Product Peek: Endeavors Technology’s Magi Enterprise 3.0

Endeavors’ Magi Enterprise 3.0 builds around a secure peer-to-peer architecture to provide chat, file-sharing and search capabilities delivered over standard Web ports and protocols.

Many companies have tried to implement group collaboration, only to find their efforts wasted because of difficulties with the company firewall or lack of interest from users. What’s needed is simplicity – using standard Web protocols that meet the needs of the group. Magi Enterprise 3.0 from Endeavors Technology fits the bill in both cases.

Magi Enterprise 3.0 builds around a secure peer-to-peer architecture to provide chat, file-sharing and search capabilities delivered over standard Web ports and protocols. The peer-to-peer architecture simplifies the user experience by making it possible to share documents residing on the local computer with the outside world or other members of a closed group. Magi Enterprise also incorporates the Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning standard to augment its basic peer-to-peer file-sharing capabilities.

In a true peer-to-peer architecture you don’t need any server applications – but Magi Enterprise has a server component that handles authentication and searching. The user has a relatively small client to implement chat and file-sharing functions. The server search function looks through all the public folders on each individual registered computer to build an index of searchable items.

Managing Magi Enterprise is almost too easy. Client software installation involves clicking a button on a Web page. The scary part for many IT organizations is that it runs with very little control on their part. File transfers can and will happen without going through the corporate firewall. Antivirus protection at the local computer level would be imperative to prevent any file from taking down the entire network.

Performance issues depend on the types of transfers you perform. While most users will have a machine sufficient for their own purposes, large file transfers to other machines – either on the network or over the Internet – can degrade performance. Slow network or Internet connections also will affect overall performance.

Endeavors offers Magi Enterprise on a per-user basis and as a service billed monthly per user. Overall cost depends on the number of users, but a typical installation of 1,000 users works out to about $400 each. For small groups, it’s more cost-effective to use the service model.

Magi Enterprise provides tools that are extremely easy to use and work in just about any environment. In the end. it comes down to the users and if they adopt it or not.

Ferrill can be reached at Paul.Ferrill@verizon.net.