Comments on: Is Foldera Vaporware?

By: Bill Simms

Bill Simms — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 03:41:28 +0000

zzzzz…..If it isn’t complete vaporware then it is going to be outdated before it is released. This dog has had a longer roll-out time than Longhorn. In the meantime, other Web 2.0 apps are taking over the space and gaining marketshare. Now that they have stopped the coincidental practice of hiring authors 20 seconds after they publish a glowing review of the product they’ve never seen, noone is talking about Folderra at all. Every geek on the planet (myself included) signed up on their Beta list a year ago and nobody I’ve heard of is beta testing yet.

By: Saas-a-fras-er

Saas-a-fras-er — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 16:55:31 +0000

Update: Foldera Information Coming Soon

By: Attila Bradjan

Attila Bradjan — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 00:52:11 +0000

What is the definition of vaporware? I believe it is software which has not been proven to exist. To me (a stockholder in Foldera for the last 8 months) this is exactly what this product is. I have not seen a screenshot, an image or even so much as a definition of what this product really is. Frankly, Foldera might have a good product but they are holding onto it for so long that I foresee one of 2 things happening:
1) The public will lose interest in the company since the company has not been very oriented toward marketing. (These questions about Foldera’s credibility definitely harm the credibility of the board).
2) The product will deliver something which has been in development so long that it is not as revolutionary as it would have been had it have been released 6-12 months earlier.
I bought on the premise of a revolutionary, great product. Frankly, I work for a large organization where this type of lack of progress would get all of us fired, had we have been assigned to this project.
I am left with questions such as:
1) Will Foldera be able to respond to customer demands and feedback in a timely manner? I fear they will not be able to do so adequetly based upon what little I have so thus far.
2) Will Foldera even learn to communicate to the public? Without this inherent ability the company will fold quicker than a house built from a deck of cards.

I reall wish the company well,especially being a stockholder, but I feel they just don’t have their pulse on what the public wants. As the executive from Microsoft knows, you do not need a good product to make it in this business. You need great marketing more than anything else.

Foldera, if you need someone to help guage public sentiment and interest give me a call. I still have faith in you. It’s dwindlling day by day, but the faith is still there.

By: Troy Meldrum

Troy Meldrum — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 09:59:56 +0000

SaaS-a-fras:
I am a FOLDER stock holder and I think you will wish you were too. I do agree it has been hard to see the stock price continue to drop but it hasn’t stopped me from continuing to buy more. I am a small business owner and I need FOLDERA. If they do deliver as promised it will be huge. So pull your pennies together because this gold will not be priced at $0.60/lb for long.
Troy Meldrum

By: Stockholder

Stockholder — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 05:24:57 +0000

Thanks for the update in response to the vaporware accusation. Myself and several co-workers have invested into FOLDERA and find little information available as to your progress.

By: Dave Madison

Dave Madison — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 00:17:56 +0000

Let me just add to what Oliver has so accurately noted. By way of background I joined Foldera back in August as a Senior Vice President after 14 years at Microsoft working in various roles in the collaboration space. When I saw the Foldera product I saw a product the many of the customers I had worked with while at Microsoft were asking for. As for the product being vaporware, well no one understands what it is to be accused of having a vaporware product more than a current or former Microsoft employee . (insert your favorite Microsoft vaporware product joke here) I can tell you that the product is NOT vaporware and I would have not left a successful career at Microsoft had that been the case. To repeat what Oliver said, we have released the product to a set of beta customers and have received very productive feedback. Despite what we may be seeing in the present day Web 2.0 type software being released, there are no silver bullets when it comes to software development and to repeat what Oliver said, to release before we, or our beta customers believe its ready would be a mistake.

We all want to release as soon as possible and customers like yourself are also eager for us to do so. I understand the skepticism and certainly cannot argue with your current position. But I can say we are all working hard to get the initial release out the door and expect that to happen very soon. And I hope you will give us the chance overcome your skepticism and when the product is release we welcome your feedback and input on how to make it even better

Dave Madison

By: Saas-a-fras-er

Saas-a-fras-er — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 13:36:32 +0000

Oliver, thanks for taking the time to comment, I do appreciate it. I’m going to have to remain skeptical since all we have – and continue to have – is Foldera’s word for it, so to speak. Look forward to hearing more about the eventual release.

By: Oliver Starr

Oliver Starr — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 03:56:29 +0000

Aloha, I noticed your post and thought I’d pop over and give you what information I can. As you know Foldera is a publicly traded company so there are strict limitations as to what I can and can’t say.

What I can tell you with absolute certainty is that Foldera is not “vaporware” by any stretch of the imagination.

You’ll notice that we’ve exhibited at lots of events this past year and you’ll also notice that not one of our competitors wrote that we were vaporware or didn’t really exhibit or exhibited something vastly different than we’ve been describing or promising from day one.

Don’t you think if during any event at which we where exhibiting we demonstrated any kind of deviation from what we’ve been promising companies that consider us competitive would have been all over it like white on rice?

Mostly I think that people competing with Foldera are hoping that we ARE vaporware or that we can’t deliver what we promised.

Granted, getting our application rolled out to the large number of people that registered back when it sounds like you did has proven more challenging than we expected.

First because the demand so exceeded our capability to provision for it that we took several months just to increase our available gear and bandwidth. However that was not the sum total of the reasons for the delay.

During this time we had small but diligent groups of beta testers providing us with very comprehensive feedback. What we learned was that while much of the application was as good as we thought it was and delivered what people wanted and expected there were certain deficiencies that were significant enough that we ended up reengineering some major components of the application and then reintegrating them into the application architecture.

When you’re dealing with millions of lines of code and the subsequent need to scale to hundreds of thousands and then in quick succession millions of users with what amounts to a complete suite of productivity and permissioning tools it takes time to make these big changes.

As you noted, Foldera has been in development for a long time. Believe me when I tell you that no one is more anxious than the Foldera team to release the application into open beta.

The caveat of course is “When it is ready.” We’ve taken long enough at this point that to rush something out now that is 90 or 95% there would be a mistake. We’re not going to make that mistake.

Trust me when I tell you that this is not the first time we’ve heard this or responded to similar questions and while I don’t enjoy having to explain this situation over and over I’d rather that people understand that we’re trying to do something that has never been done before and we don’t want to over promise and under-deliver.

I think in the long run, even people that would have liked us to have pushed something out a lot sooner will ultimately be glad that we took the required time to make sure that every part of Foldera is world class.

For what it’s worth we’ve recently been adding more and more beta testers to the application and things are proceeding according to our updated schedule.

While I wouldn’t suggest that you hold your breath about getting an invite, I will say that we are getting closer and closer to letting the world get a first hand feel for what the hub-bub regarding Foldera has been about.

Oliver Starr