NewsGator preps hosted RSS manager

NewsGator Technologies has developed a hosted version of its RSS management server that it believes will appeal to small and mid-size companies, as well as departments within large organizations.

The Denver, Colorado, company plans to release on Monday its NewsGator Enterprise On-Demand application, which has most of the features of its server cousin, the NewsGator Enterprise Server.

Two features it lacks are the ability to link up with a company’s corporate directory and to grab RSS feeds from behind a firewall, according to a company official.

As with other types of software, hosted applications tend to appeal particularly to small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) that have limited IT resources to install and maintain servers internally, said Oliver Young, a Forrester Research analyst. Thus, offering a hosted version is the right way for NewsGator to find new customers among SMBs, he said.

Demand for enterprise RSS management systems is nascent but holds much promise for growth, as companies discover the benefits of this technology for distributing information to employees. “The market is going to take off. It’s just a matter of when,” Young said.

NewsGator and rivals like KnowNow and Attensa have benefitted from the fact that makers of industrial-strength collaboration and messaging platforms like IBM and Microsoft haven’t yet incorporated robust RSS capabilities into their products, Young said.

While IBM and Microsoft are bound to strengthen the enterprise RSS component of their platforms eventually, the market is still too small to justify the effort, so NewsGator and the others can continue focusing on this promising niche, Young said.

NewsGator Enterprise On-Demand features centralized administration to manage users and subscriptions, collaboration features to let users share content with one another and a look-and-feel that can be customized to match the interface of corporate intranets, according to the company.

The hosted service costs $99 per user per year and can be tried for free for 30 days. More information is at newsgator.com.