RSS is Everywhere!

Well, that may be true on the Internet, but not as true within the enterprise. At NewsGator, we find prospects and customers at different stages in RSS adoption, and almost all ask the same question: "How do I get existing information into RSS?"

There are a number of mechanisms to accomplish this goal, and the answer will depend on your business problem. There are three major business processes and problems that I'll cover here: newsletters, corporate communications and legacy data.

Newsletters

Many of our customers come to us with an e-mail overload problem, and newsletters are part of that. In most cases, we suggest that customers use our E-mail Feed feature. E-mail Feeds are a very accessible way to create RSS from an e-mail. An author creates an e-mail feed, composes the newsletter in an e-mail and sends it to the e-mail feed address. Subscribers to that e-mail feed receive the e-mail within NewsGator Enterprise Server (or Inbox for Outlook, FeedDemon, NetNewsWire, NewsGator Go! for Blackberry or Windows Mobile, or Desktop). Since an e-mail feed is just like any other feed in our system, an enterprising organization could also re-purpose that content to a portal or other external destination using our APIs.

Corporate Communications

As a corporate communicator, blogging is a really convenient way to put your content into RSS. Don't considering blogging as just a bunch of casual posts about your kids or political candidates. Think of it as a really effective alternative to all that staff e-mail. Even e-mails where you have five people on the cc line, you should consider blogging it! (I blogged this internally for feedback before it goes up on our public site for you to read.) Tags associated with a blog post allow you to target that information to the right constituents. Many of our customers are evaluating SharePoint as a blogging platform, since they are either evaluating or rolling out SharePoint as part of an Enterprise 2.0 solution. Plus, SharePoint's integration with the Word 2007, OneNote 2007 and Windows Live Writer makes blogging really accessible to everyone in your organization. Look to other blogging platforms like SixApart's Movable Type -- they may have additional desirable features.

Legacy Data

What about those systems that we won't be replacing in the next 12, 18, or even 48 months? What if I'm in a heterogeneous IT environment? How do you expose that data in RSS? We've partnered with /n software and provide RSSBus as an enabler for just this kind of scenario. RSSBus is a framework that resembles Yahoo Pipes that allows you not only to convert legacy data into RSS format but combine legacy systems output as a mashup that can be distributed through NewsGator Enterprise Server.

Ashley Roach
NGES Product Manager