Intel-Backed Enterprise 2.0 Suite is Discontinued
An Intel-backed suite of Enterprise 2.0 software announced with much fanfare a bit over two years ago is being put out to pasture.
SpikeSource pulled the plug on SuiteTwo in part because it wasn't in its best interest to focus on any particular software market segment, such as enterprise 2.0 products, CRM (customer relationship management) or content management, but rather to stick to its strengths: to assist ISVs with services like code testing, software maintenance and development.
As such, SpikeSource is focusing on its new Solutions Factory, launched in April 2008 and described as an automated platform for assembling, testing, packaging, certifying and updating software from ISVs. Along with the Solutions Factory launch, SpikeSource also announced that it had closed a new round of funding led by Intel Capital. Intel also uses SpikeSource's Solutions Factory services in its Intel Software Partner Program, Sartorio said.
Ironically, Intel still seems interested in Enterprise 2.0, judging by a demo of a workplace social-networking system that its CEO, Paul Otellini, gave in November at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, two years after SuiteTwo's introduction.
The demoed system included Web-based enterprise collaboration tools for social networking, blogging, wikis, online meetings and syndicated feeds. A company like Intel, with 86,000 employees worldwide, would put such a system to good use to let staffers better collaborate, obtain training and education, and find the data they need to do their jobs, he said.
Such a social-networking system for the workplace, which would require strong security and control features for IT departments, doesn't exist, he said. "I don't see any company really addressing this," Otellini said.
Maybe Otellini never paid close attention to SuiteTwo, which could have very well become such a system. Intel declined to comment about SuiteTwo.
Actually, if he moves quickly, Otellini might still be able to place an order for SuiteTwo: At press time, SpikeSource hadn't yet updated the SuiteTwo Web site to indicate that the product is being discontinued, and its ordering page remained online as well.
Asked for further information about the enterprise social-networking system Otellini had demoed, an Intel spokesman said in an e-mail that it had been "a mock-up done for the sole purpose of his keynote, with no plans to productize."
At his company's Web 2.0 Summit show floor booth in November, an amused Ross Mayfield, CEO of Socialtext, remarked: "We've had a lot of people rushing to our booth as a result of the Intel presentation."



