Zogix Blog

Zogix wins the prestigious Oracle UK Partner award, 2008

We are delighted to announce that on Wednesday (13th Feb), Zogix won the prestigious Oracle award for the "Most innovative use of Oracle technology" in a glittering ceremony at the Mayfair Hotel in London. This annual award is presented to the software company which has used Oracle technology to develop an innovative solution to a large business problem. The Zogix "Employee Services" solution was developed using Oracle SOA suite, identity management and the solution was chosen as it enables companies to track green house gas (GHG) emissions related to business travel and introduces an incentive program that aims to transform employee behavior to use low carbon travel providers and / or travel alternatives.

We will share a detailed press release on the event and other associated developments within the company in due course.   

Zogix@Salesforce Incubator

I am pleased to announce that Zogix has been selected to join the salesforce incubator at San Mateo. This is an important step for us before the production launch of the Employee Services Platform and is a continuation of our strategic partnership with salesforce which kicked off with Zogix showcasing a pre launch version of the Employee Services PLatform at Dreamforce. The incubator initiative is linked with some exciting new developments within salesforce that was kicked off with the launch of force.com http://success.salesforce.com/ at Dreamforce. We are currently in discussions for leveraging these new products and initiatives, so keep an eye out for anouncements from our end which is specifically targeted for the salesforce customer base.

sam

Zogix demonstrating employee services platform at Dreamforce

Between 16th and 19th September we are going to be demonstrating our business services platform at Dreamforce.

The business services platform uses a marketplace model to manage discretionary spend within companies.

Through its unique applications, Zogix@Travel, Zogix@Event and Zogix@Dining, users can source all their travel, accommodation, event and dining requirements through a single platform from a wide choice of suppliers.

The platform's integrated architecture enables enterprises to apply their corporate policy at the point of sale and to streamline the reconciliation process by linking directly into expense and reconciliation systems.

Come and visit us at the show for a demonstration and to register for our Beta trial.

Solution development

Over the past six months, we have learnt some valuable lessons in developing an enterprise web 2.0 business. Today there are three big challenges in this space;

• Lack of successful case studies from marquee corporates that can justify introduction of these technologies with a measurable return on investment (ROI). My experience of various conferences and speaking to a range of large enterprises have shown people tend to use the same case studies that have been in circulation over the past 6 to 8 months.

• Other issue is the positioning of these technologies. To date majority of these technologies have been either positioned as a new model of collaboration or a new channel for employees to communicate breaking down company barriers. Unfortunately CIO's don't seem to resonate with either of these as this doesn't seem a "must have" technology for them. On the contrary we are seeing it's the business more than IT which is picking up these technologies. But the downside of this model is chances of enterprise wide deployment are pretty remote.

• Lack of context, majority of these technologies provide a business need which is "soft" and hard to measure. This raises further questions during any budget allocation exercise within either IT or Business function.   

One of the implications of these issues are, companies (large and medium) are reticent to buy these technologies from start up vendors. They would prefer to engage existing enterprise vendors to provide these technologies as add ons to existing platform. 

The above market issues pushed us towards a complete rethink of the platform usage. After a detailed review (both internal and market), we realized the usage of these technologies / platforms can only be successful if it can be aligned to solve specific "business problems" within industries. We believe this is where these technologies have an advantage as majority of enterprises today are globalised and open, which traditional IT architectures can't support.

I would be keen to get some alternative views or experiences?

 

 

Zogix WebTop Suite v1.0 (ZWS) Launch

Hello everyone, a piece of interesting news for all you supporters of Zogix. We have released the first version of our flagship product; Zogix WebTop Suite (ZWS). The product is currently being deployed at some major UK based companies and we have received some enthusiastic response from various enterprises where we have showcased the product to date. I have enclosed our press release (https://www.zogix.com/news2007-01-09.html) which provides more details on the product.

Over the next few weeks, i am going to announce additional features, news on new customer acquisitions by Zogix and our plans for the future. We believe these are exciting times to be in enterprise software where new business and technology models are being created at the intersection of SAAS, enterprise 2.0 and SOA. So stay tuned ! and do download the product to let us know your thoughts on the current version of the product.

sam

Business Widgets - the new black

This is something happening in the nascent widgets space. After om malik started talking about widgets; everything's coming in widgets this space is seeing a revolution. Recently ZDnet blogger richard macmanus talks about the rise of web office widget which is the emergence of a new model for enterprise software where data can be displayed to end users through these light weight applications. We at Zogix feel quite pleased about renewed actvity in specifically what we call "Business Widgets" space that is in line with the vision of enterprise 2.0 that Zogix is pushing for.

We believe future of enterprise productivity will be driven by "widgets" that enables end users to improve personal productivity by accessing real time data and also incorporating new data from the same interface. This sees the rise of a two way interaction model leveraging which end users can access "inventory levels, daily sales reports, new opportunities etc" from their desktop. The data get's refreshed through the AJAX mechanism with RSS acting as the glue for data transfer between the said application and the widget.   

Stay tuned for the launch of the first enterprise widget platform (Zogix WebTop) which is aimed at enabling end users to create this two way interaction from their desktop.

ps - It's good to see SAP realising the value widgets Widgets in Enterprises can create for  enterprises, and the outlook of having SAP data available through this mechanism from the desktop seems a great opportunity to free up all that information that is stored within these systems.

A new model for portals

i came across an interesting post and a book written by Bill Ives and Kathleen Gilroy on intranet 2.0 Transforming your intranet which is spot on interms of how web 2.0 technologies will be deployed inside enterprises.

One of the biggest challenges in transforming existing intranets is the fact that large enterprises have traditional portal products currently in their infrastructure which has substantial sunk cost associated with it. So, any new portal product needs to provide substantial usage based benefits and an overall TCO that is substantially lower than the existing maintenance contracts.

I believe it's a question of time before disruptive products are developed which will drive enterprises to transform their existing monolithinc intranets.

 

Zogix Product Launch

Hello everyone,

To all Zogix users, we hope you have been enjoying the beta version of the product. Many thanks for testing the applicaton during summer and all your valuable feedback has now been incorporated. The team here has been hard at work trying to bring to you the production version of the platform with a completely new look and feel. This is my first of many posts where i will talk about the repositioning that we have done in Zogix, the new product set that we are bringing to the market, what we have got to offer for the developer community and primarily the key market gaps that we aim to address with this product.

So stay tuned to this blog for further news as we transition towards the most exciting phase in the company.

sam

   

The Start

It has been some time since the Zogix team sent out an update on our activities...and to all our avid fans, my apologies for the delay. The team have been cranking on trying to close down on all the outstanding bugs and get Zogix in a shape that we are ready for the beta program. 

Note that Zogix will start with private beta. It will take a little while until we open our doors to everyone. If you have a special interest, special story, special need then email me. I would love to hear it and see if it is a good match for our private beta program.....do email us beta@zogix.com

- sam

 

What's in a name?

Much debate has been had over the past 6 months over our name...Zogix.  We are frequently asked what does it mean, where does it come from, does it stand for anything, how do I pronounce it?  However all these questions stem from one thing, people notice our name and it draws comment.  In a world where people are bombarded with new brands and company names, the importance of choosing a name that stands out and sticks should not be underestimated.  So what does it mean and how do you pronounce it?

Zogix is an abbreviation for Zones of Global Innovation Exchange which originates as follows...

Zones...the Zogix application comprises three types of zones that allow members of the network to undertake certain activities.  These are the Private Zone, Community Zones, and Solution Zones...more soon

Global...the power of the Zogix network comes from connecting people around the world who would otherwise not be able to connect and collaborate

Innovation...the aim of the Zogix is to connect people, enterprises and institutions to create new products, services and solutions...in other words open innovation

Exchange...Zogix facilitates the swapping of knowledge, skills and intellectual property to drive innovation      

The Z and X in our name also draw comment and were recommended as two of the most memorable and distinct letters.

How is it pronounced...well that is up to you!

Check this out for more ideas for the naming game...  http://www.basement.org/archives/2006/04/zixxo_rsspowered_coupons.html#comments