I do find more and more companies aware of, exploring, and piloting RSS for a variety of reasons. Externally it might be justified as part of a CRM effort. From a supply chain perspective it could be justified as a means to provide partners with up-to-date information on products or areas of joint work. Internally, RSS can be valuable from a variety of perspectives typically around alerts, notifications, ability to "carve out" a communication channel for certain types of information (project updates and such) or for other process-based solutions. The possibilities are very broad. Applications can publish data and lists of different task items to subscribers. The promise of XML-based syndication is very credible. So the post below from Attensa's CEO is also pretty reasonable. Disclaimer: I'm quoted in the NewsGator release.
While we have been last to market with our Enterprise offering (the Attensa Feed Server) we have by no means found ourselves "late to the party." This is a new, new market opportunity. And it is friggin HUGE. I can't believe the companies that are contacting us. BIG companies. Household names. NewsGator and KnowNow are no doubt experiencing the same. Like NG, we are seeing all kinds of different scenarios driving interest. Also like NG, we are not yet able to disclose who these charter customers are, but here's a quick summary of the scope and scenarios surrounding our first big customer wins (all of whom are F100 companies)
Source: Craig's Lemonade
That said, my role as analyst requires me also critically analyze new technologies (as well as vendors) and ensure that clients consider broader as well as specific implications at the business, application and infrastructure/networking level. This also includes pointing out where security aspects of an enterprise RSS platform need to be examined. My talking points generally fall into the following categories:
Security
• Ensure support for SSL and related authentication methods
• Browser add-ins should run “internet zone” or “restricted sites zone”
• Require Windows XP SP2 Attachment Execution Service support
• Ask about block lists, content filtering, and handling of malformed feeds
• Outline how RSS enclosures are managed
• Require ACL’s per feed at group/user levels integrated via AD and LDAP
De-duping
• Assess how multiple updates to posts are handled and impact to read/unread marks
Synchronization
• Check to make sure read/unread marks are managed across clients and devices
Storage
• Primarily a concern when feeds are sent into e-mail systems
• Potentially a compliance concern
Network Utilization
• Assess download schedule management
• IE7 “salting” the interval (is it good enough)
• Is the RSS 2.0 Time To Live (TTL) tag honored
• Use of / support for Incremental feed updates (RFC 3229 (“Delta Encoding in HTTP”))
• Compression of feeds and enclosures
Personalized Feeds
• Not really an easy feature to implement at this time
Organizational dynamics are also critically important. After addressing the technical issues above, there still is a ton of work to focus on in terms of user adoption patterns and supporting the desired experiences users want around feeds (e.g., browser, e-mail, dedicated client, mobile, etc). Other aspects related to RSS like pinging services, tagging models, and so on also need to be addressed.
This is not an overnight event. Rolling out RSS platforms without a plan might create an adrenaline rush or sense of euphoria, but change management in terms of user behavior and institutionalizing the technology (e.g., secure, trusted, scalable) is equally as important. Otherwise "success breeds the seeds of its own failure". Enterprises should go in to any new technology with their eyes wide open and aware that there is no such thing as a free lunch or silver bullet.
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