Internet Changes Everything

Traction Software gains ground on weblog front

Mass High Tech

12/15/2003 07:49 AM
By Elizabeth Dinan

Outside tech circles, blogs have a reputation of being just for self-indulgent geeks or young technophiles.

But Traction Software knows better. With financial backing from CIA-funded In-Q-Tel and a recent half-million dollar deal with the Department of Defense, the Providence company’s blogs are receiving military honors.

Traction president and co-founder Greg Lloyd describes his company’s weblog software as a layer over the web, collecting information from web-based sources and organizing it by time and linking by topic. Users can add text and customize it for limited access with permission/password-based log-on.

From a field of 120 applicants, Traction’s TeamPage software was selected by the DoD to manage U.S. Navy test and evaluation communications at Rhode Island’s Naval Undersea Warfare Center. The project is scheduled to run through 2008 with participation from the Marine Corps, the Army Night Vision Lab, the Defense Acquisition University, New York Police Department and Ford Motor Co.

Lloyd says the Navy was managing similar projects through e-mail but that using his “hyperlink journaling” technology via the $450,000 DoD deal will bring it all forward by creating “an instant, secure communications hub using the Internet that already connects program managers, project experts, contractors, sponsors and warfighters.”

Gilman Louie, president of In-Q-Tel, is quoted as saying his organization gave Traction funding for its ease of collecting, organizing and publishing blogs, and calls the product “a valuable tool among our growing portfolio of cutting-edge technologies that benefit enterprises like the CIA.”

The program has the capability of creating and managing weblogs for individuals or groups of like workers, or by specific project, all with specifically designated users who have specifically designated access. For example, some users will have access to weblogs about current project activities while being blocked from research and development discussions.

Access was the “critical” selling point for the DoD, Lloyd says.

“Some kinds of discussions are going to be privileged,” he says. “So we built a business model that pays attention to security and permissioning and how it fits into the IT structure.”

Founded in 1996 as Twisted Systems, Traction is also bringing the blog to commercial customers, including the Western States Information Network, a Department of Justice-funded program for which Traction built a private intranet to maintain a “notebook” for the 1,200 law enforcement members to share intelligence about criminals, including outlaw motorcycle gangs and drug traffickers.

Verizon technical employees use the enterprise blogging software to brainstorm new projects for market research and planning in addition to sharing competitive information. Another early adopter is a team of physicians using it as a round-the-clock operations blog via Blackberries “for a mobile view of everything happening in all of their clinics.”

Pricing starts at $5,000 per server. And with military, law enforcement and medical professionals as users, the blog is clearly going commercial.

February 21, 2004 at 03:29 PM in Knowledge Management | Permalink | TrackBack (12) | Top of page | Blog Home