CollabWorks™ is bringing the network effect to the enterprise.
Our mission: Simplify the processes for effective Enterprise to Enterprise Collaboration™.
Our vision: Over 1000 enterprises participating in a collaborative network where shared problems are solved once.
Our Beginnings: CollabWorks was born in August of 2006 from separate discussions Michael Grove, CollabWorks Founder, was having with Bill Vass, then CIO of Sun Microsystems and with Vin Melvin, then CIO of Sanmina. In different ways they both said the same thing - IT organizations solve the same problem over and over again. When he was CEO of Open Country, Mr. Grove put together a meeting of 10 CIO's and former CIO's including Vin and Bill. The conclusion of that meeting was a consensus that if CIO's and their teams collaborated enterprise to enterprise, they could share valuable knowledge and resources and reduce duplicate costs. From this initial meeting, the group agreed to focus on three problem areas - Security, SOX Compliance, and Monitoring.
The Founding group understood that in order to get concrete measurable results there needed to be more than roundtable talk groups and a facilitator. The activities needed to be defined and held accountable just like their internal IT projects. There needed to be an easy way for different enterprises to collaborate in-person and virtually. The legal infrastructures needed to be simple and yet effective enough for all the different interests to come together without sacrificing the controls and legal protection needed by each participant.
In those early days, the open source model for developers was borrowed and they coined the term "Open Source for CIO's". The analogy is similar to open source: CIO's and their teams could come together, form projects, share resources, and together solve problems. It was from these roots, that Open IT Works, was founded.
Our Evolution: By year-end 2006 it became clear that a very experienced dedicated team would be needed to bring Open IT Works to reality. Mr. Grove launched the company in January of 2007. The first year saw a number of accomplishments, including: Creating a scalable legal infrastructure to allow IP to be contributed, created, and distributed through managed project activity
Collaborative project management processes where developed to assure accountability
The business model evolved to provide for different levels of participation and for suppliers to sponsor collaborative projects and collaborate with other suppliers
The concept of Network Leader was developed which allows the domain experts and business consultants to leverage their skills and the network effect.
Participants are provided a suite of collaborative tools which support project management, Web 2.0 functions, and security.
Project successes where produced in security, SOX, and monitoring.
The number of Forum members more than doubled
There are three fundamental economic model changes that occur through Enterprise to Enterprise Collaboration:
Consolidation of customer requirements by customers,
Combining customers and suppliers into an unified project promotes end to end process evolution, and
Customers share solutions with other customers creating a peer-to-peer channel for suppliers.
Our Future: While initially focused on IT, this fundamental model can apply to any business endeavor. Therefore, the company name changed to CollabWorks in early 2008. The number of enterprise members is expected to be over 1,000 by 2010.
