Telligent News & Articles

For those of you who have followed the whole "is it dead or not" discussion on Telligent's Graffiti Web CMS, well there seems to be a final answer.

A very short announcement on the Telligent blog says that Graffiti has made the move to CodePlex as an open source solution.

Graffiti has a strong developer following, and we encourage those involved with Graffiti to continue to provide peer-to-peer support for one another. Users and developers can continue collaborating together to enhance the product. We look forward to seeing the innovation the open source community will bring to Graffiti.  We are especially thankful for some of the community members that stepped up and offered to help shepherd the project.

Hmmm, well this is all interesting. How many times did we ask Telligent what its plans were for Graffiti, only to be told that although there's nothing formal defined, Graffiti was still very much alive and well.

Now it's not that we expected Telligent to reveal all its plans before they were officially made, but many did see the writing on the wall -- if you go by the comments on our review of Graffiti.

Now licensed under the Microsoft Reciprocal License (Ms-RL), Graffiti v1.2 is available on CodePlex with some "extra" assemblies still on the Telligent website -- a website that needs to be cleaned up as it still talks about different license versions.

It is also interesting to note that Telligent's own website doesn't use Graffiti Web CMS, but instead uses CS Publisher, now called Scribus CMS.

Anyway, time to put this baby to bed. Happy downloading!

Web CMS vendor (and the latest J. Boye Web Idol winner) Sitecore (news, site) integrated its content management system with Telligent Community -- a platform for social content, interactive communities, collaboration and social analytics.

In the name of online engagement, community collaboration and traffic increase, Sitecore integrated with Telligent’s (news, site) functionality to allow for web content to be leveraged in online communities and to “…enhance the way Telligent Community enables organizations to interact with their customers,” according to Patrick Brandt, Telligent CEO.

On the Sitecore side, the integration package aims to provide centralized security (using single sign-on) and a way to manage content in both Sitecore and Telligent. Let’s note that both are technologically compatible, Microsoft .NET products.

The security integration allows for central user management: i.e. users only need to be created in Sitecore CMS and are automatically transferred to Telligent Community after their first login.

“Creating more channels for customer engagement is the natural evolution of CMS software,” said Darren Guarnaccia, VP product marketing, Sitecore.

The content management side of the integration allows users to mix and match social media applications and web content, while being able to repurpose content for Telligent Community’s online social networking, forums, blogs and multimedia galleries in Sitecore sites. Social content can be used as is, or filtered based on a user’s rights and group memberships.

While they may seem quiet lately considering the rush of social computing announcements coming out almost daily, Telligent (news, site) does not appear to be sitting on their laurels.

As a provider of a newly revamped social software platform, Telligent is in one of the most competitive markets today. So they need to be on their game.

To help them reach their goals they have appointed Kelly Brashear as director of services, reporting directly to the VP of Operations. His responsibilities? To oversee Telligent's professional services team.

Brashear has a sales and service background, working for companies like CDC Software, Skywire Software and Electronic Data Systems. Interesting to note that Patrick Brandt, Telligent's new (since May) CEO was the founder and CEO of Skywire Software.

Telligent's professional services team specializes in strategy and online communications, helping clients understand their needs and requirements for community software.

Research firm IDC has a new list you might want to pay attention to: 10 Innovative Application Companies Under $100M to Watch.

"IDC has projected 2009 as a year of accelerated adoption of new business models for applications, including software as a service and open source, as well as Web 2.0 capabilities and functionality," says Michael Fauscette, group vice president, Software Business Solutions, IDC.

To pull this list together, they solicited entries from vendors who make enterprise software. Vendors had to meet the financial criteria and demonstrate one or more aspects of three key trends, including Web 2.0 capabilities in the Enterprise, SaaS, BPO or open source solutions, and new business models for software use by service providers. The selection critiria came from the  IDC's Worldwide Applications 2008 Top 10 Predictions.

So who made the list? There are more than a couple of names we recognize, with a particular focus on social computing: Jive Software, Telligent, Atlassian, Kaltura and Trampoline Systems Ltd., among others. There's no specific order to the list, in case you are wondering.

IDC profiles each of the 10 companies in this 9 page report -- that'll run you US$ 3500.

Interesting to note that Atlassian, Jive and Telligent also made Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Social Software in the Workplace.

This is just further evidence of the growing strength of social software in the enterprise and its potential to displace content management as a key technology.

Solutions provider, Couto challenges the social enterprise market with its Telligent-based, but highly expanded, intranet and community solution for business.

Jive Software (news, site) has announced Jive Market Engagement, a new service integrated into their Social Business Software, designed to help organizations not only monitor social activity related to them, but to also measure, share and engage with their communities based on that information.

Yesterday's theme of integrating social software and business data (via application integration) was echoed by Jive Software (news, site). They have announced a new agreement that will see SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence onDemand solutions integrated into Jive's Social Business Software suite.

It's a day for news on the Enterprise 2.0 front and Telligent (news, site) wants you to hear what they've been hard at work on. It's about that time of the year when Telligent offers up a new version of their community solutions. This time, instead of simply a new version number with some new functionality, we get major products upgrades and new branding to boot.

Say goodbye to Community Server, Community Server Evolution and Harvest Reporting Server. Say hello to Telligent Community 5.0, Telligent Enterprise 2.0 and Telligent Analytics 3.0.

Oh, and for those of you interested in Telligent Graffiti, we have a little update, but don't get too excited.

Interesting news in the pipeline for Telligent (news, site). Founder and CEO Rob Howard has released the reigns of the company he founded almost 5 years ago to Patrick Brandt.

Well, released the reigns -- sort of. Howard has been appointed the new CTO of Telligent. A position that he feels right at home in.

There is not an organization out there today who isn't implementing or planning some kind of enterprise social computing solution. There are a lot of things to consider when developing your strategy and just as many technological solutions out there to choose from.

Here we offer you 8 articles on social computing, some focused on the plan, some focused on the technical solution. Both will provide you plenty of information to focus on your plans.

When you start thinking about whether or not you need a community, there are likely a dozen questions running through your mind -- at least there should be. If you haven't taken the time to think about what a community will achieve for your organization, then don't go buying the technology to create one.

If you need a little guidance along your path, CMSWire talked with two community evangelists: Lawrence Liu, Director of Platform Strategy at Telligent (news, site) and George Dearing, Telligent Evangelist about how to tell if you need one, how to approach a community strategy and what are some key features in community solutions.

Whether you choose to go the path of Telligent Community Server or not, there's some solid information to take home and think about.

If you are looking for a community solution, then Telligent (news, site) is one of most well known. But it may not contain all the functionality out of the box that you would like -- we're speaking of content management here.

So it's good to have partners like Four Roads to come alongside and fill in the gaps in functionality. CMSWire took a look at the content management capabilities this company provides Community Server, known as CS Publisher.

When we published our review of Telligent's Graffiti Web Content Management System we were made a little uncomfortable when we caught wind from the community that more than a few people considered the product to be dead.

Following this up, we double checked with Telligent (news, site) CEO Rob Howard that this wasn't the case. And now Telligent has officially confirmed it on their own website -- the product will live on.

Previous to this update, the Graffiti Web CMS blog had not been updated since February, when Graffiti 1.2 was released. So there has been a bit of radio silence.

Houston, We Have Contact

Silence is golden, but not always. The community wanted some answers.

Now we see some activity in the form of a general update plus some details on future plans for the Graffiti CMS. We're happy to re-confirm here that Graffiti does indeed have a future.

The post states that Telligent was not prepared for the response it received to Graffiti -- especially since it was created to be a sort of "test bed" for ideas and concepts. That being said, the plan is to go forward with version 2.0, just not in the time frame originally stated.

Telligent goes on to say that they also weren't prepared for the effort to get the next version off the ground. The cutbacks in staff -- many of whom were on the Graffiti team -- did not help.

Graffiti Web CMS is not Telligent's primary offering, Community Server and Community Server Evolution are first and foremost with their Harvest Reporting Server safely in tow.

That's the story for now. If momentum continues to build around Graffiti, perhaps this will change. But the only current promise is that we will see v2.0 of Graffiti sometime this summer.

Editor's Note: About Graffiti (June 23, 2009)

Waiting for this one, weren't you? We asked Howard what was happening with Graffiti, their web content management system. We expected to see a new version or some kind of news coming out this month related to it's future development.

We now find we must wait a little while longer. Howard said that complete focus has been on the community and analytic solutions and not Graffiti. They have started some dialog as to what its future looks like (so he is indicating that it has a future, that's good), but he wouldn't go into details, saying it's too early to spill the beans of those conversations.

As the team ramps down from releases of Telligent Enterprise, Community and Analytics, focus will shift to Graffiti. Our only thoughts here are this: if web content management is your primary focus, Telligent does not appear to be your answer, because it is not theirs.

If Community solutions that engage enterprise integration and tight social and web analytics is your focus, then take a closer look.

Let's talk about social computing. Or we can talk about communities. Or we can talk about enterprise 2.0 and social networking, blogging, forums, wikis, what have you. Regardless of what you choose to call it, there's a need to analyze what is happening when you deploy or harness social tools. And, no, we are not talking about basic traffic stats. 

Telligent (news, site) has a keen awareness of this need. Hence we have Harvest Reporting Server -- social analytics for their social computing solutions, Community Server and Community Server Evolution. Interested in getting a better feel for what social analytics really are and how you can leverage them, we spent some time with Telligent. This is what we learned.

Telligent's primary offering is Community Server (news, site), a social media and community solution. But it's not the only thing they have going. They also offer a web content management system called Graffiti CMS.

Graffiti CMS is a simple web content management system -- the CMS in its name actually stands for "content made simple". Some consider it a blogging platform, but it contains features and functionality that you don't normally see in such as platform. And anyways, the lines between blogging platforms and web content management systems are rapidly blurring, n'est pas?

Our interest piqued, we took a look at Graffiti and here's what we found.