch blog.

This week marks the official launch of the Mindtouch-Kaltura integration, and the topic of the day is Enteprise Video. Much ink has been shed on the growing use of video in the enterprise.  As companies look to cut costs & emissions, we’re seeing increasing use of live web meetings, eg0-casting, and video-powered marketing & communications. But what happens to these videos after the live meetings? How does the knowledge generated become an asset for future training, collaboration, support, or revenue generation? And what is the connector, the lifeblood, tying together the document-focused file management systems and desktop hard drives with these new fountains of rich media?

Enter… The Kaltura Mindtouch Extension. Two open source companies, one big vision. (see screenshots here)

What’s exciting about this extension is that it brings together Kaltura: a video platform that connects video applications across the enterprise and enables managmeent, organization, and delivery, with Mindtouch - a destination for enterprise collaboration.  The result is that no longer are internal and external collaborators stuck  solely with text.  Now enterprise users can communicate and collaborate with rich media.  They can upload and post video or audio from a desktop, webcam, the social web, or a company directory, make that video available for editing, and then share the results with others. Sounds, a bit high-minded, doesn’t it?  But now consider a few concrete applications:

- Have a library of training videos from lectures, screencasts, and news reports but don’t want to deal with an LMS,  central training team, or let the videos get lost on hard drives? Don’t want to deal with videos in multiple formats? Load the video into Kaltura & organize for public display at Mindtouch.

- Major software company wants to streamline its tech support and create a destination where users can help one another and read documentation.  Stuck with text only? No, not now… embed software training videos or screencaptures of common errors and bugs right into Mindtouch. And allow community members to upload their video contributions as well.

- Managing a team at work? Allow team members to record brief intro videos of themselves and create simple profiles on Mindtouch.  Build community, communication, and connection by letting people see and hear one another

We’re still in the early days of enterprise video.  But the Kaltura-Mindtouch Extension is sure to generate a whole new set of workflows and uses.  We’ll update you with new use cases and ideas here….

Over the last 12 months MindTouch has extensively surveyed both customers and users. Previously, I shared facts about the community of users. Primarily I reported on the remarkable performance of our users in spreading the word. Thanks again for this. Also, I highlighted top programming languages and top business use cases. Now I am pleased to present, what I believe, is even more interesting, indeed even exciting, information about our paying customers. The following information is a statistically significant sampling of our over 1,000 paying customers.

Before I dive into some of our findings, here is a simple return on investment (ROI) calculator developed from our customer research that will help you calculate the returns you can expect from deploying MindTouch. You should know I am using a 20% increase in efficiency (lower bound from customer research—see below). I have supplied the initial input for 100 users and an average employee salary of $45,000. Plug in your numbers and your ROI will calculate. I think the result will impress you.

I highlight the above ROI as “partial ROI” because this figure represents improved efficiency,  but does not cover improved effectiveness, which is difficult to measure. With the dashboards and reporting capabilities in MindTouch our customers are reporting improved effectiveness as well.

Early customers, such as Red Mountain Retail Group and Bill Me Later reported 25% to 40% increases in productivity. This translates to millions of dollars in savings for these companies. Recent surveys have reinforced these claims. Indeed, a statistically significant sampling of customers show an increase in productivity that is, on average, above 20%.

Justifications offered for increases in productivity include: finding and sharing information more efficiently, automating reports that previously were manually created, automated dashboards, achieving the same output with fewer human resources (a popular explanation—perhaps a sign of the economic times) and improved output from existing resources. Respondents quantified gains in terms of hours per week per user or by anecdotal percentage gains estimates based on the aforementioned justifications.

46% of customers report their businesses would stop (mission critical 20%) or be severely adversely impacted (highly valuable 26%) without MindTouch. Another 40% of respondents ranked it moderately valuable. This was assessed on a scale of 1 to 5, where ratings ranged from not valuable, mildly value, moderately valuable, highly valuable and mission critical.

88% of customer respondents use MindTouch constantly (42%) or frequently (46%). Another 12% of customer respondents use it sometimes (9%) or rarely (3%). This was assessed on a scale of 1 to 5, where ratings ranged from never, rarely, sometimes, frequently and constantly.

Of the customers that evaluated alternative enterprise collaboration platforms, the top competitors considered where Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, IBM Lotus and Open Text ECM Suite. In that order, with SharePoint, by far, taking the lead in competitive platforms considered.

There was a lot of valuable information gathered from our user and customer research. While it was overwhelmingly positive some of the most useful information was constructive feedback about places to improve; such as more comprehensive documentation. Thank you all for taking the time to participate.

Learn more how MindTouch is delivering value to our customers by reading the Forrester Wave: Collaboration Platforms report.