Pramati developing enterprise collaboration widgets

Pramati Technologies will release new software widgets for the enterprise by January that will allow users to collaborate from within the business applications that they are using.

Collaborations tools installed by enterprises are currently in silos, and separate from the main business applications, said Jay Raghavendra Pullur, founder and CEO of Pramati. Users working on an ERP, order management, or CRM application are less likely to use a separate collaboration tool, using instead informal channels such as e-mail and even the telephone for collaboration, he added.

Pramati hopes to get around this problem by making its social and collaboration widgets "pluggable" and available from within business applications. The widgets from Pramati will support any business applications with a browser interface, and will work with collaboration tools like Microsoft's SharePoint already installed in an enterprise, Pullur said.

The widgets to be released for enterprise applications include a widget for project management, and another for discussions among users running different applications, according to Pullur. The widgets will figure in a portal from where users can download and paste code into applications, he added.

Pramati's first product was a J2EE application server that has been deployed by a number of customers worldwide.

Last month, Pramati's SocialTwist business unit launched its Tell-a-Friend Web widget, which lets readers recommend and share content directly with their friends through a variety of methods including e-mail, instant messaging, social networks, Twitter, or their blogs. Tell-a-Friend gives word-of-mouth marketing capability to Web sites, Pullur said.

The widget is offered free at www.socialtwist.com for users to copy and paste the code into their Web sites or blogs. It has already close to 2,000 installations, Pullur said.

The immediate objective of Pramati is to boost adoption of the Tell-a-Friend widget. Down the line it will look at advertising as a revenue stream from the widget.

A paid corporate edition of the widget, which does not have advertisements, is already being offered, and gives corporate users more control over the widget, and better context integration, Pullur said. Pramati already has seven corporate customers, he added.

The Tell-a-Friend widget is based on SaaS (software as a service) technology, which helps Pramati add new features to the widget quickly. There have already been requests for support for more blogging platforms, multiple languages, and other features, Pullur said. Pramati plans to release weekly upgrades that add new features to the widget.

The company also plans to offer more widgets for Web applications, including one that allows owners of Web sites to identify content on their site that they would not mind reused and blogged. Currently bloggers are never certain if they can use content from a Web site, without attracting copyright restrictions, Pullur said.