NGES 1.1 in the works

As you know, NGES v.1 launched last fall and is deployed at over 20 companies across the globe.  As you may not know, NGES v.1.1 is currently in Customer Technology Preview (similar to a private beta).  1.1 has numerous new features; most of which are based on suggestions from our current customers.  A few of the new features include:

For the users:

• Clipping Annotation - This feature is AWESOME!  The clippings feature (the ability to share feed you think are important with your colleagues) is a great in and of itself.  Now it is even better because you can add notes alongside the feed.
• Improved search function - when you conduct a search, and 15 feeds result, now you can subscribe to several feeds quickly and efficiently without navigating away from the page.  This is a big time saver for power users and knowledge workers.
• FeedBanner - contains information about the feed you are reading such as name, description of feed, ability to mark as read, or unsubscribe from feed.  Creates a more user friendly feed reading experience.

For the Administrators:

• Group and User filtering - finding and editing users is easier than ever.
• Group based administration - allows administrators to restrict the admin functions of a user to specific groups instead of allowing them to access all groups.
• Blacklists - of course execs are not going to buy into a system that gives their employees free reign to aggregate any kind of content, so we created blacklists.  Now you can deny access to specific content from the internet.
• Subscription Locking - Now the system admin can subscribe employees to a feed (say, the HR Blog) and users are unable to unsubscribe.

Press, analysts and customers are excited about RSS applied to the enterprise for a variety of reasons.  Take a look at this customer case study.  Dykema, a midwest based law firm with 800 employees and 10 offices across the US, is doing some really cool stuff enterprise-wide with RSS - including aggregating internal and external feeds.  Bill Gratsch, Dykema's web technologies manager, had this to say about NGES:

"NewsGator Enterprise Server will ultimately help us improve internal and external efficiencies in the form of faster research and knowledge transfer, improved communication and collaboration and enhanced service delivery to our clients.  This is a very compelling value proposition for a new technology."

We expect 1.1 to ship in a few weeks.  Stay tuned for more updates, customer announcements and case studies.  This thing is really taking off!