Exciting Times in the Enterprise Collaboration Market

This is an extremely exciting week in the dynamic and vibrant Microsoft SharePoint marketplace, and by extension, the enterprise collaboration market. Metalogix announced its acquisition of the Axceler brand as well as its SharePoint-related assets. Metalogix also indicated that it would assume the employment of 70+ employees to augment Metalogix’s 200+ employees today. Forrester Research Principal Analyst Alan Weintraub published an article talking about the recent developments in our market and stated that the new addition to Metalogix’s “platform” now will pressure other ISV vendors to enhance or make similar acquisitions to keep up with the competitive landscape. I agree with his takeaway, and not only do we agree in principle – we’ve made platform integration a key tenet of our software since we first opened our doors in 2001. I encourage you to read up on what some of our customers say about our pre-integrated platform for compliance, governance, and management for social enterprise collaboration platforms. I’ve stated in past blog posts that in today’s disruptive technology landscape, we’re called upon to innovate and follow suit. That includes industry heavyweights like Microsoft, which recently announced a vast realignment in its company structure to best support the next generation of computing. The consequence for not doing so? We’ve seen a slew of companies come and go since 2001 – one of the biggest being the acquisition of Quest Software by Dell. A common question that we ask of ourselves when we examine how to continue to grow and scale is how to do so – through acquisition or through internal development? It’s been our experience in watching other enterprises acquire additional product lines and then try to pitch integration for different, disjointed products that it helps you gain bulk in the short term but lose out on truly offering an integrated commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) experience for the long run. This is why we have seen other companies struggle in the recent years to grow, as “innovation through acquisition” rather than “organic integrated innovation” catches up and unravels any business momentum. It’s this experience that propels us to continue ahead in building all of our products in-house, ensuring pre-integration of our software so that when your needs evolve and grow, we can grow with you without letting technology become the hurdle – whether it’s compliance, governance, infrastructure management, productivity apps, or mobile data access management solutions across SharePoint, file shares, websites, and CRM platforms. It’s why we continue to marry in-house product development with providing truly global, live 24/7 customer support – which we built out back in 2011. By developing our products in-house, we are able to more easily keep our support professionals engaged as experts in products with which they’re already familiar. As evidenced by our aggressive product launches and business expansion, we will not rest on our laurels and will continue to expand our offering to better understand and serve our enterprise customers – whether on-premises, in the cloud, or across hybrid environments. It’s exciting to see continued validation in the marketplace – from industry analysts, the press, our customers, and even our fellow ISVs in the SharePoint space for what we’ve held near and dear to our hearts for years. I not only speak for myself but also for each and every one of our 1,400+ employees at AvePoint, from top to bottom, who continue to pour their passion for excellence into building products and services to better serve our customers. As the summer comes to a close and we look ahead to closing out 2013 strongly, I can only smile and continue to forge ahead with passion and confidence to fulfill our mission to provide global enterprises with products and services to help them revolutionize their businesses.