Happy Birthday to Us!

It’s launch day – the day we’ve been anticipating for the past 3 years.  As of this morning, anyone can go to Apeer.com and get Apeer Professional v1.0 for the PC!  We’re offering a 14 day complimentary evaluation of Apeer – and can’t wait to see what happens now.  The outreach to the media and analysts will take place over the coming weeks – with an “official” launch event in another month after we’ve had some time to make sure the gears are turning smoothly.

We hope you give Apeer a try – and please let us know what you think!  See you on Apeer!  -lj

“Sorry, you can’t come, you’re a competitor”

So, here’s a good one.  A few weeks ago I registered to attend a TechWeb / Information Week seminar in San Francisco – Making the Case for Unified Communications. The agenda for this event indicated that it would be a discussion of “unified communications – winning converts from IT departments to lines of business for its ability to enable employees to rapidly and seamlessly share knowledge across multiple communications platforms, such as voice, e-mail, IM, videoconferencing, and telepresence.”  Sounded like a perfect fit for my interests, and I was especially excited to have a chance to meet Melanie Turek, Principal Analyst for Frost Sullivan and blogger for Enterprise 2.0.  We showed Apeer to Melanie in a demo, and she wrote a great blog post about the demo in July of this year.

The registration form indicated that I’d hear back in 3 business days with my confirmation, and after 3 weeks I followed up myself to see if I should keep this event on my calendar.  I got a prompt response that indicated that one of their reps would follow up with me the next day.  To their credit, they did – only to tell me that unfortunately, since I am the VP of Sales for a company with competitive technology to the sponsor of the event (Seimens), that I wouldn’t be able to attend.  I had to laugh.

I find it amusing, and somewhat flattering, that a multi-billion dollar company with close to 400,000 employees is competitively threatened by a start up that is just this month launching our first commercially available release.  If we are a competitive threat to Unified Communication technologies from Seimens, I guess we are also a threat to the telephone, email and instant messaging.  Good news is – we play well with others, and most “competitive technology” actually can be enhanced with the simultaneous use of Apeer across all those multiple communications platforms mentioned above.  If anything we are a “complementary technology”.

Look out world – Apeer is coming, and it’s the beginning of a whole new way to communicate.

Apeer Plays Well With Others

It’s amazing how many proclaimed WebEx killers have entered the online collaboration marketplace recently. There’s Vyew, a free browser-based application that allows many to see a posted file. There’s also Marratech, video conferencing on the web that was recently acquired by Google; DimDim, a web-hosted web meeting solution; and Teamslide, an online file sharing application.

It’s a wonder WebEx isn’t depressed beyond recognition.

During an Apeer demo to an executive group in Austin a few months ago, we were dubbed “the WebEx killer that’s as easy to use as IM” by a presentation attendee. Our first reaction was extreme flattery. Not only were we just ramping up our Alpha-phase, but the comment came from someone we greatly admired.

It’s true that WebEx, and other programs like it, offer some features Apeer does not, such as desktop sharing or the ability to run an application. But there are plenty of reasons for users to want to use Apeer as an alternative. Spontaneity is the first thing that comes to mind – Apeer doesn’t require that you post anything to a server – and anyone in the session can add media to the session. Just like a real conversation, this leads to ad hoc ideas sharing and brainstorming. Everyone can mark-up, comment, move and scale the media. Also, once files are transferred in Apeer, there is no transmission of data, so unlike desktop sharing apps that “screen scrape” and refresh constantly – there is very little load on the network. How many times have you been in a “live” presentation – only to hear the presenter talking about Slide 15 when you’re looking at Slide 7 ? With Apeer, you can click through a multi-page PDF file and the pages turn for EVERYONE in the session as fast as you can click your mouse. Sometimes, you might want to have the other participants save the file you are sharing in Apeer. Since the file is transferred, they can simply drag the media out of the Apeer window to their desktop or into an application. Files can also be sent in a “no save” version if you only want them to be able to access the file during the Apeer session. Also, we’ve yet to see another application that lets you see and hear video, play audio, see images and PDF files, text chat and more – in real time, in the same window. These options just don’t exist with the WebEx’s of the world.

Instead of trying to replace other applications in the collaboration and communication space, we opted to play well with others. And play well, we do. You can continue to use programs like WebEx to show those functions that require desktop sharing, like application demos – but use Apeer to look at images, see and hear video and listen to audio files in real time with others – all in the same window. Share your media, and keep your desktop to yourself. Other applications exist for free conference calling or VoIP – use those and Apeer at the same time. As usage of Apeer is unlimited with your subscription, you can keep your Apeer client open on your desktop all day long. Let’s say you’ve just had an Apeer session to review some design concepts, and have decided that a few changes need to be made. Well, when the changes are ready, just drop the files back into Apeer and the people you are connected with will get a notice that there’s something new to see and you can pick up the conversation where you left off.

We’d much rather be seen as a complimentary application, and we feel that our highly disruptive price point is going to make it possible to let WebEx and the like continue to live. Meanwhile, we’ll continue to work on ways to add value and play well with all of them.