Basecamp vs SharePoint

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.

For Microsoft health and safety of the users - is the highest priority. And to prevent people from falling and being injured while working with SharePoint on the go, Microsoft just doesn't release mobile clients for SharePoint (except one for Windows Phone, which is used by very few users). But there are people for whom money means more than user security. Harmon.ie (the company known for its Outlook plug-in, which allows to collaborate on files stored in SharePoint) has released a mobile application for iPhone/iPad that works as a mobile SharePoint app. Now mobile users with smartphones and tablets can collaboratively edit documents stored in SharePoint, comment them, track the history of changes and versions, agree the documents. It's so easy and convenient that people do this even while walking and because of this already 2675 were injured due to falls and other accidents. The sufferers have already created a web site protesting against the new mobile app - www.DontSharepointWhileWalking.com

Recently we noted that for a long time there is no news about the progress of the enterprise software superstar - intranet system Microsoft SharePoint. And today the news appeared: SharePoint 2010 finally adds full support for the third-party browsers: Firefox, Chrome, and partial support for Apple Safari. Developers say that the limitations of these browsers didn't allowed to use all the bells and whistles of the SharePoint interface before. Wow! That's a really huge achievement of SharePoint developers. There is still no word about support of mobile platforms (except Windows Phone). But there is a word about social features. Jared Spataro, Microsoft's senior director of SharePoint product management recently said that they were carefully studying the opportunities of social networking technologies for enterprise collaboration and Microsoft's approach will be to increase enterprise social features in SharePoint. Looks like SharePoint is really in crisis.

In this case by "Dropbox for Enterprise" we don't mean the business version of Dropbox. The fact is that the expression "Dropbox for Enterprise" has become a new meme. The largest enterprise software vendors want to release a product under the label "Dropbox for Enterprise". That's how they say: "We want to create something like Dropbox for Enterprise" (watch the video). Recall, Dropbox - is the super-popular file syncing and sharing service, which has already attracted 50 million users thanks to its simplicity and multi-platform support. It's business usage is limited due to the strict corporate security standards. But employees still tend to use it bypassing IT admins, and that is why the enterprise vendors are standing in the line to become the Enterprise Dropbox provider.

Today, Microsoft has rolled out a new service Office 365, which is a reincarnation of the SaaS package BPOS. The name change was expected, since Microsoft critics have referred BPOS as "Big Piece of Shit" instead of "Business Productivity Online Services". But not only name is to be changed. The new service except SaaS versions Exchange Online, Sharepoint Online and Lync Online, will include the online office tools Office Web Apps. I.e. Office 365 can now be considered as a full-fledged alternative to Google Apps. The service will be available in 2 editions. Small Business Edition for companies with less than 25 users costs $6/user/month and includes the basic functions. Enterprise edition provides additional customization and administration features, full functionality and provides users with desktop suite Office Office Professional Plus with pay-as-you-go licensing. This edition costs from $2 to $ 27/user/month depending on configuration. Recall, Microsoft also plans to include its CRM and ERP to the SaaS suite. At the moment, Office 365 is in beta stage and will be available worldwide next year.

Just yesterday we talked about Sharepoint Workspace - the tool which allows to sync files between Sharepoint server and user's computer, and today the cloud file collaborative service Box.net (which is positioned as a Sharepoint alternative) released the similar tool Box Sync. This is a program that is installed on your computer and allows you to sync any folder in your online Box.net account with desktop. If you change any file in that folder, it will be immediately synced, and those users who have access to this folder - will receive an alert. For now Box Sync is only available for Windows and only in the paid (business) accounts. Versions for Mac and Linux, as well as the free version will appear later this year.

We have already mentioned that p2p collaboration app MS Office Groove was renamed to SharePoint Workspace and utilized as an offline client for Sharepoint. Now we have got the chance to see SharePoint Workspace 2010 in action and it appears that offline access to Sharepoint - is not the only function of this application. First, SharePoint Workspace can be used without Sharepoint - as well as MS Office Groove. I.e. you can create Groove Workspace (with files, calendar, discussions) and sync it with computers of co-workers or customers. However, the audio-chat and permission levels disappeared from the application. Recall that SharePoint Workspace is not sold as a part of Sharepoint Server, but as a part of Office 2010 Pro Plus.

Last week together with Office 2010, Sharepoint 2010 was officially released. Of course, this is an important event for Enterprise 2.0 industry, however, not so important as we expected. Because despite the fact that Sharepoint 2010 was introduced as a cloud solution, at the moment neither Hosted, nor SaaS version of Sharepoint 2010 are not available. Hosted version (in BPOS-D) will be available only by the end of the year. SaaS-version (Sharepoint Online) by the end of the year will will be available for beta testing and official release is expected only in mid-2011. (We included Sharepoint Online in our Top 10 cloud platforms for Enterprise, but apparently that was too early). And now about the positive moments: Sharepoint 2010 really contains a lot of improvements that will strengthen its (almost monopolistic) position of the intranet platforms market: