Server-based RSS aggregators offer businesses better control and
more security than the more common consumer RSS feeds. You have to
dish out the money for it, but experts say for small to midsized
businesses, the investment is worth it.
 | | | | | Some people will find that they
oversubscribe to RSS and it becomes as bad as email.
Mike Gotta
principal analystBurton
Group |
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Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is an XML-based technology that
allows Web sites to send news and other content via feeds to users
who subscribe to the content. Users typically use consumer
Web-based aggregators from companies such as Yahoo,
Google Inc.
and
NewsGator
Technologies Inc. to collect and review these RSS feeds.
"Overall this technology is still somewhat at the emerging stage
within enterprises," said Mike Gotta, principal analyst at Midvale,
Utah-based Burton Group Inc. "2007 should see continued incremental
growth, but the huge surge in XML syndication will be in the latter
part of 2007 into 2008 as companies roll out infrastructure that
have greater support for RSS and Atom." Like RSS,
Atom is a form of XML-based syndication
technology.
Gotta said Attensa Inc., KnowNow Inc. and NewsGator have all
launched enterprise RSS server products that channel RSS feeds into
a customer's choice of email folders, Web-based applications or
dedicated client applications.
"I would say that it enhances communication to a greater extent
than collaboration as its first-order impact," Gotta said. "Where
it helps collaboration is the community aspect around how feeds are
tagged, shared and so on. What's nice about some of the
server-based enterprise tools is that they can begin to act as
connection mechanisms to help people who are subscribing to certain
types of information to connect with each other. 'You and I work in
different business units, but we discover that we subscribe to the
same internal or external feeds, so perhaps we end up collaborating
on related projects.'"
Art Kuntz, IT project manager at Polyform U.S. Ltd., a Kent,
Wash.-based manufacture of buoys, boat fenders and accessories,
used a consumer RSS aggregator up until about six months ago. Kuntz
and his company's owner then decided to take a centralized approach
to RSS feeds.
Kuntz said he and the owner had a lot of overlaps in the news
feeds they received on their consumer aggregators, and several of
the company's 34 employees were interested in RSS feeds. He
purchased NewsGator Enterprise Server, which typically sells for
$4,000, along with a user fee that usually begins at $4,000 for 100
users.
"We felt like we would like to be able to control our own feeds,
what's allowed and not allowed in the company," Kuntz said. "And
the other thing I really like about it, it feeds into an Exchange
folder in each user's inbox, giving everyone an interface they're
used to working with."
"The big thing for us was the smart feed technology," Kuntz said of
a feature that monitors the Web for specified keywords, and feeds
relevant content into RSS feeds. "That was always the problem I had
with RSS feeds -- trying to find them, trying to find things you're
looking for. It always seemed fairly difficult with the consumer
version. I was also very interested in trying to publish our own
feeds to our customers and our employees. This seemed like a good
mechanism to let us funnel stuff into [Microsoft] Exchange folders
that are easy for people to use."
Kuntz said he has feeds sent to his IT department to keep it
up-to-date on new technologies. The owner of his company, on the
other hand, uses feeds to track the financial markets and trends in
manufacturing and marketing strategies.
"The sales manager uses it for the same kinds of things as the
owner, but he's also monitoring trends in the marine industry in
general."
Kuntz can strategically create news feeds on topics for specific
groups of employees to help them with their job functions. For
instance, his company has employees who are responsible for the
color formulas in their products. He can send them all the same RSS
feeds on trends and innovations in the chemical industry.
Jack Sinclair, COO of ReturnPath Inc., a New York-based email
marketing services company, uses the NewsGator Enterprise Server to
distribute internal reports to selections of his company's 150
employees.
"I'm a big fan of using channels for delivering information. In
a company you have a lot of channels for delivering information
into people's hands," Sinclair said. "I like RSS because you're
able to list feeds and provide them to people internally. With
email, it's harder to communicate. And RSS is much more powerful. I
have an area where an administrator can go in and do targeted
feeds."
With internal reports in the feeds, security was an issue for
Sinclair. Otherwise he would have used a consumer RSS reader. "But
because we had a lot of company-specific information that we were
putting through the feeds, we wanted a little more control over who
could see it and who could sign up for it."
Gotta, of Burton Group, said RSS offers people another channel
for communication and information delivery.
"There are some companies (some quite large) that are aggressive
when it comes to RSS. Financial services, for instance," Gotta
said. He said RSS can have some pitfalls. "Some people will find
that they oversubscribe to RSS and it becomes as bad as email."
Burton also sees a future where customers will want to use RSS
technology to integrate with content and data from ERP and customer
relationship management systems, "which means your RSS vendor needs
an integration strategy to connect to a variety of back ends."
Let us know what you think about the story; email:
Shamus McGillicuddy,
News Writer