Central Desktop 2008 Year-End Review

Before we kick-off the New Year of 2009, I wanted to do a quick reflection on 2008.

Our small company has achieved significant milestones over the past year .  We've grown from a handful of employees and contractors to more than 20 full-time employees at the time of this writing.  During the past year, our revenues and customer counts have grown every month and every quarter.  In fact, even in these difficult economic times, our fourth quarter was our best quarter ever with a particularly good November and December.

Our rapid employee growth has been a result of many factors converging at once; primarily we've grown out of customer need and demand, but we've also grown as a result of a $7 million cash infusion from Openview Venture Partners that we closed in early 2008.  After bootstrapping the company for almost three years we decided that it was time to accelerate our growth and expand the company; a milestone that we have not regretted to this day.

The additional resources have allowed us to improve and develop more aggressively on our core product, Central Desktop.  As I scanned the Release Notes that we post on the Forum I realized that in addition to company, customer and revenue achievements this past year, that we also made significant product enhancements and improvements. 

As a recap for 2008, I wanted to highlight some of the key features that we've released, noting that an advantage to developing on a pure, multi-tenant SaaS platform - is that our customers realize the benefits of these features by simply refreshing their browser - and eliminate costly downtime or expensive resources often experienced during traditional software upgrades:

• More Storage for Everyone.  In February, we increased everyone's storage by 100-500%.  
• Increased File Upload Limits. We also increased file upload limits from 100MB to 250MB.
  
• Workspace Templates. Added "Workspace Templates" to manage repeating projects and customized workspaces. Saves a ton of time!
  
• Usage Reports.  Administrators can report on "Popular Search Terms" "Search History" and "User Usage" - ideal for measuring adoption and increasing usage.
  
• Web Capture Form. Ability to capture data from a web-form on any website and store that data inside a Central Desktop database.
• Record Webinars.  Ability to record web meetings and webinars via the Web Meeting client.
• API v2.0.  The SOAP API was retooled to allow access to databases contained within workspaces. 
• User Profile Extensions.  Options to add custom fields to user profiles. 
  
• Time Tracking.  Ability to track time associated with Tasks.
  
• Help Desk.  We released a turnkey Help Desk Workspace Template for managing tickets, bugs, incidents.
• Search Improvements.  Inclusion of "phrase matching," one-click filters by file type and advanced search capabilities by workspace, tag and file type.
• Workflow. Powerful rules engine to configure auto-notification and auto-task creation based on predetermined criteria (i.e. when documents are changed, edited, deleted, etc.)
• Free Conference Calling For Everyone.  Addition of Free Conference Calling as part of the Calendering system.
• Bulk File Download.  Download and delete multiple files/folders at one time.
• Enterprise Edition.  Enhanced product offering to cater to companies and departments of more than 100 users that require advanced security options, service level agreements, workflow engine and Salesforce.com connections. 
• Safari and Chrome Browser Support!  A long time in the making - finally released.
• AJAX Hovers.  Hover balloons for Calendar items to quickly view Task, Milestone or Event details.
  
• Task Hiding / Archiving.  Setting to auto-hide / auto-archive old and completed tasks.
  
• New Help Center.  Powerful new Help Center to assist users.

And that wasn't everything!  That was just a quick highlight of the "bigger" feature enhancements we did during 2008.  Visit our Forum to view the exhaustive list of Product Release Notes. 

As for 2009, we've got a lot more coming at you beginning in early January.  Look for a powerful Plugin to tie Central Desktop calendars and tasks directly into Microsoft Outlook.  2009 will also include additional UI enhancements and stronger customization functionality. 

2008 was a very good year for collaboration software Central Desktop - but thanks to you, we see an even brighter future in 2009.  We see Central Desktop growing in the down economy and emerging as a strong market leader in the SaaS-based Social Technology arena. 

Thank you all for your business and your continuous feedback - we read and examine every single email, comment, voicemail, blog post and tweet that you send us.  We appreciate your voice. 

As we close the chapter on 2008 - lets look forward to a brighter and successful 2009!