TripleTree Collaboration

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COLLABORATION, COMMUNITIES &THE EXTENDED ENTERPRISECONSUMERISM, THE SOCIAL GRAPH, AND APPLICATIONPLATFORMS ARE CONVERGING TO HELP ORGANIZATIONSLEVERAGE RELATIONSHIPS AND ENHANCE BUSINESS AGILITY

A TripleTree Industry Analysis

952.253.5300

http://www.triple-tree.com

WWW.TRIPLE-TREE.COM MINNEAPOLIS 952.253.5300 Q1 2009 COLLABORATION PAGE 1

TABLE OF CONTENTS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 2

GROWTH DESPITE FRAGMENTATION 4

INTERNAL COLLABORATION 7

EXTERNAL COLLABORATION 9

COLLABORATION PLATFORMS 11

USERS PREFER LESS FRAGMENTED APPROACHES 13

THE POWERFUL DIFFERENTIATION OF COMMUNITIES 14

OTHER IMPACTS ON THE EXTENDED ENTERPRISE 16

CLOUD COMPUTING 18

CONCLUSION 19

APPENDIX 20

THE TRIPLE TREE TECHNOLOGY TEAM 22

TripleTree, LLC

7601 France Avenue SouthSuite 150Minneapolis, MN 55435

Minneapolis

t 952.253.5300f 952.253.5301

www.triple-tree.com


Enterprise collaboration solutions are in the midst of nearly chaotic innovation. The popularity of social networks is forcing co-workers to use consumer-like tools such as those shown in Figure 1 to stay connected with peers, clients, partners and friends outside the purview of IT. Economic pressures have businesses focused on doing more with less, forcing corporate marketing departments to innovate the way their employees and other constituents search for, create, target, and personalize content and media.

Adding to the complexity and market confusion is that much of the day-to-day information sought by today’s knowledge workers exists outside of corporate IT firewalls. “Googling it” is a knee-jerk reaction for almost every query and users are emboldened at addressing business needs with tools and solutions that do not involve corporate IT.

This behavior brings transparency to the workplace and shows how consumerism is influencing the growth of collaboration solutions. These influences include design, adoption, and usage patterns modeled after sites like eBay, Amazon and Yahoo, the likes of which most traditional enterprise applications have never seen. With collaboration solutions virally spreading into businesses of all sizes, some are concerned that best practices are seldom addressed, data is not uniformly indexed, and content is not always shared.

Amid these considerations, even the casual industry observer may call into question how legacy applications like email and web conferencing will look in five years. This is accentuated as internal and external workgroups and their activities are tied in new ways and with new business models.

It is notable that some of the best examples of sector leadership in collaboration are not originating from leaders like IBM and Microsoft, but rather from emerging vendors who are disrupting the market with point solutions. It is through these emerging vendors that users are finding approachable, flexible and relevant solutions to address needs at the individual, project, department, or organizational level.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY – The 80/20 Rule

PAGE 2 Q1 2009 COLLABORATION MINNEAPOLIS 952.253.5300 WWW.TRIPLE-TREE.COM

“TripleTree’s over-arching

message to aspiring or “next

generation” application

providers is clear: if you are

not engineering collaborative

capabilities into your solution,

you are telling the world you

have decided to remain a legacy

application vendor.”

– TripleTree

Figure 1: Social Network Tools

emailchat

events

self service tools

presence blogs

IM

publishingsocial networks

tagsSMS micro-blogswikis

forumsRSS user contributedcontent videopodcasts


The turf battles facing IBM and Microsoft are familiar – confronting marketing messages and solutions from agile, niche vendors with the counter-punch of “standards-based platforms”. Further, these niche solutions are not being sold toCIOs but to business unit executives, happy to apply operational budget dollars for much needed productivity solutions. In their fight to maintain relevance, global vendors have hurriedly incorporated new capabilities into their product mix to address new buyer attitudes and competitive realities. TripleTree has segmented the collaboration landscape into three categories:

Traditional Enterprise Vendors: Global application vendors who are incorporating collaboration constructs into their solutions to improve user adoption, worker productivity, and communication.

IT Infrastructure Vendors: Traditional hardware vendors who are jockeying to provide collaboration features as a way to differentiate their offerings and avoid commoditization.

Specialist Vendors: Regardless of size or brand recognition, firms like Facebook, Twitter, and 99Designs are gaining acceptance as meaningful business solutions because crowd sourcing and the power of each person’s social graph is becoming better understood. Unfortunately, these specialists have created market fragmentation and consternation for CIOs who are trying to get their arms around “outside the firewall” solutions.

As both business executives and CIOs seek an open, simplistic, unified and compliant approach to enterprise collaboration platforms, TripleTree has analyzed the market forces influencing vendor best practices and user needs.

For vendor CEOs, collaboration functionality is critical to long-term growth and the ability to offer connectivity to an application platform.For investors, enterprise-wide capabilities will have a better strategic value than point solutions.For vendor marketers, business over consumer applicability will garner the highest average selling price.

As an investment bank, TripleTree is concerned that users may become numb to real collaboration solutions. Daily information flow is huge, too many options exist for information access, and standards are not prevalent. All realities lead to the likelihood that content is not being well received, much less understood.

To that end, TripleTree predicts considerable vendor consolidation over the next several quarters as best-in-class collaboration platforms quickly mature. Thus, TripleTree’s over-arching message to “next generation” application providers is clear: if you are not engineering collaborative capabilities into your solution, you are telling the world you have decided to remain a legacy application vendor.

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“A combination of macro-market

trends are making it imperative

that organizations of all sizes re-

evaluate how they encourage and

manage collaboration internally and

externally. These trends include:

Competitive forces

Workplace requirements

Economic and ecological

conditions

Enabling technologies

Globalization and eCommerce

have fundamentally changed the

competitive landscape, leveling the

playing field while lowering the

barriers to entry in nearly every

industry. While these trends have

opened new market opportunities,

they have also opened the door to

more competition, undercutting

customer loyalty, and complicating

traditional methods of gaining a

competitive advantage.”

- Jeff Kaplan,

Managing Director,

THINKstrategies

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http://www.THINKstrategies.com

Collaboration has finally attained its long awaited spike in market interest as evidenced by its #2 ranking in Ziff Davis and CIO Magazine’s 2008 Top Trends Survey. While email and shared calendars have been considered corporate standards for more than a decade, only recently have web conferencing and instant messaging (IM) worked their way into mainstream enterprise applications. Now, we’re faced with a renewed level of hype around companies like Skype, LinkedIn, and dozens of other “dot-com” sounding solutions.

TripleTree believes collaboration as a niche solution will not be a compelling long-term value creator for most businesses. Rather, integrating collaborative capabilities within enterprise applications such that they support and improve business workflows will emerge as the best way to address the surge in demand.

Other factors include:

A desire to enhance the cost-effectiveness of communications with customers, partners, investors, and employees.An increased willingness for businesses to invest in customer-centricity.An increased productivity from corporations seeking continuous technology improvement.A dispersed and increasingly global workforce.The maturation of web standards and some rationalization around Web 2.0 technologies.The mainstream adoption of Cloud Computing.

It is difficult to define collaboration narrowly and vendor messaging has not offered useful clarity. Because collaboration functions link to, and overlap with, features found in ERP-like applications (e.g. financial, human resources, CRM, and retail), TripleTree has attempted to define collaboration across a continuum of solutions encompassing traditional communication mediums – such as telephony, email, and shared calendars, and web-centric mediums – such as hosting, blogs, wikis, mash-ups, widgets, RSS feeds, and social networking.

As shown in Figure 2, TripleTree has separated the functional areas of Collaboration into two spheres of influence:

Internal (within the enterprise) External (outside the enterprise)

This distinction has been drawn because the environment for which an application is designed has profound effects on workflow sophistication, policy enforcement, level of standardization, and the ability to integrate with other enterprise systems. These functional areas are shown as micro-disciplines within our proprietary Q-Diagram, consistent with other TripleTree market definitions.

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GROWTH DESPITE FRAGMENTATION


Web Meeting and Conferencing Solutions CISCO/WEBEXUsing WebEx as a foundation, Cisco has created a Collaborative Software division. This move and other public statements from Cisco indicate that collaboration underpins a large component of the Company’s unified communications focus (social networking may have a role too with much smaller deals in Five Across and Tribe.net). We expect additional moves form Cisco in SaaS-based enterprise collaboration, especially moves that can leverage WebEx’s multi-million subscriber base and MediaTone network.

http://www.webex.com

“Collaboration as a niche

solution will not be a compelling

long-term value creator for most

businesses. Rather, integrating

collaborative capabilities within

enterprise applications such

that they support and improve

business workflows will emerge

as the best way to address the

surge in demand.”

– TripleTree

http://www.webex.com


While this attempt at mapping such a wide array of internal and external collaboration tools across a continuum may not be perfect, it goes beyond grid style rankings by acknowledging the roles of “collaborators” from both inside and outside the enterprise and by identifying specific, supporting technologies.

As stated earlier, vendor messaging defining the collaboration market landscape has been somewhat inconsistent and is influenced by:

The challenges of defining collaboration boundaries.

Definitions around emerging themes such as teaming, document sharing, coordinated workflow, and online interactions.

Marketing hype emanating from global firms such as Microsoft, Salesforce.com, and IBM.

Identifying “pure play” collaboration vendors as opposed to those offering collaboration functionality as part of a suite.

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Figure 2: Collaboration Q-Diagram

Source: TripleTree, LLC

Web Self Service & Presence

Social Bookmarks

Virtual Service Agent

Customer Interaction Hub

Enterprise Wireless Email

Data Conferencing

Audience Analysis

Business Intelligence (BI)

Online Business Optimization

Social Network Analytics/Search

Portals

mCommerce

Web Chat and IM

Sales Web Chat

Dashboards and Reports

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) Feeds

Folksonomies

Customer Service Online Communities

Multichannel Commerce

and Reviews

Unified Communications

Audio Mining/Speech Analytics

Single Sign-On (SSO)

Identity Management

Mobile Application Sharing

Application Virtualization

Dialogue Management

PersuasiveContent

Management

Widgets

Project Portfolio Management (PPM)

Internet ForumsWeb Publishing

BlogsWikis

Collaboration Workspace

Group Calendars

Simple Message Syndication (SMS)

Mobile Sales Tools

mPromotions

Shared Productivity Tools

Shared Office Tools

Community Intelligence

Micro-blogs

Enterprise Social Networking

Episodic Communities

Integration as a Service

Mobile Telepresence

Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM)

Electronic Meeting Environments

Video Conferencing

Web/Mobile Video

Telepresence

Near-Field Mobile

Advertising

Communication as a Service

Enterprise Instant Messaging (IM)

Web Conferencing

Mashups

Digital Asset Management

(DAM)

Web Content Management (WCM)

Mobile Applications

Metadata/ Data Federation

Email

Targeting & SegmentationPodcasts

External

Internal

Sales & Marketing

Enablement

CustomerExperience

Management

EnablementTechnologies

BusinessPerformance Management

SocialNetworking

Workflow & ProcessesImprovement

To further illustrate the scope of fragmentation across the collaboration market, broad market sizing estimates should be considered. Below we have mirrored the Q-Diagram shown in Figure 2 with market sizing estimates for over a dozen collaboration categories.


$500MSocial Networking

$250M

RSS

$250M

Blogs

$200M

Mashups

$150M

Podcasting

$3.2B$1.0B

$350M

Content Management (Records/Document

Management)

Web Content Management

Digital Asset Management

Telepresence

Wikis

$2.3B

Web Conferencing

$50M

Web Analytics

Customer Self Service

Hub

$1B

$200M

$150M

Widgets

$75M

Figure 3: Fragmentation & Market Sizing


“Twenty years ago…80% of the

knowledge that workers required

to do their jobs resided within their

company. Now it is only 20%

because the world is changing ever

faster. We need to be open to new

and unknown connections with

people and content…”

- Andy Mulholland,

Chief Technologist, Capgemini,

as quoted in The Economist

REDUCING FRICTION ALONG THE CONTINUUM

Internal collaboration tools are engineered to reduce friction between business processes that occur predominantly within the enterprise firewall. Thus they are more standardized, more deliberate, and serve better defined user roles. Such tools have long been a focus for global technology vendors, and although incremental improvements have been made, most solutions remain inflexible, architecturally complex, and require considerable IT support. They also have origins in content management that lack key user-centric technical features. Though users of internal applications benefit from increased security, speed, and more robust functionality, disadvantages have included high up front license costs, high friction interfaces with other applications, slow deployment, and costly maintenance.

Email is by far the most widely used collaboration application and has been categorized as “internal” given its predominant deployment behind the firewall. Email has contributed immensely to enterprise productivity and other internal collaboration applications could do well by mimicking its positive attributes.They include:

Omnipresent: Accessible anywhere through wired or wireless networksIntuitive: Requires little trainingStandardized: Offers a homogeneous environment for a large

user communityRole-based: Builds around standard behaviorsPurpose-built: Serves discreet rolesDocument-centric: Provides a single interface to accomplish several

tasks (communicating, calendaring, managing)

Despite clear benefits, email also faces limitations as a stand-alone tool and is seldom the best collaboration application for business functions such as:

Managing document workflowServing as a content repositoryFacilitating team-based communicationsOptimizing advanced messaging and shared calendaring.

Unfortunately, many knowledge workers over-rely on email systems to fulfill these functions and when system availability is encumbered, productivity declines dramatically. Better communication solutions are available, and in the interest of productivity gains, TripleTree predicts that by 2010 vendors offering real-time collaboration and communication features (email) with asynchronous content management will begin to see increased adoption.

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“Of all the tools we use in the

modern office, few are the double-

edged sword that e-mail has become.

Once a method for quick and

easy communication, e-mail has

evolved into a time-consuming (but

necessary) evil in today’s workplace.

In fact, the average user spends over

30% of his day creating, organizing,

reading and responding to

e-mail.

But it’s not just overflowing inboxes

that vex today’s knowledge worker.

Blogs and RSS feeds keep users

constantly connected to the world

at large. Social groups such as

Facebook and LinkedIn keep

users continually networking. Then

there’s the actual work you have to

do. In fact, on average, you start

doing something new every three

minutes.”

SOURCE: www.ibm.com

INTERNAL COLLABORATION

http://www.ibm.com

TripleTree’s Q-Diagram (page 5) defines internal collaboration tools by three categories:

Business Performance Management Enablement TechnologiesWorkflow & Process Improvement

BUSINESS PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

The ability to mine information to derive specific answers is an important component of most any business performance management initiative. From content rich interactions to specific business applications, collaborative tools, shared dashboards, interaction analytics, and community intelligence can ease the exchange of information as well as capture business intelligence (BI) that supports improved organizational efficiency. Vendors are creating solutions to extract meaning out of these everyday interactions and when cycled through BI and analytical tools, the data gathered can translate into actionable business process improvements.

ENABLEMENT TECHNOLOGIES

The multiple form factors for communications in the digital workplace call for flexible approaches to supporting knowledge users through:

Creating innovative ways to manage the formal and informal interactions happening via chat, forums, blogs and communities. Embracing collaborative interactions as essential sources of new ideas and best practices. Capturing and managing the resulting unstructured data.

WORKFLOW & PROCESS IMPROVEMENT

Workers are becoming more “distributed” and as a result, teams are being forced to interact remotely. Thus, the reliance on collaboration tools to link these individuals with each other as well as bringing “episodic” or temporary members into the fold is strong. Many distributed teams have members who may never speak or meet in person, but through the support of virtual meetings, cost-effective processes are created for reduced team friction and thereby supports a broader range of participation.

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BusinessPerformanceManagement

Workflow & ProcessImprovement

EnablementTechnologies

EXTERNAL

INTERNAL

Consumer Productivity ToolAPPLEiWork ’09 is Apple’s new version of its home desktop productivity solution and is an attempt to gain a foothold in the Microsoft dominated productivity solutions arena. With iWork, Apple is messaging away from strictly desktop based productivity applications without making a full commitment to web-based solutions.

http://www.apple.com

http://www.apple.com/iwork

Just as enterprises utilize collaboration technologies internally, the need to improve workflows, reduce costs, and speed communication externally is also a high priority. Many view external collaboration as a two-way street. For marketing executives, it is becoming apparent that to effectively win in the marketplace, customers need power. Acknowledging this bi-directional conversation by deploying collaborative tools can augment an organization’s ability to listen, assess, and effectively respond to requests, ideas, feedback, and complaints.

For most executives, this bi-directional conversation goes deeper than simply communicating with customers. It helps by enhancing product support, sharing information in a personalized way with broad constituencies, supporting commerce, and tapping into alumni (e.g. former employees, and retirees). At its core, external collaboration tools should help a business improve its understanding of its most important markets.

Most external collaboration tools are engineered to reduce business process friction and enhance communication outside of an IT firewall. This definition considers the effects of how these solutions are delivered, what functions they offer and how they interoperate. Identifying one standard upon another in order to communicate is impractical if not impossible. Thus, we have identified a few attributes toward which leading external collaboration solutions will aspire. They should be:

Purposeful: Generic versus purpose-built application functionality Open: Web-based architectural design that is workflow or

document-centricSelf-sufficient: A customer support process requiring minimal

human intervention

TripleTree’s Q-Diagram (page 5) defines external collaboration tools by three categories:

Social NetworkingCustomer Experience Management Sales & Marketing Enablement

SOCIAL NETWORKING

Perhaps the most hyped technology trend in recent years, the popularity of social networking tools has grown virally and is driven by users who want simple user interfaces, easy access to others and constant connectivity. Considering that the roots of social networking are outside the enterprise, TripleTree expects to see increased security and user rights controls develop before these tools move inside the IT firewall. During this maturation, vendors will need to find better ways to monetize solutions as the luster of market buzz wears off and gives way to investor scrutiny around business model viability and potential growth.

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EXTERNAL COLLABORATION

Search Ranking ToolGOOGLESearchWiki is a new feature that allows Google users to rank, reorder, remove and add notes to search results. Customizable rankings and other features will only affect an individual user’s search results but soon users will be able to view the notes and rankings of other users. SearchWiki encourages users to interact with Google’s search engine and give feedback to improve search relevancy. Google will use this information to further optimize its search algorithms and better cater to the demands of its users.

http://www.google.com

Sales & MarketingEnablement

SocialNetworking

Customer ExperienceManagement

EXTERNAL

INTERNAL

“...vendors will need to find better ways to monetize solutions as the luster of market buzz wears off and gives way to investor scrutiny around business model viability and potential growth.”

– TripleTree



CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MANAGEMENT

Knowledge transfer within today’s organizations to a customer base has been liberated by the concepts and tools promoted by Web 2.0. Traditional product research and feedback from field sales interactions have limitations and cannot offer the 360 degree perspective featured by leading edge communication strategies and automated tools. Amazon was an early leader in showing businesses how to capture and assess real-time feedback that empowered its marketing, merchandising strategy, and product engineering teams to immediately tweak productivity, quality and customer service.

SALES & MARKETING ENABLEMENT

New collaboration technologies help vendors build or enhance brand loyalty and create demand for products and services. Today’s “Generation Y” knowledge workers have grown up with Google, YouTube, and the Apple iPhone and can’t imagine a world before text messaging. Their appreciation for building personal relationships via a social graph represents a unique opportunity for marketing teams tasked with extending brand loyalty and identifying new trends. Social networking for marketers includes initiatives like community marketing and group chat, both impacting how a brand can be positioned and how demand can be measured and influenced. The most effective collaboration vendors now realize they must cater to both marketing (who has a pulse on the market) and IT (who can harness the technology to meet these needs) seamlessly.

Digital Media Platform VMIX MEDIAVMIX provides a collaborative web-based video platform to help businesses build a stronger online presence and customer loyalty. By using video and other digital content to enhance user experience on a website, VMIX establishes a deeper connection between enterprises, publishers, broadcasters and their respective audiences.

http://www.vmix.com


Social Media Analytics ANDIAMO SYSTEMSAndiamo Systems delivers a SaaS-based “Word of Mouth” brand management application. By synthesizing user-generated content from a wide range of social media such as blogs, forums, and social networks, Andiamo allows businesses to assess user sentiment regarding their brand. By leveraging this real-time collective intelligence, marketers can take a more proactive approach to managing customer opinions.

http://www.andiamosystems.com

“The most effective collaboration

vendors now realize they must cater

to both marketing (who has a pulse

on the market) and IT (who can

harness the technology to meet these

needs) seamlessly.”

– TripleTree

http://www.vmix.com

http://www.andiamosystems.com


Collaboration technologies have a far reaching impact across functional enterprise domains as application platforms mature.

Compliance: In order for enterprises to meet increasingly stringent regulatory mandates, constituents at each level of the enterprise must participate in the compliance process. Collaboration technologies, in turn, encourage good governance by ensuring an enterprise-wide consensus and by matching business value to risk as collaboration policies are published.

Content: Collaboration is at the core of capturing and streamlining user input (content). This content can range from product ratings and opinions, to FAQs, user lists, blogs and bookmarks. A growing trend includes user-generated news sources and user-generated media.

CRM: Via published opinion and analysis in 2007, TripleTree identified where application tools centered on sales, marketing or service needed a centralized focus toward a “marketing and customer system of record.” Recent announcements from Salesforce.com (Force.com for Facebook), Microsoft (Azure) and Oracle (SocialCRM) are examples of social approaches for CRM platforms. They are trying to address how linking constituents can capture and assess the meaningful data emanating from customer service interactions in a move toward that vision. Other examples of CRM / Collaboration tools include:

- Web Chat and IM- Web Self Service and Presence- Virtual Service Agent- Community Intelligence- Episodic Communities

eCommerce: As the web has evolved, online commerce platforms have featured numerous collaborative features. The long tail impact of eCommerce solutions includes consumer based merchandising features like tags, reviews and product categorization.

Human Capital Optimization: Outsourcing, off-shoring and near-shoring continue to shape how organizations work. As teams become more distributed and labeled as virtual, team members who may never speak or meet in person have become reliant on automated, collaborative tools. The collective intelligence in these solutions is fed by the contributions of many individuals, who in turn can rank peers, check quality, and stay motivated to uphold their “online” reputation.

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COLLABORATION PLATFORMS

Mobile: Many estimates cite that there are over four billion mobile phones in use today. Collaboration tools ranging from simple instant messaging to more advanced applications are growing at an equally fast pace. Application innovation from mobile network and handset vendors is cutting edge, and will soon broaden the reach of application functionality.

- mBanking: Micro-applications will foster an interactive customer service experience for the financial services provider and bring convenience for users.

- mMarketing: As total spending on mobile marketing, messaging and collaboration solutions is estimated to grow from $800M in 2008 to $2B in 2012, promotional content is being pushed to drive mobile commerce.

In addition to mobile delivery models, the influence of Software as a Service (SaaS or On Demand) on Collaboration and communities is profound. A number of seminal events characterize this impact including M&A (as shown in the Appendix) and the growth of SaaS Platforms and Cloud Computing.

•mMarketing SAEPIO TECHNOLOGIESSaepio provides a mobile marketing solution as part

of a broader suite of automated marketing tools that

allows B2C retailers like Starbucks to communicate

with customers and individuals within a geographic

location. Its solution uses GPS to determine the

location of an individual (who has requested the

service) and pushes a digital coupon to the customers

mobile device, which is redeemable at the specified

Starbucks location through a quick scan of the

phone at the point of sale.

http://www.saepio.com


Compliance• Regulatory Mandates• Content• Business Risk• Information Security

Content• Tags• Localization• Education• User-Generated

CRM• Sales, marketing and service oriented content including interactive video, audio and chat

eCommerce• Online Stores• Product Reviews• Multi-Channel Commerce• Cross-Selling

Mobile• Mobile Feedback• Mobile Communities• Mobile Offers and Promotions• Mobile Search

Figure 4: Collaboration Touches Many Enterprise Domains


HR Optimization• Virtual Teams• Automated & Collaborative Tools• Collective Intelligence

http://www.saepio.com

The common theme evident throughout the industry is that enterprise users will not be able to sustain hundreds of disparate point solutions and functionality. From database technology to ERP systems and everything in between, more functionality from fewer vendors will obviate cumbersome integration cycles, in turn facilitating a higher rate of adoption and a richer collaborative environment. The landscape of today’s emerging vendors will change as end-users ignore specialized, niche applications and CIOs defer to a short list of vendors offering platform solutions.

In some respects this is already underway as global firms who are accustomed to sector leadership move to expand their influence beyond their core strengths. A few examples include:

IBM marketing Lotus beyond messaging solutions and under its Bluehouse initiative, integrating a richer application set that includes web conferencing, instant messaging, content management, social networking, and web commerce.

Microsoft shifting its collaboration focus from Exchange to SharePoint and incorporating a number of features including content management and workflow, messaging, social media, Web 2.0 constructs, and search.

Social networking tools such as Twitter and websites like Facebook experiencing huge growth in site traffic as users begin to appreciate the power of their social graph. These range from business connections and associated relationships of peers to personal relationships and communities.

Cisco is leveraging its strong web conferencing position to gain marketshare in productivity applications and will swiftly move into the on-demand media management space.

Other vendors seeking to gain a foothold on the growth of collaboration solutions, including traditional software leaders like Oracle and SAP, who are engineering their visions and capabilities for collaboration into very broad platforms.

Successful collaboration platforms will be driven not by technology and features, but by the ability to transform the way businesses approach teamwork and leverage technology for user empowerment. Today, enterprises can pick from an array of best-in-class, feature-rich collaboration tools or select a comprehensive platform solution. However, if the cultural mindset of an organization is not sufficient to foster adoption, creativity, sharing and teaming, the best automated approach will provide little value and will likely fail. The success of collaboration suites is contingent on their ability to bring about widespread user process improvement and cultural shifts and not necessarily on the robustness of their technology offering.

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USERS PREFER LESS FRAGMENTED APPROACHES

Application Integration BOOMIBoomi delivers on-demand integration of business applications. Atmosphere, its new solution, is an open platform that allows ISVs and developers to embed integration architecture into their applications to connect and collaborate with a growing network of interconnected SaaS, PaaS, on-premise, and cloud computing environments using an intuitive self-service model.

http://www.boomi.com

Collaboration Application Platform IBM BLUEHOUSEThrough Bluehouse, IBM has developed a suite of integrated Web 2.0 tools, hoping to provide a Facebook-like environment where knowledge workers can create content and interact in a secure, trusted location. Offered under the Lotus brand, Bluehouse’s toolsets include unified communication, content management, social computing, messaging and collaboration, and situational applications and integration. By taking more of a platform approach, Bluehouse aims to allow people to transcend internal/external boundaries, simplifying the collaboration process.

http://www.ibm.com

Enterprise Productivity Applications MICROSOFT SHAREPOINTAs the most widely used enterprise collaboration suites in the marketplace, a central driver of the SharePoint adoption is its ability to seamlessly deliver pre-integrated BI, collaboration, and enterprise content management functionality to Microsoft Office users. In addition to its productivity application tools, a core value proposition of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) is its middleware component, which provides a custom application development environment for both professional developers and everyday business users.

http://www.microsoft.com

http://www.boomi.com

http://www.lotuslive.com

http://www.microsoft.com/sharepoint/default.mspx

From a definitional standpoint, a community or social network is a group of people joined together with a common interest. When related to a collaboration application, strategic value is limited by the richness of its community. How can an enterprise make its communities stand out, capture the right audience, and drive value to its members? On the surface, it may be as simple as providing as much value to the community as one hopes to see in return.

Such applications and communities might focus on:

- Alumni - Employment

- Analysts - Gender

- Anonymous Parties - Geography

- Associations - Partnership

- Competitors - Prospects

- Customers - Teams

Since the goal of enterprise collaboration solutions is to facilitate and empower interactions, the success of any social networking feature can be measured by the active participation of its users. For example, in an employee-centric social network, it may be more effective to support voluntary participation by fostering an open, secure, useful and trusted workspace in which to share ideas.

Communities can be a rich resource for internal business groups and attracting new community members from outside an organization’s physical walls (or their IT department’s firewall) can benefit from initiatives like:

- Activism - “Long-tail” Brand Development

- Brand Awareness & Loyalty - Market Research

- Channel Enhancement - Product Feedback

- Community Relations - Project Management

- Customer Forums - Rapid Prototyping

- Idea Generation - Recruiting

- Innovation Support - Board or Shareholder Communications

- Key Opinion Leaders - Word of Mouth Marketing

- Alumni Relations

SUCCESSFUL COMMUNITIES ARE NOT ACCIDENTAL

Meaningful collaborative interactions happen because of a compelling topic, a motivated sponsor, or an engaging facilitator. In contrast, vendors offering a “field of dreams” approach to collaboration through free tools or some other “hook” that is bereft of community leadership may not succeed. To reduce the risk of a failed community initiative, building out a social network should include a few key constructs:

THE POWERFUL DIFFERENTIATION OF COMMUNITIES


“Since the goal of enterprise

collaboration solutions is to facilitate

and empower interactions, the

success of any social networking

feature can be measured by the

active participation of its users.”

– TripleTree


Business Goals: Users want to connect, share, learn, belong, help and acknowledge interactions. There is a natural draw to individuals wanting to participate in forums that enable and simplify these interactions.

Governance/Rules: Just as in any functioning community, rules, roles and trust must exist. Governance via ratings, user verifications and other policies are important components of enterprise collaboration and social networks.

Ownership: Enterprises must assign a business owner to champion collaboration and social networking initiatives. While ownership may vary, having well defined goals will help guide which internal departments can best drive value.

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There are a wide range of applications and uses for collaboration tools. While this report has considered a few of the drivers behind the growth and potential of enterprise collaboration and communities, additional discussions regarding unique product vertical opportunities and delivery models are introduced below.

Application Development: Distributed workforces, competitive environments, and extended supply chains are more challenging than ever before. Just as other areas of the enterprise have called on social software to improve workflows and address new challenges, application developers are turning to these same approaches to improve the overall quality of the software development and deployment process.

Product Support: Vendors such as AT&T, Dell, and Symantec have turned to collaboration vendors like Lithium to build product support forums driven by user participation to drive down product support costs. Customers are encouraged to participate in online product forums to solve FAQs, determine best-practices, and find new and innovative ways other users utilize products and services. The goal of creating these communities is to eliminate costly inbound calls to product support teams by encouraging users to interact to solve each other’s problems. The goal of these user-generated forums is to improve customer support while transferring product support costs from businesses and into the communities.

VERTICAL SOLUTIONS

Healthcare: The way that consumers (patients or concerned individuals) now seek information goes well beyond face time with a care provider. TripleTree recently published a report on the Health & Wellness sector, where we explored how healthcare providers and patients are increasingly looking to web-based communities to find new ways to educate themselves. We contended that several companies are intelligently leveraging the social networking model to bring together various stakeholders in the healthcare system with similar interests. These communities have a voluntary, captive audience and a well-defined need. One example is AmericanWell and its solution to facilitate virtual interactions between providers and patients. Its revenue model is driven by reducing overall healthcare costs while substantially increasing convenience.

Financial Services: A surprising number of companies have evolved to offer social collaboration tools for investment decision support and loan requests. Specifically, these services include validating loan requests outside of formal bank lending constraints, posting and assessing peer feedback on financial decisions, aggregating personal financial information, and rendering targeted advice

•

•

OTHER IMPACTS ON THE EXTENDED ENTERPRISE


Software Development Tools COLLABNETCollabNet’s web-based application lifecycle management solution provides tools to facilitate a collaborative software development environment that reduces friction in the software development process. Its solution connects disparate team members through a unified platform that increases collaboration and workflow among remote team members. By simplifying the entire development process and fostering collaborative information sharing, CollabNet speeds time-to-market while minimizing infrastructure costs associated with software development.

http://www.collab.net

Community Health PATIENTS LIKE METhe company creates new knowledge by charting the real-world course of disease through the shared experiences of patients with various conditions such as ALS, Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson’s, HIV and Mood. In addition to communities of patients interacting to help them manage their personal illnesses, central to PatientsLikeMe’s model is assisting industry researchers to better understand the course of the disease through the exchange of patient-authorized structured health data on outcomes, symptoms, and

treatments.

http://www.patientslikeme.com

Enterprise Community Management LITHIUM TECHNOLOGIESLithium is the leading provider of customer-centric social networking solutions for the enterprise. Working with market leaders, Lithium helps inspire customers to share knowledge, connect with each other, and connect with the enterprise, thus providing a unique method for companies to identify, engage, and understand customers. As a result, businesses can measurably improve their marketing and sales, accelerate innovation, and increase customer satisfaction. Lithium’s platform is proven in high-volume, growth environments and provides the security, analytics, APIs, and multi-language support that enterprises demand.

http://www.lithium.com

http://www.collab.net

http://www.patientslikeme.com

http://www.lithium.com

via a single interface. Cake Financial provides an online portal for investors to measure portfolio performance and track how “top performers” are investing and receive qualified opinions on live market moves as well as buy, sell and hold recommendations.

Education: Traditional collaboration leverage points of knowledge capture peer-to-peer interactions and content management have strong ties into today’s education sector. Class coordination, project/report development and scheduling tools are a few examples being applied by both pre- and post-secondary schools.

•


Connecting Patients and Providers ZOCDOC ZocDoc brings the speed and convenience of the web to enhance the manual process of booking a doctor or dentist appointment. Its online solutions enable users to view real-time calendar availability of providers in their geographic area and schedule an appointment, all from within a web portal. ZocDoc empowers consumers to make informed decisions more quickly. Through a single visit to its web portal, consumers can find local providers, review patient encounters and ratings, filter providers by insurance, and book appointments online 24/7.

http://www.zocdoc.com

http://www.zocdoc.com

Perhaps the most important trend driving collaboration is the mainstream adoption of Cloud Computing and Software as a Service (SaaS). Today, most team-oriented interactions within organizations occur beyond the firewall and are best delivered via web-based platforms. The inherent nature of team- oriented projects provides a synergistic fit with the web-based construct of SaaS solutions. The ad-hoc adoption of external collaboration projects with partners and customers allows knowledge workers to create temporary work environments with on-demand collaborative tools (wikis/blogs/virtual teams) to fulfill short-term needs. Most on demand collaboration tools will offer:

More open environmentsFaster implementation cyclesSimplistic deploymentsLower up-front investmentSimple and powerful ways to link users from multiple communitiesAn ability to extend business function to partners and customersReduced complexity and reliance on IT A light technology footprint

All of these are critical attributes for successful collaboration environments. Although most of today’s collaboration deployments are on-premise, TripleTree views SaaS as the primary enabler of collaboration technologies and attributes much of today’s market interest and innovation to SaaS vendors. Certain offerings such as enterprise content management (ECM) suites and tools stemming from ERP suites will succeed predominantly behind the firewall but we are beginning to see more collaboration tools being offered via SaaS.

Because both delivery models feature value drivers for particular functionalities, the maturation of collaboration will bear a hybrid model that leverages both on-premise and SaaS. Successful collaboration platforms will tap the benefits of Cloud Computing (cost savings, openness, scalability, and extensibility) and maintain a footprint behind the firewall to serve internal systems.

••••••••

CLOUD COMPUTING


Wiki SOCIALTEXTSocialtext is a high-touch wiki and social networking company centered on providing wiki-centric collaboration tools to enterprises. Version 3.0 of its flagship solution features a dashboard-like UC and social network tool. Recently, Socialtext announced plans to develop a Twitter-like application for businesses to serve the enterprise micro-blogging market.

http://www.socialtext.com

Enterprise Productivity Applications GOOGLE APPSAlthough enterprise sales constitute a small portion of total revenue, Google seeks to capture a larger share of the corporate market through its Google Apps Premier Edition (GAPE). Built by piece-mealing a host of recent acquisitions, Google has built a SaaS-based portfolio of tools centered around Google’s popular Gmail, Google Docs, Google Talk, and Page Creator. GAPE lacks the functionality set of its on-premise counterparts, but offers businesses a low cost, slimmed down alternative to the IBM and Microsoft productivity application suites.


http://www.socialtext.com

http://www.google.com/apps

CEOs and their executive teams are now focused on the power of both niche and platform-oriented collaboration tools and the need to extend their enterprise by leveraging the social graph. For specialized vendors with discrete solutions, going it alone in an economic climate where speed to market and cost effectiveness dictate success (and survival) is not an option. As such, alliances and alignment within a larger vendor ecosystem are a good first step. For global firms, TripleTree asserts that collaboration features will become the very core of every enterprise application suite and that business functionality will become a secondary part of the platform. Other considerations:

Content: Collaborative workflows are now more central to traditional enterprise content management (ECM) systems as knowledge workers seek real-time links to the producers of information. Collaboration capabilities improve content management solutions by allowing content creators the ability to manage information during the creation process via features such as wikis, threaded discussions, or instant messaging. Vendors integrating collaboration features into their content management solutions will be in a stronger competitive position to manage an exponentially growing information landscape.

Customer Service and Social Context: TripleTree predicts that marketing and customer service departments will remain the driving force behind demand for collaboration features and the unification of collaboration platforms. For ISVs, integrated email, content search, video, mobile features, and social tools are examples of features where value creation can occur, but questions about how social and professional connections will be maintained and extended in a secure, approachable platform still exist.

Niche Solutions: Point-based collaboration solutions are becoming enmeshed in the enterprise application landscape and are providing “caulk” to link key workflows, individual roles, and performance metrics. To build strategic value, these solution providers need to consider how they will link to broader platform ecosystems.

Platforms: Established vendors and global leaders need to aggressively engineer collaboration tools into their product suites. Some will sidestep organic development of collaboration features and turn to acquisitions for rapid market presence.

TripleTree’s investment banking and advisory practice is focused on where disruptive technology-enabled delivery models are influencing horizontal software applications like collaboration. We look forward to learning more about your organization and understanding the key opportunities and challenges that are shaping your vision and how we can help accelerate your success.


CONCLUSION

“For global firms, TripleTree asserts

that collaboration features will become

so core to every enterprise application

suite that business functionality will

become secondary to the collaboration

platform.”

– TripleTree



Transaction Most Recent Current Total Date Target Description Investment* Round* Investment*

JackBe Enterprise mashup software

KickApps Corporation SaaS-based media and community applications

Open-Xchange Open source email and collaboration solutions

Vivaty Online virtual communites

DimDim Open source Web conferencing solutions

Digg Enables users to search and share content online via tagging

The Active Network Group specific online communities and Web 2.0 toolsets

Appirio On-demand adoption; Salesforce.com and Google apps integration

Boomi On-demand application integration

LinkedIn Social networking for professionals

NetPickle Web-based widgets and applications on social networks

Lithium Technologies Social media platform for building enterprise communities

Zannel Mobile instant messaging platform

Flock Social network web browser

Think Passenger Brand management and customer collaboration

Wetpaint.com Online social publishing platform

Big Jump Media Video-centric social network

Starcite On-demand global meetings management

Ning Hosting services for online communities, blogs and forums

Alfresco Software Open source enterprise content management solutions

SugarCRM Open source customer relationship management software

Facebook Social networking website

NewsGator Technologies RSS feed aggregation solutions

MyBuys Online consumer recommendation tools

FaceTime Communications Enterprise instant messaging applications

Metacafe Video-centric social networks and forums

Jive Software Social productivity and community solutions for enterprises

Hulu Ad-supported online video services

Loopt Mobile-based social mapping and communication service

Socialtext Wiki-based Web 2.0 technologies

Daptiv Project management and collaboration software

Reunion.com Social networking-based reunion website

Zopa Limited Online financial marketplace for lending and borrowing

RingCube Technologies Digital workspace solutions

Plaxo Online social networking and portals to consumers

VMIX Media Digital media platform to build online presence for the enterprise

APPENDIX – SELECT COLLABORATION INVESTMENT ACTIVITY

* Information Based on Publically Disclosed Data

Source: Capital IQ

$5.0

$14.0

$9.0

$9.5

NA

$28.7

$80.0

$5.6

$4.0

$75.7

$52.0

$12.0

$10.0

$15.0

$8.0

$25.0

$30.0

$15.0

$60.0

$9.0

$20.0

NA

$12.0

$10.0

$15.6

$30.0

$15.0

$100.0

$12.0

$9.5

$21.0

$25.0

$12.9

$12.0

$9.0

$22.0

$15.0

$21.0

$32.0

$17.8

$9.5

$9.0

$40.0

$275.0

$6.7

$4.0

$103.0

$67.0

$21.0

$16.0

$28.0

$20.5

$40.0

$30.0

$51.0

$104.0

$19.0

$46.0

$513.0

$30.0

$14.5

$85.6

$45.0

$15.0

$100.0

$17.0

$13.5

$36.0

$25.0

$34.0

$16.0

$28.30

$27.0

$27.5

D

C

B

A

C

C

F

B

A

D

C

B

B

D

C

C

A

E

D

C

D

E

E

B

G

C

A

A

B

C

B

A

C

B

D

B

C

(All figures are in millions)

Dec-08

Nov-08

Nov-08

Oct-08

Oct-08

Sep-08

Aug-08

Jul-08

Jul-08

Jun-08

Jun-08

Jun-08

Jun-08

May-08

May-08

May-08

May-08

May-08

Apr-08

Jan-08

Jan-08

Jan-08

Dec-07

Oct-07

Sep-07

Aug-07

Aug-07

Aug-07

Jul-07

Jun-07

May-07

Apr-07

Mar-07

Mar-07

Feb-07

Jan-07

MEDIAN:

Acquisition Enterprise EV / Date Acquirer Target Description Value Revenue Revenue

Dec-08 Six Apart Pownce Online file sharing, messaging, blogging

Nov-08 Twitter Values of n Online email and productivity tools

Nov-08 Oracle Tacit Software (IP assets) Shared profiles, messaging, and content sharing solutions

Sep-08 Cisco Systems Jabber Unified communications, chat, and conferencing software

Aug-08 Cisco Systems PostPath Linux-based email and calendaring software for enterprises

Aug-08 Athenahealth Crest Line Messaging services to the healthcare industry

Aug-08 AOL Socialthing Online social networking

Aug-08 Amazon.com Tastemakers Online literature-centric social networking

Jul-08 Hyland Software Liberty Information Digital asset management, e-forms, and email management solutions

Apr-08 BT Group Wire One Video and Web conferencing solutions

May-08 Comcast Plaxo Online social networking and portals to consumers

May-08 eGenera Talisma Enterprise email, chat, and telephony applications

Apr-08 Six Apart Apperceptive Online enterprise social media and blogs

Apr-08 Jive Jotlet Online calendaring and project management

Apr-08 Seesmic Twhirl Twitter blog search and image uploading

Apr-08 mindSHIFT Collaboration Online Hosted applications, messaging, and collaboration managed services

Mar-08 AOL Bebo Online social networking and content sharing

Feb-08 EMC Corporation Pi Corp Online file sharing, search, and storage solutions

Feb-08 West Corporation Genesys Conferencing Online, audio enabled conferencing solutions

Feb-08 Novell SiteScape Integrated forums, blogs, wikis, chat and Web conferencing tools

Jan-08 Blackboard NTI Group Email and SMS mass notification solutions

Jan-08 D&B Visible Path Corporation Online social networking for businesses

Dec-07 EMC Corporation Document Sciences Content publishing and automation software solutions

Oct-07 Omniture Visual Sciences Optimization, content management, search, and data management

Oct-07 AT&T Interwise IP-based enterprise conferencing solutions

Oct-07 Google Jaiku Social networking, blogging, and content sharing solutions

Sep-07 Yahoo! Zimbra Open source email and messaging solutions

Sep-07 Xerox Corporation Advectis Online document management, archiving, sharing, and collaboration

Aug-07 Microsoft Corporation Parlano Group chat enablement software solutions

Aug-07 IBM Corporation WebDialogs Online conferencing and meeting software

Jul-07 Thoma Cressey Bravo Hyland Software Enterprise content management software solutions

May-07 Google FeedBurner Web-based RSS feed management solutions

May-07 Salesforce.com Koral Web-based collaborative content management

Apr-07 Google Marratech AB Video conferencing, collaboration, and meeting software

Apr-07 Google Tonic Systems PP automation, presentation/document management

Apr-07 CollabNet VA Software Tools and repository for open source development

Mar-07 Cisco Systems WebEx Communications Web meeting and conferencing solutions

Jan-07 Adobe Systems Antepo Instant messaging enterprise software


APPENDIX – SELECT COLLABORATION M&A ACTIVITY Transaction Most Recent Current Total Date Target Description Investment* Round* Investment*

JackBe Enterprise mashup software

KickApps Corporation SaaS-based media and community applications

Open-Xchange Open source email and collaboration solutions

Vivaty Online virtual communites

DimDim Open source Web conferencing solutions

Digg Enables users to search and share content online via tagging

The Active Network Group specific online communities and Web 2.0 toolsets

Appirio On-demand adoption; Salesforce.com and Google apps integration

Boomi On-demand application integration

LinkedIn Social networking for professionals

NetPickle Web-based widgets and applications on social networks

Lithium Technologies Social media platform for building enterprise communities

Zannel Mobile instant messaging platform

Flock Social network web browser

Think Passenger Brand management and customer collaboration

Wetpaint.com Online social publishing platform

Big Jump Media Video-centric social network

Starcite On-demand global meetings management

Ning Hosting services for online communities, blogs and forums

Alfresco Software Open source enterprise content management solutions

SugarCRM Open source customer relationship management software

Facebook Social networking website

NewsGator Technologies RSS feed aggregation solutions

MyBuys Online consumer recommendation tools

FaceTime Communications Enterprise instant messaging applications

Metacafe Video-centric social networks and forums

Jive Software Social productivity and community solutions for enterprises

Hulu Ad-supported online video services

Loopt Mobile-based social mapping and communication service

Socialtext Wiki-based Web 2.0 technologies

Daptiv Project management and collaboration software

Reunion.com Social networking-based reunion website

Zopa Limited Online financial marketplace for lending and borrowing

RingCube Technologies Digital workspace solutions

Plaxo Online social networking and portals to consumers

VMIX Media Digital media platform to build online presence for the enterprise

* TripleTree and Industry Source Estimates

Source: Capital IQ, The 451 Group

Source: Capital IQ

NA

NA

NA

NA

$215

$8

NA

NA

NA

NA

$150

NA

NA

NA

NA

NA

$850

NA

$285

$19

$182

$4

$83

$382

$121

NA

$350

$32

$53

NA

$265

$100

$7

$15

NA

$7

$2,909

NA

$111M

NA

NA

NA

NA

NA

NA

NA

NA

NA

$140

$10*

$34

NA

NA

NA

NA

$20*

NA

$209

$10*

$30

$3*

$39

$76

$25

NA

$3*

$8*

$9*

NA

NA

NA

$0.5*

$1.5*

NA

$9

$380

NA

$15M

NA

NA

NA

NA

NA

NA

NA

NA

NA

NA

15.0x

NA

NA

NA

NA

NA

42.5x

NA

1.4x

1.9x

6.1x

1.4x

2.1x

5.0x

4.8x

NA

116.7x

4.3x

5.8x

NA

NA

NA

14.0x

10.0x

NA

0.7x

7.7x

NA

5.4xMEDIAN:

(All figures are in millions)

THE TRIPLE TREE TECHNOLOGY TEAM


Kevin Green, Managing PartnerCo-founded TripleTree25+ years building and advising Healthcare and Technology companiesSenior executive roles in public and private companies; two as CEOActive with numerous industry associations and selective boardsBA and MBA, University of San Diego

David Henderson, Managing PartnerCo-founded TripleTreeFormer COO of a $90 million telecom company25+ years in venture capital and operating expertise7+ years in public accounting with Arthur AndersenActive Board of Director on several public and private companiesBA, Moorhead State University; Certified Public Accountant

Chris Hoffmann, Senior Principal/Research Director, TechnologyJoined TripleTree in 200520 years of experience as an operating/sales executive, consultant, and analyst in the technology industryFormer President of Tier 1 Research; executive positions at Gartner, GE Capital and IBM Global Services2006-Present SIIA Software Division Board memberBA, University of Minnesota-Duluth; advanced studies through the University of Minnesota and Michigan State University

Brian Klemenhagen, Senior PrincipalJoined TripleTree in 1999 with over 10 years of combined investment banking and Wall Street equity research experiencePrimary engagement manager across technology, software and outsourcing sectorsPrincipal contributor to TripleTree’s SaaS researchPrior to joining TripleTree was with RBC Dain RauscherBA, Gustavus Adolphus College; MBA, Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota

Scott Donahue, PrincipalJoined TripleTree in 200615+ years financial strategy analysis and business development consultation including marketing, operations support, and technical product developmentExpertise in technology operations and services delivery approachesWall Street experienceBA, University of California – Santa Barbara; MBA, University of Michigan

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Scott Prentice, AssociateJoined TripleTree in 2007Focus on M&A and private placementPreviously worked on M&A activity at Ingenix, a division of UnitedHealth GroupPrior experience included technology capital investment at Target Corporation and as an IT consultant with Computer Science CorpBA, Bethel College; MBA, Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota

Michael Boardman, Senior AnalystJoined TripleTree in 2006Specializes in research and analysis of industry trends and investment opportunities within Software and IT servicesPrior experience includes an internship at Merrill LynchHeld a Cisco Certified Networking Associate Degree (CCNA)BA, Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota

Matthew Flores, Senior AnalystJoined TripleTree in 2006 focusing on research and analysis within Enterprise Software, Telco and Wireless.Research and transaction experience with the Technology and Mobile Wireless teamsBA, Bates College

Joanna Redding, AnalystJoined TripleTree in 2008Focuses primarily on industry trends and investment opportunities within Software and Tech-Enabled Business ServicesPreviously interned at Protiviti BBA, Finance, Investments, and Banking and Accounting, University of Wisconsin – Madison.

Jeff Kaplan, Senior Advisor• Advises TripleTree’s technology team• Founder and Managing Director of THINKstrategies• Founder of the Software as a Service (SaaS) Showplace® and Managed

Service Showplace®

• Founding member of the SIIA SaaS Executive Council• Frequent speaker at industry events and contributing columnist for

BusinessWeek, Mass High Tech Journal, Financial Times of London, and Network World, among many other industry leading publications

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About TripleTree

TripleTree is a leading investment banking firm dedicated to meeting the needs of technology,

business services, and healthcare companies. TripleTree’s professionals have over 100 years of

combined senior executive operating experience building high growth technology, healthcare

and financial companies. Specializing in M&A, private placements and financial advisory

services, we represent growth-oriented companies in pursuing strategic alternatives that drive

premium valuations. Unlike most investment banking firms, TripleTree brings a unique

approach to advisory services through strict industry focus and extensive commitment to

research. Such a commitment has allowed TripleTree to build an investment bank focused on

identifying and delivering strategic solutions that enable shareholders and business executives

to maximize the value of their firm in a dynamic and rapidly changing marketplace.

For further information, visit our website at: www.triple-tree.com

Copyright © 2009 by TripleTree, LLC

t 952-253-5300 f 952-253-5301

7601 France Avenue South Suite 150 Minneapolis, Minnesota 55435