The success of the hosted version of our enterprise bookmarking software has led us to develop a version that can be installed on your own servers* when you want that added layer of security and control (as well as things like LDAP integration). You’ll even get our API so you can build your own internal apps to interface with your bookmark and tag data.

Our development team released the first test version yesterday, so we’re just putting it through its paces now. If you’re interested in learning more, drop me a line.

* IIS and SQL Server required.

If they gave prizes for not blogging for over six months, we’d win.

Usually, you’d just think we’d gone into hiding or become one of the first Enterprise 2.0 casualties. But Bill Ives has gone and linked to this blog in a post written for the Fast Forward blog, entitled Enterprise 2.0 Application Providers are Blogging and spoiled all the fun.

Actually, we probably owe Bill a favour. He was one of the first people to become interested in what we are doing and we care about what he has to say. He’s also one of the leading commentators on social software in the enterprise.

So what’s our excuse?

Put simply, we just haven’t had the time to blog. We’re a small team who have had to prioritise our clients and prospects over writing clever thoughts about social bookmarking and Enterprise 2.0 (that doesn’t mean to say we don’t have them, by the way). Don’t fool yourself that it’s easier for small companies to maintain a blog than large ones - the converse is actually true.

Instead, what we’re finding is an increased demand for social software solutions, not just social software. So a lot of what we’re doing right now is helping companies understand where social bookmarking fits into their social software strategy, and how to integrate it with their legacy systems. The good thing is that it’s possible; the bad thing is that it doesn’t leave us much time to blog.

So that’s our story. Take it or leave it. If you want regular insight on who’s doing what with social software then follow people like Bill. If you want to integrate social bookmarking into your existing intranet, knowledge/document management system or even other social software tools, then drop us a line.

IMPORTANT: Due to a number of requests from developers (and because the competition was late getting listed on one of the key API portals), the deadline has been extended until 30 November 2007. So get coding!

We just launched our new API at the Office 2.0 Conference in San Francisco. The official release is on WebWire, but here’s why we think it’s big news:

1. Our customers can now integrate Cogenz into their existing intranets, search engines, desktop applications or other workflow tools - closing the loop between our standalone social software application and their established platforms. This could include simply surfacing tag and bookmark data on intranet pages, or feeding user-generated metadata into their enterprise search engines.
2. Third parties can create and monetise software to help our customers save and discover their data, visualise it in interesting and informative ways, integrate it with desktop operating systems and applications, and even create completely new interfaces.
3. Other social software companies can integrate our functionality with their tools, saving them the time and cost of re-inventing the wheel.

In addition we’re offering the developer of the best application that uses our API USD 5,000 in cash, with 5 runner-up prizes of USD 750 each. The contest closes 30 November 2007 - more information here.

Spurred on by others’ efforts, we finally got round to creating an extensive screencast introduction to social bookmarking in the enterprise using Cogenz.

It covers the basic concepts of social bookmarking and demonstrates how companies can use Cogenz to create a secure and private system for their employees to collect and share business bookmarks.

You can watch it below on YouTube, or if you want a full resolution experience watch the original Flash screencast. We hope it’s worth 7m 48s of your time.

We’ve got some shorter ‘howto’ videos in the edit suite at the moment, so will upload those over the next few weeks.

In his latest Team Think blog post, ZDNet’s Dave Greenfield highlights "a glaring, underserviced niche" in the enterprise bookmarking and tagging market.

He identifies that the "small enterprise" of 50-500 users has similar security requirements to large enterprises and wants the ease of use of consumer-orientated services, but simply cannot afford the $20+ per user price tags of the heavyweight enterprise bookmarking systems.

We respectfully disagree with his assertion that "services aren’t likely to be the preferred deployment method for enterprise bookmarking and tagging". We’re seeing very few problems with the hosted model right now. Maybe SaaS has finally come of age… And as Dave hints at, we’re thinking about releasing a low-cost on-premise solution soon.

He points out that Cogenz’s on-demand service is priced at just $2 per user, although I think he has some of his comparison pricing wrong by mixing monthly and annual charges, and also assuming that the same per-user price points are applied to a smaller user base than his original 5,000 user scenario.

We’re pretty transparent about our pricing (no "Contact Sales" links on our site), so if you wanted to use Cogenz with 50 users it would cost you $180/month for our Workgroup edition. With 500 users you’d be looking at $1,070/month for the Enterprise version.

We’re always interested in new ways to explain social bookmarking and its benefits for business, and these two videos and slideshows do the job perfectly.

First up, the latest in the Plain English series from Common Craft, explaining what social bookmarking is "in Plain English" using the public del.icio.us service as an example.

And to add the business context, here’s another great set of slides from the DIGWWW team at Pfizer (courtesy of Sid’s blog), designed to convince their staff of the personal and business benefits of enterprise social bookmarking:

Great stuff.

Great to hear from Susan Scrupski that Pfizer’s Scott Gavin (aka Charlie) will be speaking as part of the Enterprise 2.0 track at Office 2.0.

One thing’s for sure - you know the slides are going to be good!

In a very good introduction to Enterprise 2.0, CIO.com (perhaps unwittingly) demonstrates why public social bookmarking systems like del.icio.us are not appropriate and potentially even dangerous as business tools:

Marketing teams could use social bookmarks for competitive analysis to track what a competitor is doing; Sales could use it to learn and share information about targeted companies; knowledge workers could use the technology to track a particular subject such as Exchange Traded Funds or cell phones. What’s more, people can share these lists, and the data lives on even after an employee leaves the company.

Yet how many employees are using them to track sensitive subjects such as these?

Whilst we’re not great fans of the term here at Cogenz towers, we couldn’t help but applaud Frédéric Cavazza’s excellent article answering the question What is Enterprise 2.0?

If you’re into schematic diagrams take a look. You won’t be disappointed.

UPDATE 31 July: We made it into the official press release

Cogenz has signed up to be a sponsor of the Office 2.0 Conference to be held in San Francisco on 5-7 September. We’ll have a stand, a live demo presentation and a few people milling round, and are also planning a couple of suprises.

The Office 2.0 Conference is a collective experiment organized every year in San Francisco, CA and aimed at discovering the future of mobile productivity & collaboration. It is a unique gathering of visionaries, thought leaders, and customers using innovative online services for getting things done, at the office, at home, and on the go.

Looking through the list, it seems like we’re one of very few non-US companies to be attending, so if you fancy coming along to redress the international balance, the organisers have given us the following discount code ($100 off): ATLTUAE42.

As if that wasn’t incentive enough, all attendess will also receive an iPhone. I wonder if they’ll also be giving away the hacks to make it work on UK networks…?

If you’re heading to the St Regis Hotel in September, then drop me a mail so we can ensure we meet up.