Every Friday I’m going to attempt to summarize any relevant news in the future of work/collaboration space. I’ll provide the name of the vendor, a short summary of what the announcement or piece of news is with a link to the original, and finally a short POV. I can’t cover every single thing that comes out but I will do my best to provide as much relevant content as I can. If you have something you think I should include then please send it over and I will decide if it’s something I can add.  Again, keep in mind this is weekly roundup so the news or announcements need to be from that week. Here is the roundup for this week:

Good Technology changes pricing structure

Good provides mobile security which is especially relevant for companies that allow their employees to access their collaborative environments through mobile devices and/or tablet devices.  Their old pricing model focused on charging per device which meant that if you had multiple devices you would be charged more.  They recently switched their model to a flat $5/user/month rate.

My POV

I don’t think anyone will argue that this is a bad move for Good.  It makes it easier to market and sell their product and is much easier for organizations to get behind and support for their BYOD policies.  Their pricing is also low enough so that a company of any size can take advantage of their product.  Great move which I think will really help the company grow.

Link to announcement

Asana adds time tracking through Harvest partnership

Asana, the task management company recently added time tracking capabilities to their product through a partnership with Harvest (easy to use time tracking software).

My POV

Again, I don’t think anyone is going to say this is a bad thing.  Time tracking and task management go together like peanut butter and jelly; it’s clearly a natural fit.  The integration is pretty well done and the new feature is something I’m sure many people have been asking for although a separate login for Harvest is required.  I’m sure we can expect several other apps to be integrated and released from Asana in the near future and I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of these integrations involve existing enterprise collaboration vendors.

Link to announcement

Box focusing on education market

Although Box already has a pretty strong presence in the education space they are making a much bigger push into this market by announcing the development of an entire education ecosystem designed to connect students and teachers.  This being made possible by an integration with Canvas which is a widely used learning management system.  Crocdoc (which Box acquired) is already used by Canvas and many other companies in the education space.  The list of the partners and integrations which are now a part of their OneCloud directory can be found in the link to the announcement below.

My POV

A great move for Box since in my opinion the education market is under served when it comes to enterprise collaboration software and just technology in general.  Our companies need to adapt but so do our educational institutions.  Students and teachers already use Box to access and share information from their computers, tablets, and smart phones.  This ecosystem that Box is building is going to completely change how students learn and how teachers teach.  Just like a knowledge worker who always needs to be connected to co-workers and information; students and teachers also need to be connected to information and to each other, anytime, anywhere, and on any device.

Link to announcement

 

 

 

 

 

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