Thoughts on NextPage 1.5, Aug 8

Email is broken as an ongoing group collaboration tool, and yet people keep using it extensively for group communication, discussion, and document sharing. Normally, vendors that note this pain within a group of users seek to change user behavior through the delivery of new systems that shift people out of email and into a collaborative workspace (it's the right long-term model, but there are a number of technological issues that the industry needs to resolve before seeing mass adoption). NextPage addresses the pain points in coordinating group work via email from a different starting point. Instead of attempting to shift people out of email, it overlays key capabilities that I find very compelling.

NextPage: Control Document Chaos
NextPage is a client-service add-on for Microsoft Office and Outlook. It tracks Office documents that are shared between multiple people, and visually displays the lifecycle of a document as it moves between multiple people for editing. Let's delve a bit deeper into what that means:

• The NextPage client software download (20.4 MB) installs onto a Windows PC. The client software adds metadata (essentially Property fields) to documents that are written in Office XP and 2003. This metadata notes point-in-time information about a specific edition of a document, and in conjunction with metadata from all of the editions of a specific document establishes whether a specific edition is the Master copy, an alternate revision, the most recent edition, or an out-dated copy. Some points of note:
  
  
  
  • Metadata about a document is automatically retained even when the document file name is changed or it is shifted to a different location on the user's hard drive or thumb drive. However, it is possible for a savvy user to manually delete the NextPage metadata, and the metadata will also disappear if the document is converted to a non-Office format, eg, from .DOC to .RTF, or if a metadata scrubber is employed on the email gateway.
  
  
  • The Client brings a number of changes to the user's computer, including new menu-bar options in Office applications, different file icons to indicate which documents are being tracked, and a new right-click option to provide access to the NextPage Version History map, document status, and document tracking settings.
  
  
  
  
• The NextPage client software uploads the NextPage document metadata to the NextPage Global Service. Note that I said "metadata"; it does not upload the documents themselves. Therefore the NextPage Global Service is essentially a database on the public network that has rows and columns that contain a number of metadata fields about specific document editions. In order to establish the position of a specific document edition within the overall document lifecycle, the NextPage Client queries the NextPage Global Service for the collection of metadata about all tracked editions of a NextPage-enabled document. If the Client notices that a specific document edition is no longer the most recent one, or if a more recent edition has just arrived by email, it will alert the user via a pop-up notification box.



• NextPage supports the editing of documents while offline, but since there is no caching of information from the NextPage Global Service, it can not display information on other editions or notifications about new master or alternate copies. The user can create a new master edition of a document, or a new alternate edition of a document, and these display as "unconfirmed" in the Version History map until the user has re-connected to the network.

Note that recipients of NextPage-enabled documents do not have to be a subscriber to the NextPage service; they can still work with the document as normal. They also have the ability to check if they have the most recent edition of a master or alternate edition via a Web browser.

Next Action for NextPage
I think there are some places where NextPage could add new functionality to deliver an even stronger value proposition to organizations. Here are some of my ideas:

1. Real-Time Joint Editing. Visual tracking of document editions throughout a lifecycle of sequential or parallel edits by individuals is a big positive. There are times, however, when the only way to reach accord on a proposed change is to share the document in real-time with a counterpart in a joint editing session. The NextPage Version History map could be enhanced so that a user could right click on a document in the Version History and select "Joint edit with owner", which initiates a real-time joint editing session. Given the way NextPage is linking tightly with Microsoft products, an initial integration to Office Live Meeting 2005 would make sense, although it would be helpful longer term to support whatever the customer uses, eg, WebEx, GoToMeeting, Interwise, etc.


2. Integration with Document Management Systems. NextPage needs to be able to query centralized document management systems for master and alternate editions of a document, not just the email inbox and local file system. Any organization that already has a centralized document management system will derive additional value from the NextPage service, with respect to the graphical map, and additionally for when dealing with external people. However, the NextPage system must be able to interface with their document management system of choice. In my view, NextPage should develop a proof-of-concept integration with a document management system that a large proportion of its current customer base has, and then release an API within a Technology Partner Program to enable the document management vendors to build their own integrations.


3. Privacy vs. Openness in the Version History. One of the design choices that the NextPage team made was to limit visibility to what was happening within the Version History map to those users that held a document edition on one of the rows of the Version History. In other words, if there were a combined total of 5 rows of document editions on the Version History, but a specific user only had editions from two rows, they would only see two rows of data. I think that is a fair design choice for that set of use cases where privacy is paramount, and you don't want to fully disclose who is working on the document. However, I equally think that there is a strong argument to be made for other use cases where a team is working in a collaborative mode, and therefore everyone with any edition of the document should be able to see the complete and fully rendered Version History. I'd like to see NextPage add this as an option on a document-by-document basis.

Retail pricing for NextPage is US$99 per user per year. A free 60-day trial is available.

Next Action for Organizations
In my July 11 research note, Stop! An IT Spending Manifesto 2005-2007 I wrote that organizations should stop rolling out new versions of Microsoft Office, because of the dearth of innovation that truly impacts on what people do. Although I've only given you a taste of NextPage, I strongly advocate that NextPage is worthy of your investment in lieu of a Microsoft Office upgrade, because it adds a very compelling set of capabilities that will be useful by a large portion of users in your organization.

Happy to discuss. Please leave a comment below, or email me for an off-the-record discussion.

Comments

[Peter de Haas]

Michael,

The solution looks compelling ...at first. Hiwever, when you position it in line with your earlier published IT manifesto you seem to indicate that this can replace the strength of Office System. I say it can not.

When you want to reduce cost and gain benefits from a collaboration platform adding a solution like Nextpage may not bring you all the benefits a platform could. You don't look for additional components at first

The solution seems to bring you SharePoint like functionality at the cost of some $300 in 3 years. This is a substantial investment per desktop !

Having said that, there are a lot of strong partner solutions out there. Will look into Nextpage as wellto try and discover their true value proposition on topo Microsoft Office System