Basecamp vs Jira

As one of the Enterprise 2.0 classics said: "If I had more time, I would have created a simpler application". That's how 37Signals (the company behind the project management app Basecamp) is spending its time. Basecamp was launched about eight years ago and since then it remained almost unchanged. Every new feature was added only if it was really necessary. Due to this, Basecamp has retained its simplicity and effectiveness. But it turned out that the Basecamp developers during all these years not only defended the app from the complications, but also have been inventing more perfect and simple structure. And this year they decided to roll it out. It's hard to believe, but the new version of Basecamp is even easier and more effective.

37Signals decided to market a combined package of its key SaaS services for business - 37signals Suite, similar to how Google sells its services as Google Apps. 37signals Suite includes Basecamp (project management system), Highrise (CRM system), Campfire (group chat, which can be used as communication tool in this bundle) and Backpack (group organizer+wiki, which can be considered as an intranet portal in this bundle). The integration between applications in the package doesn't rock for now, but at least the user base will be unified. 37signals Suite is prices so that in most cases it's cheaper to buy the whole suite than two separate services. Price starts at $99 per month - for 35Gb of memory, 35 projects in Basecamp, 20000 contacts in Highrise, 5000 pages in Backpack, 50 simultaneous chats in Campfire. Though it seems much more expensive than the cost of Google Apps (50$/year), but you shouldn't forget that Google charges this fee for each user, and in 37Signals Suite the number of users is unlimited.

Let's start from what happened last week. Without any announcements 37Signals dropped a low end plan from the Basecamp sign-up page ($24/month for 15 projects and 5GB of disk space). Now, the cheapest option on this page is $49 for 35 projects and 15 GB. Of course, this caused a loud reaction of bloggers and competitors. Bloggers started speculating that Basecamp feels so confident that has lost interest in small business. Competitors started pitching their alternative services and Zoho even pushed the promotion for customers switching from Basecamp to Zoho Projects. 37Signals co-founder Jason Fried has clarified the situation. "In fact, Basecamp hasn't raised prices. Existing users continue to pay the same price for the same subscription plans. The company is just experimenting with the sign-up page design. The $24 plan is still available (inside) for those who sign-up for free account and then wants to upgrade". Nevertheless, the idea of the experiment is clear: Basecamp focuses on the more "expensive" clients. Here's why:

Jason Fried, 37Signals co-founder, exactly knows how to create beautiful systems. Basecamp users and Ruby on Rails developers know this. Recently he published the video with his vision of how to create a beautiful workspace (on the example of 37Signals) and how online tools can help. Jason started with the fact that in most companies collaboration is organized absolutely wrong. It's based on the constant interruptions. Employee just turns on the computer, and the interruptions begin: instant messages, email notifications, phone calls and of course, co-workers that come and ask something. No one can work productively in such environment. And, often collaboration software (especially messengers and microblogs) doesn't help to mute this noise, but increase it.

37Signals, the developer of online project management service Basecamp, according to the recent investment round, has become the most expensive company in the Internet services market. The group of investors, led by Yardstick Capital and Institutionalized Venture Partners purchased 0.000000001% of the company for $1. So, the potential 37Signals' market price has increased to about $100 billions. This was officially  announced in the company blog. During the company-wide meeting, dedicated to this event, Jason Fried (37Signals founder), announced, that all SaaS applications, developed by 37Signals, including Basecamp, will become free in order to attract more users and to reach the estimated userbase already in 2013.

Atlassian has launched the new version of its project management system Jira 5 and called it Social. We expected to see some sort of built-in social network where users could add bugs, vote for features, discuss updates. But none of these features appeared. Probably it's for the better, because bug - is an intimate thing and it shouldn't be publicly discussed. The new social features in Jira 5 are: the tool for sharing bugs/tasks with co-workers or groups, and the support for @names. If you mention @someone in the comments - he will receive the notification and will probably help in solving the task. In addition, the new version allows to link a bug to any external URL (website or web app) and adds a lot of integrations (including Salesforce, Zendesk, Confluence, Get Satisfaction). And you certainly want to know why there are so many Angry Birds in the video?

Atlassian has launched the new SaaS service Atlassian OnDemand, which includes its popular tools for managing software development projects: JIRA (issue-tracker), Confluence (wiki), GreenHopper (Agile Project Management), Bonfire (bug reporter), FishEye (code manager), Crucible (code review) and Bamboo (integration). All products in the SaaS version provide the full functionality of the installable counterparts. There are only minimal restrictions on the tool integration and use of the custom plug-ins. You can turn on/off the tools as needed. The service pricing is traditional for Atlassian - "everything for $10 for 10 users." Recall that the company is also selling the 10-user leniences of the same installable products for $10. So you can either buy the product for $10, or rent it for $10/month.

Initially OpenSocial standard was created by Google to unify the data exchange between social web services with the help of gadgets. OpenSocial is used in Friendster, hi5, LinkedIn, MySpace, Orkut, etc. But Atlassian noticed that it has great potential  in business applications behind the firewall. The new version of its popular  web-based project management and issue-tracking software, Jira 4.0, got the full support of OpenSocial. And so what? First, this made the software interface more user-friendly. Now user can arrange individual page layout with the help of embedded gadgets. And each gadget can contain any information from the system - latest issues, activity stream, report diagram, etc...