Microblogging Appliance Delivers a Twitter for your Intranet

By Ross Mayfield | July 14, 2009, 6:00 am | 0 Comments

Today we announced the availability of the Socialtext Microblogging Appliance for rapid secure intranet deployment of microblogging and social networking at a low cost. As the popularity of microblogging has increased, IT managers have struggled with its risks. Employees often begin using either consumer tools on the public web like Twitter, or private hosted tools that don’t let IT control membership, content or company policy. The Socialtext Microblogging Appliance provides security and control in a cost-contained package. It gives IT the option of deploying secure microblogging and social networking company-wide, right away.

The Appliance deployment method is proven for rapid and secure implementation that reduces administrative and maintenance tasks to provide the lowest Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). Over the years our customer base has underscored for us how important it is to provide premium products at competitive (or lower costs) that don’t tax their IT departments: today’s announcement should captivate both their CFO and IT Teams — as this is another example of our commitment to our current and future customers.

Socialtext is currently poised as the only vendor that delivers a proven on-site microblogging solution today – enabling company wide deployment of Microblogging and Social Networking behind the firewall with the option to add additional products, such as Socialtext Workspace, Dashboard and SocialCalc. Unique features included in our new Socialtext Microblogging Appliance:

Socialtext Signals for microblogging
Socialtext People for social networking
Socialtext Desktop for real time microblogging and social networking from an Adobe AIR desktop application
Rapid, secure and scalable Appliance deployment
Automatic updates and upgrades, so customers get all the benefits of SaaS and on-site deployment combined
Optional integration with your directory system (LDAP/Active Directory) for single sign on with your other intranet applications and automatic profile population
Rapidly extensible with RESTful APIs, it is easy to integrate third party applications into a unified Activity Stream or make other applications social
The option to instantly upgrade to the full Socialtext Appliance for Socialtext Workspace, Socialtext Dashboard and SocialCalc

And we are making this offering available for an attractive $1 per user per month + $1,000 per month server subscription! This affordable pricing enables businesses to right-size the application to an optimal amount of users, with confidence that the population can grow without having uncontrollable or unforeseen exploding costs.

Two and a half weeks ago, we also announced a “freemium” offer for up to 50 employees called the Socialtext Free 50. The offering was aimed at mainstream use for online collaboration with Twitter-style micro-blogging, social networking, personalized dashboards, desktop file sharing, weblog publishing and a wiki workspace. The organization’s IT department can control of the private network’s content and participation in Free 50 at no charge, and the free service is governed by IT friendly policies. Employees can join or create their own private collaboration networks by using their work email address at Socialtext.com. In the first two weeks of the offering we had thousands of sign-ups, indicating the need and perceived value of this offering for both employees and their IT departments.

Socialtext Microblogging Appliance meets the growing demand for intranet microblogging. If you would like further information, sign up for the webinar demo or contact us.