As part of the Enterprise Startup Spotlight I’ve asked each submitter to provide a one sentence explanation of the company and an explanation of how it’s different from the competition. I’m beginning to think I should have collapsed both of those fields to two words.
Why? Because so many of the strongest enterprise 2.0 companies can be summed up in just two words. Here are 15 products explained in two words each.
- Chatter – Salesforce.com Integration
- Confluence – Developer Collaboration
- Drupal – Open CMS
- Huddle – External Collaboration
- Jive – Everything Suite
- Lotus Connections – Social Analytics
- Mindtouch – Social Documentation
- Newsgator – Usable SharePoint
- PBWorks – Agency Collaboration
- Qontext – Contextual Integration
- StreamWork – Decision Making
- Socialcast – Embeddable Microblogging
- tibbr – Universal Inbox
- Yakabod – Secure Sharing
- Yammer – Freemium Social
This is by no means an exhaustive list of companies that have a strong, clear position. But these companies practically own these market positions, and standing out against them them is tough – even if they’re not the best products in their category.
Yes, some might fit more than one description. For example, Huddle is also a freemium service. But its external collaboration that it has staked its business on, and it’s done a good job of owning that position. Likewise, it’s hard to compete with Yammer for the freemium position. Mindtouch has an open source product, but it’s the focus on documentation that sets it apart.
Many are trying to compete with one or more of these positions. There are other everything suites besides Jive – but today it’s difficult to set oneself apart from Jive based only on a feature list. tibbr managed to differentiate itself from Jive not by stuffing every conceivable social feature under the sun, but by making it easy to add activity streams from other enterprise applications. In so doing, it made itself standout from Jive and other established players like Socialtext.
As the enterprise 2.0 market matures I hope to see more products with clear, distinct value propositions that can be defined in only two or three words.
Photo by Kioan
