A New Home for MarsEdit

Regular readers of this blog are probably accustomed to us adding products to our stable, so it's a bit unusual for us to talk about subtracting one. This morning however, we are happy to announce that MarsEdit, the fantastic blog editor for Macs, is being acquired by Red Sweater Software, which will take over ongoing development and support.

We acquired MarsEdit as part of our 2005 acquisition of Brent Simmons' Ranchero Software, which brought us NetNewsWire. While we are sad to see it go, it will likely result in an acceleration of new feature development and releases, which is a big benefit for users. For NewsGator, this move allows us to focus more on our core competency, which is developing RSS readers and social media tools for individuals and businesses.

If you're interested in better understanding Red Sweater's plans for the product, you can read the Q&A on our Web site.

Introducing NewsGator Europe

NewsGator's offerings have always been popular overseas, even back in 2002 and 2003, when NewsGator encompassed Greg Reinacker building and selling NewsGator Outlook Edition (re-christened NewsGator Inbox last year). Last year, we formally expanded internationally, announcing deals in Japan with GMO Group and Agrex. This morning, we hop across the other "pond" with the unveiling of NewsGator Europe.

Some of our earliest NewsGator Enterprise Server (NGES) customers were based in Western Europe, but we've seen the pace of activity pick up significantly there over the last six months, both for NGES and more recently, NewsGator Enterprise On-Demand (NGEOD). The organization, which is based in the Netherlands, and headed up by three ex-Microsoft executives and technology veterans will help us further accelerate European market adoption of our Enterprise and Private Label solutions.

We're primarily working through an indirect channel, at least initially, so Andre and team have started working with value-added resellers (VARs). If you are a software VAR based in Europe and you're interested in speaking with us about being a partner in Europe, please send us an e-mail. Look for more announcements about European momentum in the coming months.

Technorati Tags: enterprise rss, rss, NewsGator, NewsGator Europe,

Rohm and Haas Taps NGES for Enteprise-Wide Deployment

The news train keeps on rolling on the enterprise front as we announced yet another new customer. Rohm and Haas, a Fortune 1000 company and a leader in the development of chemicals and other specialty materials is using NewsGator Enterprise Server (NGES) to centralize the way they deliver information to all of their 16,000+ employees.

The drivers for adoption are similar to what we are seeing at other large companies as well as at smaller organizations with a high percentage of knowledge workers. Like any large company, the process of communicating and distributing information internally poses a constant challenge. And like most companies in the process manufacturing arena, there are a lot of people in sales, R&D and elsewhere who depend on high-value information.

With NGES, Rohm and Haas solves both issues. They are aggregating all relevant information such as company news, competitive intelligence, Factiva content and internal feeds into a single, easy-to-use location on their company intranet. This helps them reduce traffic going through e-mail and increases the likelihood of uptake and action since it doesn't have to compete with everyone else in the e-mail inbox.

NGES also helps on the productivity front. For both the people charged with finding and disseminating information and those who need to consume it, NGES removes the need to go out and find it, instead delivering it right to the employee. This not only saves time, but allows Rohm and Haas to spend more time on value-added activities. The first phase involves the Web interface, but the company will soon be delivering content to select employees desktops and mobile devices via FeedDemon and NewsGator Go! respectively.

Rohm and Haas realized the value of RSS some time ago and built an in-house system to provide newsreader capabilities. Since the system lacked many of the administration and reading capabilities of NGES, usage was below expectations and they turned to our product instead. As Cindy Callan, IT Process Analyst for Rohm and Haas notes,

“Before NewsGator, we were really facing information overload, with no centralized location for us to share that information. NewsGator has given us a strategic, easy-to-use delivery system that ensures our employees will actually read the information we provide for them, making them far more productive and informed.”

Expect to see more announcements like this one as the quarter progresses. On a different note, I know that many of you are regular readers of this blog and you might have attended one our Webinars that we offer on a regular basis. If you attended one last year, quite a lot has changed (as evidenced by this blog) and we've created a new Webinar called "2007: Year of Enterprise RSS" to highlight some of the advances. I encourage you to sign up and see how far NewsGator and the market has come in a relatively short period of time.

Technorati Tags: enterprise+rss, rss, NewsGator, Rohm and Haas