The unusual move has seen Intel Capital corral Six Apart, SocialText, NewsGator and SimpleFeed’s social networking software on to SuiteTwo, an integrated suite based on SpikeSource’s open source Spike Stack.
Intel Capital is an investor in both SpikeSource and Six Apart and clearly sees a big future in social networking software if it can maximize its investment. The SuiteTwo software will be sold through Intel’s software and solutions group reseller channels, as well as SpikeSource partners.
SuiteTwo brings together the Socialtext wiki software with NewsGator’s RSS aggregator and SimpleFeed’s RSS syndication functionality and Six Apart’s Movable Type blogging software, while future versions will include podcasting, business networking and mobility functionality.
Commenting on the potential SuiteTwo, Joaquin Ruiz, VP of marketing with SpikeSource, said the companies saw the adoption of Web 2.0 software as comparable with the adoption of email in the 1980s.
Today you have 1.6 billion corporate email clients where just 20 years ago you had roughly zero, said Ruiz. He noted that initial deployments are expected for what he called high engagement marketing and providing common look and feel for internal collaborative communication.
Ruiz added that SuiteTwo would go into production with early engagements with early access customers this quarter and will be widely available in the first half of 2007.
As for the question of Intel’s involvement, Ruiz commented: Intel is starting to get feedback that what customers are looking for is solutions. It is interesting, but I would suspect you’ll be seeing quite a bit more of this.
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