Blogs

Collaboration is a broad and all encompassing term which comprises of many technologies and application. Web meetings/conferencing, internet forums, desktop sharing, instant messenger, emails, shared calendars, online project management, wikis, social networking (Facebook, Linkedin, twitter), ranking and voting applications, online document or spreadsheet editing are all examples of collaborative applications.

After doing our market research for the past few months, I am coming to the conclusion that it is tough to sell the value proposition for a horizontal Document Management System in the SMB market place. Even if the cost are very low as is the case with a hosted SaaS based offering, unless the business is just looking for standard DMS features, they are not willing to spend any money. There are a few reasons for this:

I am starting this forum to get a dialog going around the coming together of Software-as-a-Service, Virtualization and Open Source and how they apply to Document Management Systems. I will also discuss what size of businesses and what industry segments can most benefit from this emerging trend.

My company LinearCube is a provider of Open Source Software-as-a-Service based Document Management System. I will share some of my experience as we go to market and learn what the customers are asking for.