Thursday, June 16, 2005 10:58 AM
Greg Reinacker of
NewsGator has just announced that it is beta testing its new "Dino," Newsgator Enterprise Server with an expanding list of customers. In describing Dino and what it does, Greg can do it better than I:
Dino could be characterized as "NewsGator Enterprise Server", for lack of a better name. Imagine NewsGator Online, picked up and installed on a server behind a corporate firewall. Imagine it also (optionally) connecting with Active Directory and Exchange server. No longer would a system administrator need to go install NewsGator Outlook edition on 3000 desktops; rather, with Dino, they could install a single server, make some configuration choices, and employees will just get "more stuff" somewhere in their Exchange mailbox without having to install anything on their own machines. Outlook; Outlook Web Access; Blackberry; Exchange ActiveSync; all of this is enabled by the Dino/Exchange integration. Not using Exchange? Not a problem. Dino will have a version of NewsGator Online's web-based aggregator (also also mobile edition, email edition, and media center edition). Many potential customers have asked us about an intranet-based aggregation solution, and Dino fills the bill for this as well.
And with sophisticated indexing capabilities, and integration points with other enterprise systems, Dino can become a central information distribution point for all kinds of content. All managed in one place, leveraging organizational structure in Active Directory (if available).
I have touched base with the guys at Newsgator on the subject of Dino because to me it represents a potential major step in the evolution of the blawgosphere. That is, getting reader software onto the desktop of the average person, and thus greatly expanding the blawgosphere in the process. Further, I still firmly believe that Outlook (or any other email client) is, and will continue to be, the dominant access point to reach the average lawyer, corporate executive and staff of most law firms and companies worldwide. You can still leverage web clients like Internet Explorer as part of the user experience, but to reach the masses, you have to get to them in the one application they utilize every day...and that is what Newsgator's Dino appears to offer in integrating with Microsoft Exchange to deliver content to Outlook.
Here is Greg's own description of his initial experience with the Dino beta: I gotta tell you, it's pretty cool. I got the URL of our internal Dino server in an email, clicked on it, and it automatically authenticated me via our AD domain and signed me in. I found some feeds I wanted (ok, actually I imported my monster-sized OPML file from NewsGator Online), and added a couple of internal feeds I don't have in our online system. I could then read my feeds with the Intranet site, just as one would expect. And then, a couple of clicks later, my feeds started showing up in my Exchange mailbox. Cool!
According to Charlie Wood, Newsgator's Vice President of Enterprise Solutions, while there are no law firms currently participating in the Dino beta, he is having conversations with several large, multinational law and professional services firms about licensing Dino. Obviously, I am not the only one who can see the potential and value of delivering newsreaders to the Outlook navigation pane and beyond via an enterprise-friendly solution.