Blog Entry

Now two days into BrainShare and I am growing even more excited for the future! I was able to attend a session on Pulse and I am pretty excited about the prospect of implementing an enterprise class business social networking tool for both my business and my clients. The paradigm appears to be very powerful, allowing for both public and private communications from a very easy interface. Given that the software has not been released I am a little concerned about how users might deal with public vs private, but then only time will tell.

Unlike past years most of the product branding (or product names) have remained relatively consistent from the past two or three years. I also feel there is less confusion over product positioning in general. Along with this it seems that user interfaces across many of the products have grown much more mature, intuitive and powerful while affording a much easier user experience. All this while maintaining the same, or even better, reliability and security.

Just in case it isn't obvious there are several very important reasons to simplify the user experience, even if the user is an IT professional. Tasks are more likely to be completed when they are more strait forward, important when the task is security or compliance related. Configuration errors are reduced, or even eliminated. Then, most important of all, the user is more productive.

Interface and usage paradigm enhancements have also made a big impact on the newest version of GroupWise. Usability seems to be greatly improved and there are a number of powerful new enhancements. You should check out the product pages for more details.

I am looking forward to day 3 and the IT Tech Talk, formerly Meet the Experts, where attendees will quite literally have unprecedented access to the developers and other key team members that are ultimately responsible for Novel's products. More importantly, this also creates the opportunity for development teams get to know the customer, his issues and needs. This event is, by far, my most favorite of all BrainShare parties, and has been for years.