Collanos Workplace
Friday, January 18th, 2008
Collanos built a peer-to-peer team workspace product called Collanos Workplace. Peer-to-peer allows Collanos to replicate team workspace data (Documents, Links, and Tasks) from one desktop client to another without requiring synchronization with a server. Customers can go to www.collanos.com and download Collanos Workplace for free. Once your team has downloaded Collanos, all you need to do is create a workspace, invite each other, and start sharing. No monthly costs or storage limitations. The only limitation you run into is your local desktop storage, memory, and bandwidth. Sending gigs of data will consume a lot of bandwidth and may cause your web browsing to slow down. Also, your CPU will run at a higher rate and cause your system performance to degrade.
Collanos has some work to do with stabilizing their core replication layer. So today you may encounter some loss of files and replication inconsistencies. According to Collanos this should soon be fixed.
Another limitation of the current system is that it only allows customers to replicate with the original creator of an object (ex. document). So if the original creator is not online, then no other team member can get the latest version of the object, even if an online team member already has it. This is something Collanos is already working on and told me they will have ready in a month. The fix for this issue will be to allow team members to replicate from anyone who is online that already has the latest object.
If Collanos can make their desktop foot print smaller, reduce their CPU usage, stabilize their replication engine, and allow users to replicate from any online team member, then they will have a good product that will receive some good adoption. In the end of the day, no one wants to pay for an application they do not have to pay for. Also, offline access is important for many people.
My advice to customers who are trying to save money and want an offline client. Look at Collanos and wait till they have fixed all the above issues before full deployment. Also, Collanos is a good solution for consumers and small-to-medium businesses.
From a business model perspective, Collanos should look at adding advertisement to their client, just like Pando and allowing for online access to data. I think these would be two additional ways for them to make some additional revenue. Also, Collanos should stay focused on stabilizing their replication layer before adding any more object capabilities.