NewsGator Unveils Premier Platform for Enterprise RSS Management

Today we announced the release of NewsGator Enterprise Server (NGES) 1.3, the latest iteration of our pioneering enterprise RSS management software.  We released the initial version of this product last October, and we've seen significant adoption in enterprises across a range of markets.  Ten Fortune 100 companies in industries such as aerospace and defense, pharmaceutical. high-tech manufacturing, consumer packaged goods and financial services are using NGES.  In addition, we've seen multiple deployments within smaller organizations such as law firms, PR agencies, executive search firms, HR consultancies and IT services companies.

As Robert McCullough, program manager, business applications and commerce for Yankee Group points out, "RSS has emerged as a viable platform for CIOs and CKOs to provide employees with relevant information and collaboration tools, which can directly impact efficiency and improve productivity. NewsGator Enterprise Server helps enterprises become more efficient by centrally managing subscriptions, deploying across platforms without installing client software, and minimizing bandwidth usage.”

One of the many reasons for the adoption has been our approach of building new features that are critical to our customers.  Highlights of NGES 1.3 include improvements in usability, integration with Microsoft Sharepoint, new collaboration capabilities, additional knowledge management and administrative features, and globalization.

One example is the integration with Microsoft Sharepoint.  A customer of ours, Goodman and Carr, a Canadian law firm designed their knowledge management strategy around that product.  As Elizabeth Ellis, a partner and CKO there notes, "A lot of valuable, timely information gets lost in email. With NewsGator Enterprise Server, practice groups can easily see relevant feeds from blogs, news and internal systems on our Microsoft Sharepoint Portal. It allows the attorneys and paralegals to find information more quickly, which will lead to more billable hours and better client service.”

There are a lot of other new features worth checking out and you can read more about them in the press release. We're also featuring NGES 1.3 in our weekly webinars which occur every Friday at 2:00 PM EST/11:00 AM PST.  If you're interested in attending, send us an e-mail and we'll add you to the list.

Technorati Tags: enterprise+rss, Newsgator

NewsGator Powers Personalized USA Today Web Site

Yesterday, USA Today unveiled a "public beta" of a personalized news service for the paper's online readers.  NewsGator Private Label is powering this innovative offering.  USA Today wrote to the NewsGator Online API and delivered a really smooth and compelling product to their audience.  What's unique about this application is that users don't explicitly know that they are using RSS feeds.  All they see is that they can quickly and easily personalize the news, sports, money, life, travel and tech sections with content from USA Today and popular external providers such as the New York Times, ESPN, Markwatch, Slate and The Onion.  More experienced users can add any feed they want by entering the URL, but as Kinsey Wilson, Executive Editor notes in the press release, "We have created a custom newsreader for the everyday news consumer who doesn’t want to think about technology."

We'll see if this becomes a trend for newspapers, magazines and other content providers. A lot of sites have taken the approach that people are familar with RSS and that branded readers should look and feel more like commercially-available RSS readers.  USA Today took the opposite approach and delivered something that doesn't resemble a typical reader.  There are pros and cons to each approach and what type of approach is used will often depend on the demographics of a particular site's readership.  However, given the positive buzz that this application has generated in the blogosphere, I suspect that you'll see a lot of sites choose this approach.

On another note, NetNewsWire 2.1 was officially released on Monday night.  Read more about the highlights in our press release or at Brent Simmons' blog.  You can also pick up the new product from our Web site at http://www.newsgator.com/NGOLProductCatalog.aspx.

NewsGator Teams Up with ePartners for Enterprise RSS

This morning we announced a partnership with ePartners, one of the largest Microsoft Business Solutions consultants.  ePartners will be including NewsGator Enterprise Server (NGES) into the bundled ERP and CRM solutions it to key vertical markets and will also include it as part of its new Business Intelligence offering.  With these solutions, companies will be able to see pertinent news feeds alongside application data in a portal dashboard, and when Microsoft CRM 3.0 ships, view that data in RSS as well.

For ePartners, NewsGator Enterprise Server helps ensure relevant content gets to their customers in ways that enable them to make smart decisions.  For us, ePartners has a large customer base and extensive expertise in the markets they serve, which will open up a lot of new opportunities for the company.  ePartners will also be using NGES internally so their sales force can monitor client and prospect opportunities and competitive intelligence.

This is our first announced NGES channel deal in North America.  Keep your eye on this space for similar announcements, both domestically and abroad.  If you are interested in reselling NGES to your customers, please send us an e-mail.

Read the press release or Computer Reseller News' take on the announcement.

Partnership with iUpload

As we mentioned in our Private Label Platform 2.0 post earlier today, we've partnered with the leading enterprise blogging company, iUpload.  The company has a lot of great customers such as McDonald's, New York Times Company and Knight-Ridder who are using their Customer Conversation System to give blogs to community members on their Web sites, both internal and external. 

As Robin Hopper, their CEO notes, "By integrating the leading enterprise RSS platform with the leading corporate blogging platform, clients will have access to a best of breed means of closing the publishing/alerting/consumption loop."

With this combined solution, publishers, associations, commercial Web sites, and even groups inside of companies can let their users create content through blogs and then give everyone a personalized, easy-to-use way to consume it.

We announced our first joint customer is the Columbia Record, in South Carolina. Look for more news about our relationship and customers in the weeks to come.

Attention Bloggers- Syndicate Your Content To Leading Publishers

For all of you bloggers out there, here's a great new opportunity for you!  In our last post for Private Label Platform 2.0, we mentioned a new service for publishers and other content providers to enhance their offerings by easily dropping in content from leading bloggers anywhere on their site.

Our editors and editors of our partners will be choosing relevant feeds, posts, podcasts, and videocasts from a select list of content providers for syndication.  If you are chosen to be a charter member of the NewsCast select list, your content will be promoted to some of the world’s most recognized online brands.

Your content may appear on our partners’ sites and possibly via other channels such as instant messaging and portable devices.  Whenever your content is used, the publisher will display your logo, the title of your feed and a link back to your site. 

This program will initially be launched as a "preview", during which time we will develop models that may include revenue sharing.

At the present time, we can only accept feeds that meet the following criteria:

We are embarking on a launch program with several newspapers, magazines, associations and online publishers.  If you are interested in having your full-text feeds made available as part of this program, please visit http://www.newsgator.com/leadFormPrivate.aspx?from=plNewsCast.

·          The feed must contain full text posts.

·          The feed may not contain ads for anything other than your own goods or services; if the ads appear in the feed, we may choose to remove them.

·          The feed must be updated with new, meaningful content a least once a week.

NewsGator Private Label Platform 2.0- The Future of Online Brands

We've been quiet on this blog for the last three weeks as the team has been heads-down working on an exciting new platform.  We're pleased to announce the release of NewsGator Private Label Platform 2.0, a groundbreaking RSS-based social media platform for publishers, content providers, associations and commercial Web sites that will drive revenue and extend brand loyalty through personalized content and social networking.  The platform includes three new syndication services, a new branded mobile RSS reader, and improvements to our existing branded Web and desktop readers.  The platform also includes a community publishing system that comes via a partnership with iUpload, the leaders in enterprise blogging.

In the Web 2.0 world, sites need to become more dynamic and personalized and leverage the content contributed by people outside of their editorial staff and/or marketing department.  This offering makes it incredibly easy to offer a richer, more compelling offering to visitors by bring content from bloggers (our syndication services) and members of the community (community publishing tool) and blending it with content created by editors or marketers.  We then make it easier to personalize and consume the content through our branded RSS readers.  Sites such as the Columbiarecord.com are jumping on board to take advantage of this unique offering.  Details about each of the products are below:

Branded Readers- All synchronized

• Web-Based- The 2.0 version includes new AJAX features that allow users to cretae a personalized view of their news and information within the site's look and feel
• Headlines-The leading desktop readers for PCs (FeedDemon), Macs (NetNewsWire) and Outlok (Inbox), with branded content and look and feel
• NewsCast- Send feeds to any HTML-compatible phone with a single click

Syndication Services- Publish “headlines” of rich dynamic content throughout a site. 

• NewsGator Buzz- Show the most popular, most read and highest rated content from NewsGator’s rich archive– as well as lists based on a wide range of other attributes
• Headlines-Promote content from any feed or group of feeds
• NewsCast- Post content from content providers that has been pre-approved for publication on a site. This full text content can be published on your pages that serve ads.

Community Publisher- Lets users generate their own text, photos, podcasts and other content. This integration of NewsGator’s Private Label Platform with iUpload’s Customer Conversation System is the only enterprise-class solution available.

The Mobile Readers and the Syndication Services are available for preview and will be generally available later in this quarter.  The rest of the services are available now.  Please visit www.newsgator.com/privatelabel.aspx to find out more.