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eXo Social Now Available as Open Source Download
Combines OpenSocial and GateIn for enterprise social networking and mashup development
SAN FRANCISCO, May 17 -- eXo today introduced eXo Social 1.0, an enterprise social software package based on OpenSocial. Bundled with GateIn 3.0 and Tomcat 6.0 to run out of the box, eXo Social is immediately available as a free download under the open source Affero Gnu Public License (AGPL).
Why Use eXo Social
Sure, there's now several social software packages available on the market—some so simple, they're being used by line of business managers. But increasingly, IT organizations want to "own" this move to an enterprise social network. Here's what eXo offers to make this transition smooth for IT managers and developers.
eXo Social plugs into a company's existing infrastructure through LDAP integration. A company directory can be used to create an instant social network, complete with specified roles, groups and permissions. There's no need to add another layer of administration or dedicated resources.
Once the social network is set up, employees can add to their profiles, connect to colleagues and share information about what they're working on through an activity stream. eXo Social also makes it easy for project teams or groups to collaborate through an online area known as a community workspace. In eXo Social, applications are treated as individuals, so users can subscribe to updates on JIRA, for example. Activity streams can be customized for individuals, groups and even applications, and they can access Java and REST-sourced posts and status updates as well.
Lastly, eXo Social offers a mashup development environment for building gadgets. These can be both hosted and deployed in any dashboard or workspace. The GateIn application registry organizes gadgets and sets permissions for users.
What Can You Do with eXo Social
eXo Social is a general-purpose enterprise social platform, meaning it can be used to develop and deploy applications. eXo puts all the tools needed to create social applications or add social features into the hands of IT organizations. Here are some example use cases of what eXo Social can do.
- Create a developer dashboard. Developers can create an activity stream for an application—that is, show changes made in commonly used developer tools like JIRA, Hudson and Sonar, which are published as activities. These activity streams are displayed in a gadget. Check out this video to see how this can be done: here.
- Add social features to an application. With eXo Social, many applications can be turned into interactive social applications. eXo shows how using the popular Grails bookstore application in this video.
- Aggregate data to measure marketing campaigns. Developers can mashup Google Analytics data (using its API) with product launch dates in a graph and combine and grab download data from a .csv file—all shown in a single view in a gadget. A step-by-step tutorial is available: here.
Supporting Quotes
Benjamin Mestrallet, founder and CEO of eXo: "It's easy to think that eXo Social is 'yet another social software,' but we've thought through what IT organizations and developers need to turn their enterprise social networking strategy into a reality—particularly for Java enterprises that want to make their transactional Java apps interactive and more socially aware. We're confident in the package we've developed and are making eXo Social available as open source to encourage people to download it and take advantage of the features immediately."
eXo Social Features
A full list of eXo Social features is available here. Some key features include:
- OpenSocial 0.8.1 Support: eXo Social includes a fully compliant gadget container; supports the oAuth, REST and RPC Social protocols; and implements social APIs.
- Social Gadgets: A set of built-in gadgets that can be used as a starting point for enterprise gadget developers. These include a status update, RSS fetcher and connection viewer.