By Jack M. Germain LinuxInsider Part of the ECT News Network
07/24/08 4:00 AM PT
MindTouch has unveiled a new version of its Deki, dubbed "Kilen Woods." It's designed to let site admins rope in applications -- legacy systems, CRM and ERP apps, databases and Web 2.0 tools -- and hand them over to business users to create mashups, templates, dynamic reports and dashboards.
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MindTouch announced on Wednesday the latest version of its open source collaboration and collective intelligence platform, MindTouch Deki (formerly Deki Wiki). Dubbed "Kilen Woods," it features new workflow capabilities, enterprise adapters and usability improvements. The release targets information workers, IT professionals, and developers looking to collaborate and connect enterprise systems and data sources.
The new version builds on the wiki-based collaboration interface. It adds enterprise adapters to various systems and Web services including SugarCRM, Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) and
LinkedIn.
"It now installs on the Windows platform," Aaron Fulkerson, cofounder and CEO of MindTouch, told LinuxInsider. "The Microsoft installer beta is now ready -- it wasn't intended for now but worked out this way."
Growing Support
MindTouch is seeing a huge groundswell of downloaders, so it decided to support both Linux and Windows platforms, according to Fulkerson.
Since the company introduced MindTouch Deki this time last year, it has evolved into a platform that integrates disparate enterprise systems, Web services and Web 2.0 applications. Plus, it enables real-time collaboration and collective intelligence from dynamic data collection and application integration, he noted.
"MindTouch Deki Enterprise offers adapters to widely used IT and developer systems behind the firewall and in the cloud, which allows for IT governance no matter where your data lives," said Fulkerson.
Multipurpose Product
The addition of the enterprise adapters to the existing extensions for over 100 Web services allows users to surface data and behavior from these applications, create basic workflows, mashups, dynamic reports and dashboards. This allows for a collaborative macro-view of multiple systems in a common wiki-like interface, he explained.
MindTouch Deki enables businesses to connect and mash up the growing number of application and data silos that exist across an enterprise. This includes legacy systems, customer relationship management and enterprise resource planning applications, databases and Web 2.0 applications. It fills the collaboration gap across systems for all enterprises, according to the company.
For example, MindTouch Deki can visualize content from a Microsoft SQL Server or Microsoft Access database and mash it up with other services, such as Microsoft Live Earth or Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) maps, LinkedIn or a CRM system. This provides a common wiki and Web service interface for content and behavior from multiple sources.
Driving Force
Customers provided the push for these added features, said Fulkerson. They were finding ways to join program data outside the Deki platform.
"We took what they were doing and bundled it in the release," he said.
The key thing, he added, is that MindTouch was seeing people with workflow information piling their data into different Wiki pages without programming skills.
What It Does
The new release allows site administrators to register external applications and ready them for business users, even those with little to no technical knowledge or background in programming. This makes it possible to create mashups, templates, dynamic reports and dashboards that can be shared and used among colleagues, customers and suppliers.
Users can embed MindTouch Deki into existing applications, or access it from specialized front-ends on the Web or desktop. With the desktop connector, users can then drag and drop an entire directory structure from Microsoft Windows to MindTouch Deki.
Hierarchies will be automatically created as wiki pages. Users can also publish an entire Microsoft Outlook e-mail thread -- complete with all attachments -- to MindTouch Deki in a single click.
MindTouch is showcasing the Kilen Woods release at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention this week. MindTouch Deki will be available for download later this month.
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