In the Web 2.0 heyday, Netvibes had that star appeal that few companies ever experience. Their platform for creating personal dashboards rocketed in growth. Web innovators sang its praises. But you know the story. Netvibes struggled to find a business model.
Now, we’re on the cusp of the Enterprise 2.0 movement and Netvibes has suddenly come back as a contender for providing dashboard environments to better manage enterprise software.
Today, Netvibes is announcing a “sales, marketing and technology,” partnership with Sage Software, an enterprise software company with 5.8 million customers worldwide and more than 14,500 people worldwide.
Sage will integrate the Netvibes dashboard technology into Sage software products and business processes. The idea is that enterprise software has become increasingly complex for users. Netvibes technology will help manage Sage software by providing customers with an environment that is more user friendly. Sage is hoping the partnership will bridge enterprise software with the Web 2.0 features of the Netvibes technology.
Sage reaches mid-market companies. These are larger enterprises that may do $60 million in revenues. They are adopting increasingly complex software. For instance, spftware for Enterprise Resource Planning software (ERP) and Business Process Management (BPM) are more popular in light of enterprise efforts to bring more efficiencies in these times of economic difficulty. But often, the tools require a degree of administration beyond the capabilities of the average business user.
Sage will integrate Netvibes into the launch of its ERP X3 software, coming in the first quarter of 2010.
For all the skeptics of social technologies, is this at all proof of the benefits that social software provides? Sage is adopting the Netvibes platform to make it simpler for customers to use its ERP software.
Netvibes grew from the roots of the social software movement. Its technology represents what social software can help people accomplish: give the user more options to be productive and creative in their work.
