On May 1, Indaba Music (www.indabamusic.com) will launch their advanced online production console with integral new features for their international community of professional and amateur musicians. Using the application, musicians can access, edit and mix their music from any computer in the world. The console will now allow for mix down, where individual tracks submitted by different users are mixed together into a single file, creating a finished song ready for distribution. Other new features include looping, automated pan/volume and the ability to export session tracks and information directly to ProTools, Logic, and all other desktop audio applications. The new console builds upon the features of the existing site console, which include multi-track editing, auditions and session track contributions from multiple users, a chat window for real time communication, and the ability to save multiple mixes of the session.

Where once music creation was bounded by geography and online opportunities scarce, Indaba Music now offers a diverse community and an easy-to-use set of collaborative tools in one place. Indaba is a Zulu word that invokes the spirit of collaboration and community. It refers to a gathering or a forum for sharing ideas, and it embodies concepts that are central to the mission of Indaba Music.

Indaba Music’s additional features include public or private “Sessions” to manage new recording, mixing, or mastering projects together and a recommendation system whereby site members are suggested to other users that they may be interested in working with. As part of building a new marketplace for music creation, Indaba offers the ability to establish terms and payment for work and then to rate the experience of collaborating with other session members, forming a meaningful feedback system.

We maximize the productivity and quality of service by giving customer service agents the power to access expertise anywhere within a company or to collaborate with external partners for tailored case resolution. Neocase provides all relevant business units with direct, customized access for solving each customer issue, organizing back-up teams as well as all internal and external departments of a company around a single customer contact.

Neocase can be deployed on-demand, on-premise, or bundled with Microsoft CRM 3.0 sales and marketing modules.

TechAddress:  What makes your company stand apart from your competitors?

Neocase:  While most CRM vendors focus their efforts on the marketing and salesforce automation elements of the CRM equation, Neocase hones in solely on the customer service prong to create both deep domain expertise and a more complete, customer-focused product offering. We implement a unique parent-child collaborative case creation, whereby a case can be easily duplicated by an agent, then administered to internal and external experts to resolve the case quickly. The customer service agent is not always able to solve a case on his own, so Neocase allows for collaboration among the appropriate expertise within a company to solve customer issues.   

We also leverage an innovative channel strategy where channel partners are kept in the sales cycle for our on-demand product, something they have been left out of by many other on-demand vendors. Additionally, the combination of our solutions with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 delivers the only complete CRM solution available to address the full cycle of sales, marketing and customer service operations.

TechAddress:  What are some of the main features?

Neocase:  The concept of collaboration lies at the foundation of our approach to customer service. Collaboration ensures that customer requests are handled not only in the context of the help desk or customer service department, but also allows smart agents to work in real-time with other departments such as sales, marketing, supply chain, accounting as well as with external partners to utilize their efficiencies and achieve faster case resolution.

Our completely collaborative customer service platform is comprised of seven modules that work well individually and, when used together, function synergistically for faster case resolution. These seven components include a collaborative platform; Self-service Portal which allows for 24/7 online service access by the customer; a Partner Center which enables external partners to contribute to case resolution; Service Level Agreement (SLA) module; Knowledge Base containing extensive online library of past cases and case resolution information; Field Services module to dispatch field services agents through geo-localization; and a Reporting and Dashboards module.

TechAddress:  Who’s your target customer or audience?

Neocase:  Given the flexible implementation structures we offer, our target customer-base includes both SMBs as well as large enterprises. This includes global companies in a variety of industries including high tech, financial services, retail, hospitality and healthcare.

TechAddress:  Any new things in particular that you’re working on right now?

Neocase:  We’re always looking for ways to improve our technology for both the companies who implement Neocase’s solutions and the customers that they in turn service. We’ve recently been elaborating on our collaborative work with Microsoft in anticipation of their pending Titan upgrade later this year. We’re also continuing to expand upon our partner base and join forces with companies whose business practices align with ours, as well as heighten awareness regarding our on-demand offering.

TechAddress:  Where do you see your company heading in the future?

Neocase:  A main focus right now is on building out our worldwide presence in bridging our established product, customer base and success to date in Europe with our relatively new presence and growth in the U.S. We’ve brought together a top U.S. executive team since our launch stateside in early 2006 which should help in penetrating the U.S. market and becoming a truly international entity.

TechAddress:  Any negative feedback or criticism regarding technology and services?

Neocase:  One of the hardest things in the industry we’re in is being able to meet the needs of three different groups: enterprises, their partners and their customers. This creates a diverse base of needs, so in response we strive to take the feedback we receive from these different parties and incorporate it into our offerings.

Many people also believe that CRM is too crowded of a space to successfully break into, but the reality is that there are very few players in the industry that offer a truly comprehensive customer service solution, and that’s the gap in CRM that Neocase is looking to fill.

TechAddress:  So what would you say is the guiding principle behind your company?

Neocase:  From day one we’ve always been completely focused on the customer. While CRM is intended to boast a superior understanding of customer behavior, somehow the customer’s voice often gets drowned out of the equation. Neocase has a history of more than 15 years in the customer service business thanks to Supporter (our parent company), so we are fortunate to have this experience to make our products totally unique in our understanding of our customer’s needs.

TechAddress:  What is the mission of your company and what are you bringing to the market that is innovative?

Neocase:  We aim to help companies make the move from simple case management to complete, personalized customer care. Neocase redefines the customer service function by empowering the agent in a way can serve as a key competitive differentiator and bring the focus back to the customer, resulting in higher quality of service, new revenue opportunities, a substantial reduction in operating costs, and increased customer satisfaction and loyalty. Because the element of "customer" serves as the cornerstone of our products, it also rests at the core of how Neocase aims to treat its own customers.

TechAddress:  Where are you in terms of funding and your lifecycle?

Neocase:  In October 2006 we closed our series B round of funding, supported by Iris Capital. Iris Capital is a pan-European venture and development capital company specializing in media, communications and information technology.

Neocase’s first round of venture funding came from Caisse des Dépôts. Caisse des Dépôts is a state-owned financial institution that performs public-interest missions on behalf of France’s central, regional and local governments. It also manages substantial portfolios of shares in listed companies, private equity investments and real estate assets.

France-based Supporter S.A. provided the initial financial support during the company’s inception. Since 1990, Supporter has remained a major player in the field service and customer service markets.

TechAddress:  If your technology or service is not formally launched yet, when’s the launch date? If you have already launched, when was your launch date?

Neocase:  We formally launched Neocase 10 in the U.S. in May 2006.

TechAddress: Tell me a bit about your company, what it does and what’s your value proposition?

Conduit: Conduit is the inventor of the community toolbar concept. Community toolbars are a great new way to engage users and drive loyalty as they put the best of any website directly on the users’ browser. Today’s Web savvy organizations are looking for new ways to connect and engage their users, beyond the boundaries of their Web site.

As an example, Major League Baseball launched a ‘Conduit’ for each team in the league so the fans can stay connected with scores, plays, team information, tickets and breaking news on their favorite team, straight from the browser.

Bottom line, a Conduit community toolbar delivers:

• More Traffic: Drive higher traffic through unprecedented face time, resulting in an average increase of two extra clicks per user, per day
• Brand Presence: Conduit allows publishers to put their brand directly on the user’s browser
• Lower Attrition: Retain customers through engaging content, community chat, contests, and more
• More Revenue per Customer: Monetizing users beyond the boundaries of the Web site. Drive higher spending with more targeted offers and more relevant services delivered via a ‘Conduit’

TechAddress: What makes your company stand apart from your competitors?

Conduit: There are several things, but most importantly there are three:

1. Hosted turnkey service approach which eliminates all the challenges of traditional software offerings.

Typical off-the-shelf toolbar building software requires technical resources, constant maintenance staff, and presents issues in regard to user support and security, not to mention their limited component offerings. In the past, these challenges have prevented the majority of smaller websites from building and launching their own branded toolbars.

Conduit dramatically changed the model from traditional software to a hosted, global, turnkey service that is very easy to use, and requires no maintenance or technical skills. This has resulted in Conduit’s community toolbars exploding in less than 18 months to over 5 million users in 112 countries, 125k publishers in 22 languages, and over 30,000 downloads a day. For more details, see our recent milestone news release here.

2. Conduit’s business model is powered by search, which enables us to be completely free to the publisher and yet empower the toolbar with the most required functionality – search.

Conduit monetizes user searches via its Google search partnership, thereby delivering superior user experience despite being a free service for organizations.

3. Conduit supports its customers with a full suite of solutions that walks the user through the entire toolbar creation process:

• Building (Conduit provides easy to use Toolbar Wizards that make building a snap)
• Promotion (Pre-made templates for toolbar promotion include banners and download pages)
• Maintenance (Changes made to the toolbar in the hosted environment are automatically reflected in the toolbar field)
• Analysis (Reports to help optimize the solution for maximum value to publishers and users)

TechAddress: What are some of the main features?

Conduit: Conduit is free, hosted, extremely easy-to-use, completely customizable, ready in minutes, guaranteed to be secure, and available in 22 languages. The Toolbar Wizard is easy to use tool for any publisher, despite their level of programming expertise.

There are several key features that have contributed to our explosive adoption:

• Pre-defined components including customizable menus, news ticker, RSS reader, radio, chatroom, NEW video window, email notifier, weather button, and more
• Open environment that allows publishers to develop their own custom components using standard web development technologies
• A set of customizable search tools, powered by Google
• Cross-platform solution enabling publishers to provide instant availability in IE & Firefox
• Pre-packaged marketing templates for deployment and promotion
• Analytics and reports for management of the community toolbar
• Hosted solution enables seamless and dynamic updates of content, components, and updates
• 24/7 free support for publishers and users via email
• Fully localized by supporting 22 languages for the toolbar and its peripheral pages

TechAddress: Who is your target customer or audience?

Conduit: Any website with a passionate community of online users can benefit from a Conduit community toolbar. Our range of customers represents every industry including entertainment, event planning, music, gaming, non profits, libraries, business, news portals, forums, real-estate, legal enterprise and more. While we have leading brands such as Greenpeace, Major League Baseball and REMAX, the largest segment of Conduit customers are “Long Tail” publishers that come from a diverse cross section.

TechAddress: Any new things in particular that you’re working on right now?

Conduit: Our technology teams are working on exciting product releases that will transform user engagement and communication.

The first is the ability for a publisher to extend their presence beyond the current real estate of the toolbar. With an upcoming version, Conduit will transform toolbars from being a single story house to a skyscraper.

The second will empower a user to benefit from multiple toolbars without sacrificing the browser real-estate typically required, and by eliminating the need of multiple downloads. Users will be able to easily manage and control their toolbar library through this new product.

We are also looking to launch a “smart wizard” that will automatically detect community information and will build it into a community toolbar simply from a website URL. This is part of our commitment to making it easier to build and launch a toolbar.

Stay tuned for these and other exciting announcements coming soon.

TechAddress: Where do you see your company heading in the future?

Conduit: We envision Conduit evolving into a global leader in marketing platforms for building user-centric applications that drive engagement and loyalty. To that end, we are focused on forging content and product partnerships to deliver the broadest array of content and components to our publishers. From a product perspective, we are focused on being an innovation leader with breakthrough new features regularly added to the roadmap.

TechAddress: Any negative feedback or criticism regarding technology and services?

Conduit: Historically, toolbars were perceived as a search device associated with search companies, and as such they raised the question of “Who needs another toolbar?” In addition many have a bad reputation for opening up users to outside threats from adware, spyware and malware. Conduit community toolbars are strongly associated with the communities they serve (vs. being a search device only) and address a wider cross-section of information needs which goes beyond the simple search function. In addition, Conduit, delivers a safe and secure user experience.

TechAddress: So what would you say is the guiding principle behind your company?

Conduit: Publisher-focused value creation. If we help our publishers be more successful, then we will be successful. So whether it’s product development, marketing, or support, the company is completely focused on what drives a positive outcome for our publishers. We believe that publishers know what’s best for their users and they want to be able to offer them the very best solutions. Conduit provides them with the full-service solution they need to achieve that. As an example, we worked very hard to secure a partnership with Google, as we wanted to provide the ultimate search experience for our publishers’ end users while still enabling our publisher customers with the ability to embed their own site search into the community toolbar and the search page.

Outside of our dedication to products, our overall guiding principles are fairness and integrity. These are the cornerstones of Conduit. We treat everyone who interacts with the company with highest level of integrity.

TechAddress: What is the mission of your company and what are you bringing to the market that is innovative?

Conduit: Our mission is to democratize the building of connected communities, and to enable traditional Web 1.0 companies to become Web 2.0. We aim to provide every publisher with the solutions they need to connect, engage and build online communities quickly and cost effectively.

In terms of innovation, we are the first, completely free service for building a community toolbar, powered by Search. This is a significant value proposition for the market in general but more importantly, for the long tail of the Internet. Conduit is putting a powerful, free marketing platform, previously only available to large companies, in the hands of organizations of every size and capability. This is revolutionary – we are leveling the playing field and doing it with a free, secure service that is backed by a solid business model.

TechAddress: Where are you in terms of funding and your lifecycle?

Conduit: Conduit is currently fully funded and has no plans to raise additional capital at this time.

TechAddress: If your technology or service is not formally launched yet, when’s the launch date? If you have already launched, when was your launch date?

Conduit: The company was founded in 2005; however, we just recently launched an official marketing campaign in November, 2006. Incredibly, Conduit has grown virally from 0 to 125,000 website publisher customers and 5,000,000 users in less than two years.

Location: Headquartered in San Mateo, CA

Launch Date: Founded in 2002

In the company’s own words, what is it? Composite is the SOA data services leader. Composite Data Services reach your data where it lives and deliver it how you need it, so all your data appears as if it’s in one place. Only Composite’s award-winning Enterprise Information Integration (EII) technology, high performance information server, easy-to-use data services development suite, and packaged applications services let you easily leverage existing data assets so you can build applications faster across both SOA and traditional environments.

Key capabilities include:

* Virtualize your enterprise data. All your data appears as if it’s in one place, clear and simple, without silos.
* Reach your data where it lives. Overcome location and complexity, without impacting performance
* Deliver data how you need it. On demand, secure, SOA-enabled.

Our award-winning products deliver these capabilities as solutions to wide variety of IT use cases including custom development, business intelligence, compliance reporting, SOA-enablement, master data management, and more.

Outside quote about company: The Business Intelligence Network said, “Composite Software, a provider in SOA Data Services recently announced strong support from implementation firms and SOA vendors for its next-generation Composite Information Server (CIS) as the most practical approach for enterprises deploying an SOA. Partners and end customers can build applications faster without worrying about the data’s location and complexity. Composite’s easy-to-use tools and pre-built data services for leading packaged applications give partners a leg up in SOA implementations by delivering existing data to new applications more easily.”

Features:
* Accelerate new development projects
* Leverage existing data assets
* Enable SOA

Management/Directors:
R. James (Jim) Green, Chairman and CEO
David Besemer, CTO
James Crawford - VP Engineering
Marcy Dutton - VP Finance & Operations
Robert Eve - VP Marketing
Christian Nall - VP Sales
Jason Monberg - VP Application Products
Peter Tran - VP Product Marketing

Relevant Links:
http://www.it-director.com/technology/applications/content.php?cid=9068
http://www.intelligententerprise.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=196603898&pgno=2
http://www.networkcomputing.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=196603142
http://webservices.sys-con.com/read/314107.htm

Location: Chicago, ILLaunch Date: 1999

In the company’s own words, what is it? We’re a privately-held Chicago-based company committed to building the best web-based software products possible with the least number of features necessary. Our products do less than the competition — intentionally. We’ve been in business since 1999 and love what we do.

We believe most software is too complex. Too many features, too many buttons, too much confusion. We build easy to use web-based products with elegant interfaces and thoughtful features. We’re focused on executing on the basics beautifully.

While our products are mainly built for small businesses and individuals (we call this group the Fortune 5,000,000), companies of all sizes use them every day. From 1 person to teams of 3-5 people to companies of 5000. Everyone loves simple tools that help get the job done and then get out of your way.

Outside quote about company: Farhad Manjo of salon.com said, “Basecamp and Backpack represent the future of software on the Web not just because they’re elegant, easy-to-use programs that will likely make your life better. The two applications are also interesting because they were created in a novel way, using a new programming model that allowed 37 Signals to build each program very quickly, and with very few people. Indeed, this method of creating applications — doing it fast and on a tight budget — might well be called 37 Signal’s animating philosophy, its central mission.”

Features:
* Project management and collaboration (Basecamp)
* Real-time group chat (Campfire)
* Information organizer and calendar (Backpack)
* Simple to-do lists (Ta-da List)
* Collaborative writing (Writeboard)
* Open-source web-app framework (Ruby on Rails)
* Blogging read by over 30,000 a day (Signal vs. Noise)

Management/Directors:
Jason Fried, Founder
David Heinemeier Hansson, Programmer
Ryan Singer, Designer
Sam Stephenson, Programmer
Marcel Molina, Programmer
Matt Linderman, Designer
Jamis Buck, Programmer

Relevant Links:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_47/b3960428.htm
http://businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_13/b3977005.htm
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/bestof/editorpicks.htm
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,122928-page,4/article.html

Location: Headquartered in San Mateo, CA

Launch Date: December 2002

In the company’s own words, what is it? Bitpass was founded in 2002 to provide solutions that remove the roadblocks to digital content commerce and allow digital media and entertainment companies to cash in on their content assets. Today producers and aggregators of digital media want higher returns from investments in content. At the same time, rapidly changing consumer buying and usage behaviors are redefining the digital media marketplace. Bitpass connects digital media producers with this growing market, offering solutions that increase return on content, customers and community.

The Bitpass iMedia Commerce Engine marshals relevant delivery channels—including the web, cell phones, PDAs, MP3 players, podcasts and more; manages digital content rights and offers insight into consumer behavior. With Bitpass, media and entertainment companies can focus on innovation rather than technology catch up.

The Bitpass iMedia Commerce Engine offers digital media and entertainment companies a turnkey system built on open web standards and a software-as-a-service platform. The system supports rapid deployment, transparent web and commerce integration, secure financial transactions, consumer behavior tracking and seamless content and data integration. Bitpass provides merchants with best-in-class professional service and complete online and live support.

Bitpass customers are leaders from media publishing, TV, film, radio, community and Internet and include segment-leading firms such as Disney, Microsoft and MSN, Ziff Davis, Time, United Media, CanWest, and Entercom. The company is privately held and based in Menlo Park, California. Bitpass has raised over $13 million in equity financing from leading venture capital firms, including Steamboat Ventures, RRE Ventures, Cardinal Venture Capital, Worldview Technology Partners, First Data Corporation and Garage Technology Ventures.

Outside quote about company: Amy Van Hook, Director of Marketing Services for Entercom, says, “Entercom chose Bitpass‘ digital commerce engine for its ease of implementation and its flexibility to support a wide range of purchase types and price points. The BitPass solution allows us to simplify single-purchase downloads, subscriptions and up-sells to all types of digital content.”

Features:
* Universal Wallet, Media and Rewards Account
* Content Catalog and Offer Management
* Subscription, PPV and Retail Capabilities
* Small Payments and Aggregation

Management/Directors:
Douglas Knopper, Chief Executive Officer
Matt Graves, Chief Operations Officer
Kurt Huang, Founder and Vice President, Strategy and Emerging Markets
Gyuchang Jun, Chief Technology Officer
Punkaj K. Jain, Vice President, Engineering
Preston Roper, Senior Vice President, Sales & Marketing

Relevant Links:
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/05-11-2005/0003594759&EDATE=
http://www.paymentsnews.com/2006/10/bitpass_unveils.html
http://www.twst.com/notes/articles/aey106.html
http://www.digitaltransactions.net/newsstory.cfm?newsid=1098

TechAddress: Tell me a bit about your company, what it does and what’s your value proposition?

WebEx: WebEx is the leader in software-as-a-service collaborative business applications. These on-demand applications enhance high-touch business processes, such as sales, support and training, with efficient web-touch interactions. To some, Web 2.0 is just a lot of hype, but WebEx is delivering on the promise of on-demand every day, generating business results delivering across 70 countries, 2 million registered users and 82 percent of the Fortune 100.

TechAddress: What makes your company stand apart from your competitors?

WebEx: All WebEx applications are delivered via the WebEx MediaTone Network, a private global network consisting of 36 linked hubs. Built from the ground up, MediaTone offers unprecedented network reliability and connectivity that competitors can simply not provide. With over $150 million dollars invested in research and development, the MediaTone network helps 3.5 million people use WebEx every month to deliver tangible business results.

TechAddress: What are some of the main features?

WebEx: WebEx applications, and custom applications built on the WebEx on-demand platform, increase the reach, speed and cost effectiveness of doing business by unifying web collaboration with business services, processes and content. WebEx was founded as an on-demand vendor long before its SaaS was a popular concept. This unique legacy has enabled us to understand what users need better than most others. We focus on ease of use, creating specialized solutions for our customers with industry leading reliability and security. Plus, with our distributed global network we can offer flexible deployment and award-winning support for our customers most vital business requirements.

TechAddress: Who’s your target customer or audience?

WebEx: We target businesses of all sizes that strive to increase productivity, enhance collaboration and remain competitive in today’s intense global marketplace. As a result we have multiple products to serve such a wide range of customers and allow them to integrate WebEx into their daily business workflow.

WebEx provides organizations the ability to use online meetings to meet with anyone, anytime demonstrating products and services, sharing presentations in any format, and resolving open issues in real-time with a secure and reliable technology. We provide much-needed impact for live events, hosting large scale events over the Web such as all-hands meetings, shareholder presentations, and prospect webinars with interactive and dynamic multimedia presentations. WebEx also delivers interactive world-class training, enabling users to reach more people with online training and e-learning via live online classrooms. We empower customers to resolve technical issues faster, increasing productivity and client satisfaction while reducing support costs with both unattended and attended remote support. And finally we can shorten the sales cycle for large enterprises and three-person business enabling users to connect with anyone, anywhere with dynamic online sales presentations.

TechAddress: Any new things in particular that you’re working on right now?

WebEx: We recently announced WebEx Connect, the first on-demand platform designed to enable developers and customers to create collaborative enterprise “mashup” solutions from web-based, on-premises and desktop applications in late September of this year. The requirements of an enterprise mashup platform are:

• Customization—needs to allow customers to integrate their existing solutions. Can’t be a proprietary platform.
• Collaboration—need to offer IM, email, presence, and cross-company collaborative capabilities
• Control—needs to work with enterprise policy and directory services solutions.

We expect to deliver a product in Q1 2007.

TechAddress: Where do you see your company heading in the future?

WebEx: SaaS is moving beyond cost-efficiency and towards business productivity. There are new classes of applications that leverage the web to bring us together to make us smarter, more productive and better connected and WebEx fully expects to be at the forefront of this movement, changing the way people around the world do business.

TechAddress: Any negative feedback or criticism regarding technology and services?

WebEx: People sometimes think that WebEx meetings are a replacement for *all* face-to-face meetings, but they are not. WebEx meetings allow you to be more as productive and spontaneous as you would be in person, but we still believe that occasional face-to-face meetings have an important role in business. WebEx helps create a continuum for communications–from simple text chat to phone calls, web meetings to face-to-face interactions. Having WebEx meetings as an option means you can meet in-person for the right reasons.

TechAddress: So what would you say is the guiding principle behind your company?

WebEx: Continue to bring innovative collaboration solutions to our customers.

TechAddress: What is the mission of your company and what are you bringing to the market that is innovative?

WebEx: Continue to be the proven technology leader in software-as-a-service collaborative business applications.

TechAddress: Where are you in terms of funding and your lifecycle?

WebEx: As a publicly held company traded on the NASDQ under the ticker: WEBX

TechAddress: If your technology or service is not formally launched yet, when’s the launch date? If you have already launched, when was your launch date?

WebEx: Our WebEx Connect platform was launched on September 25, 2006. We expect to deliver the first version of the platform in Q1 2007.