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Cardinal Venture Capital, a small Menlo Park venture capital firm (http://www.cardinalvc.com), recently decided to re-evaluate its IT needs and ended up generating significant savings by adopting Content Circles.

Cardinal was looking for a secure team collaboration and content management solution that was cost effective and simple to manage. Cardinal ended up selecting Content Circles because it allowed it to streamline its network, while maintaining complete security and allowing for easy team collaboration. The firm now maintains only one server – a Mac mini with Content Circles software running on it – for providing a secure, encrypted 24x7 file sharing and collaboration mechanism for all of its members without a VPN or firewall, and as a disaster protection solution.

In a thank you note to Content Circles, Cardinal’s Derek Blazensky praised Content Circles service saying, “Transitioning to Content Circles has transformed our small business, saving us at least $1500 per month in recurring costs and thousands more in server hardware, security software and other capital expenses. Not to mention that this system is easier to use and manage.”

We love to hear stories like this one - if Content Circles has helped your business, please let us know!

There’s an interesting story in the March issue of eClinical Trials about using peer-to-peer collaboration technology in clinical trials. The article notes that the requirements of many clinical trials match well with the benefits of peer-to-peer collaboration: strong security; document versioning; and the ability to easily integrate with both internal and external organizations. Peer-to-peer solutions are also noted as cost effective.

We strongly agree. We’re seeing increased interest in our product in environments where security, versioning and external collaboration are challenges. Customers in pharma and biotech environments are placing an especially strong emphasis on security. Scalability can also be a concern.

eClinical Trials is a supplement to Applied Clinical Trials magazine. You can read the article online at this link.

Last night I was notified by a customer that he wasn't able login into Content Circles. I immediately tried to login myself and found out that it was true. Our engineering folks then looked into the issue and found that our SSL certificate (for secure authentication of Content Circles users) expired yesterday. Our internet service provider did not inform us that it was expiring but it was completely our fault for not keeping track of the renewal date. We sincerely apologize to all of our customers for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Fortunately, Content Circles has the "work offline" mode which worked beautifully under the circumstance. When my client failed to login, it offered me the "work offline" option. I just had to type in my password and voila, I had access to all of my files. More importantly, I was able to connect with other people and work as if nothing went wrong, thanks to the power of Content Circles' hybrid cloud/p2p architecture! In essence, the system switched to a pure p2p mode (after authentication via re-confirming password) and allowed me to work while the cloud was down!!

This is our first major outage since we launched Content Circles in early 2009. Needless to say, I'm not happy about it at all. However, I'm very pleased the "work offline" mode worked as envisioned. Tommy Tam, one of our engineers, actually covered this feature of Content Circles in an earlier blog posting titled Outage in the cloud when Google and others were having outages. I re-read it today and I encourage you to read it as well.

In the meantime, rest assured we are working hard here to re-enable our "cloud" portion as quickly as possible.

Update 03/29/2010 12:25pm: Our SSL certificate has been renewed and we are back fully operational.

From nice-to-have to mission critical!

This is the ultimate challenge in the business software market for new solutions. ‘How do I model my customer base to both make my products unique, effective, affordable and desirable within a viral network’.

At Content Circles, we started with the idea that workgroup collaboration and content management happens today despite the available technology and not because of it.

Speed, agility, security, one-to-many and many-to-one relationships, the ability to add and delete people in a workgroup, low cost, TCO, ROI are all fundamental requirements that are limited by the artificial constraints of current enterprise systems. These systems are just not flexible enough in their ability to adapt to the needs of today’s distributed and mobile workforces.

We have cracked the code on all of these issues, and we are now seeing the viral expansion that comes from new users being exposed to new solutions and technology by trusted peers. An invitation to join an existing circle, brief experience on the ease of use, reliability and low cost of the solution, all lead our new members to quickly imagine new applications for Content Circles with completely fresh and unique use cases.

One such unanticipated new application is large file transfer. Although many of our customers are using Content Circles to share and collaborate on content as anticipated, many are just using it to send and receive large files as they find it easier and much more cost-effective than burning and shipping CDs and DVDs; maintaining and using FTP servers; or even using web-based file transfer services that are available today.

Another such unanticipated new application is secure file transfer. Many customers, especially CFOs and HR managers, are using Content Circles to send and receive highly sensitive files such as files with social security numbers in them. We are finding that many states have laws that require encryption of such files before they can be sent via email or other electronic means. The fact that Content Circles automatically encrypts all files and the fact that even those files are never stored on any computers other than the intended recipients' computers, makes it an ideal communication tool for these customers.

We would love to hear from you about how you are using Content Circles. So please let us know how you are using Content Circles in ways that we have not yet discovered.

I can’t find my files.

My files, such as a design document, usually start on my hard disk. Then I email the document for my colleagues to review. After several revisions from my colleagues, I share the file online to a centralized server for the project that I am working on. My files usually have 3 different versions, and reside in 3 different locations. My CFO keeps even more copies, like for my expense reports. He usually keeps my scanned receipts on his machine and an additional hard copy. We can’t find our files.

Content management services and workflow systems are supposed to address my needs to find my files easily, and allow me to keep my content in a single location. I don’t mind following the steps to use a content management server and track my documents, but most of my colleagues don’t want (to be more precise, hate) to do that. They send their large file revisions back to me as email attachments, forcing me back to the email world. And if I store the file in the internal content management repository (such as SharePoint, Documentum, or FileNet), everybody hates me because my colleagues prefer email attachments.

Content Circles connectors allow us to move online content (from a CMS such as SharePoint) back to your machine, bring your document back to one location inside Content Circles, and keep better track of your files. Content Circles still allows you to have files in multiple locations, such as to copy document from Content Circles to your local hard drive, SharePoint, or FTP server. When you make a copy, for example an FTP server, Content Circles remembers the location and shows you a link to that location. Once you have a new version of the document, the link will show up as "outdated", and a single click can update the outdated version with your latest version, for example replace the version on the FTP server.

When I ask my colleagues to review my document, I do not need to worry about security because only members of a circle can access my content. My colleagues might still resist using Content Circles, but if they receive the files from my circles, it is just 1 click to open the document, and a click away to save a new version. They can certainly export the content, make the changes, and send email attachments, but I bet they would rather just click open and save instead. They can find their files easily in Content Circles.

In addition, Content Circles tracks whether a user opens or receives a file. You can keep track of your document and review whether your colleague has received your document or not. Obviously Content Circles can’t tell whether your colleague actually READ the document, but at least you get the sense that the file was delivered.

It saves me time to find my files and keeps me from getting sidetracked when there are more important things for me to attend to.