Dimdim

Dimdim, Inc.
Acquired by Salesforce.com
Industry Software
Fate Acquired
Successor Salesforce.com
Founded 2006
Defunct 2011
Headquarters Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Key people

CEO DD Ganguly, CTO Prakash Khot, CMO Steve Chazin, Director of Technology Saurav Mohapatra, Director of Engineering Rohit Shankar, Director of Business Development Sundar Subramanian, Director of Operations Uday Khatua

[1]
Products Web conferencing and collaboration
Website http://www.dimdim.com

Dimdim was a software company that provided a web-based platform for realtime, rich-media collaboration and meetings. Dimdim provided free web conferencing service where users could share desktops, show slides, collaborate, chat, talk and broadcast via webcam.[2] It has been compared to the WebEx 2.0 web conferencing application.[3] Dimdim was acquired by Salesforce.com on January 6, 2011.[4]

Investors

Dimdim was financially backed by Index Ventures, Nexus India Capital and Draper Richards.[5]

Open source

Dimdim was made available primarily as an enterprise edition and as a Virtual Machine appliance, but an open source community edition has also been made available to developers under the GNU General Public License (GPL), giving them the option to install and host Dimdim in their own networks. The most recent open source version, released in December 2008 and hosted at sourceforge.net, is V4.5 "Liberty". However, no installation instructions were provided, and the software had several arbitrary limitations, leading some to describe it as "crippled".[6] Distributions of the system for the installation to several OSes, Virtual Machines and the corresponding documentation are available in several archives on the SourceForge.net Dimdim site.[7]

Dimdim can be integrated with the e-learning platforms Moodle, Claroline and Docebo, the collaborative suite Zimbra and the CRM software SugarCRM. Unlike Dimdim's web-hosted services, the Dimdim open source server does not restrict the number of attendees or simultaneous meetings allowed.

Dimdim has come under heavy criticism lately by a large section of the community for not releasing an open source version after the 4.5 version. It has been accused of using open source as a means of publicity but never actually being committed to the community. The lack of a proper public repository and no communication between the developers and the community further questions the intent.

As of December 2010, at Dimdim's website, there was no download available for the open source version and the only way to download it was from SourceForge.net. Dimdim's acquisition FAQ states that the company would no longer be contributing to the open source project.[8] As of January 2011, an open source fork called miDmiD had been started.[8]

History

An alpha version of Dimdim was released in fall 2006, followed by a private beta launch in fall 2007.[9] The company's first public beta was in April 2008. Version 4.0 beta was released in July 2008. Dimdim formally exited beta in December 2008 with the launch of version 4.5.[10]

The most recent upgrade of Dimdim 5.5 was received with much criticism and numerous complaints of it being an alpha product. Various major changes took place in the interface of the system and its integration API [11] with other systems.

Acquisition

Portable 'Internet In A Box', which includes a router and a Mac Mini running DimDim, for web-based videoconferencing.

On January 6, 2011 Dim Dim was acquired by Salesforce.com for USD $31M.[12]

Revenue streams

As of 2010, Dimdim provided for hosted meetings, similar to GoToMeeting. Free meetings were made available for up to ten users. Professional meetings with collaboration tools for up to 50 users were also made available for US$25 per month, and webinar hosting for up to 100 users or 1,000 event attendees was available for US$75 per month.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Management Team - Dimdim
  2. ↑ "Dimdim in CrunchBase". CrunchBase. Retrieved 2008-08-21.
  3. ↑ Mitra, Sramana (2008-09-15). "Building A Smarter Corporation". Forbes. Retrieved 2008-10-03.
  4. ↑ Agrawal, Shrija (November 3, 2010). "Salesforce.com Close To Acquiring Web Collaboration Company Dimdim". VC Circle.
  5. ↑ Mills, Elinor (2008-07-09). "Web meeting provider Dimdim raises $6 million". CNet. Retrieved 2008-08-21.
  6. ↑ "dimdim on debian etch". btm.geek. 2008-03-13.
  7. ↑ "Download section on". Sourceforge.net. 2008-12-03. Retrieved 2013-07-30.
  8. 1 2 "Dimdim Lives up to its Name". Blogs.computerworlduk.com. Retrieved 2013-07-30.
  9. ↑ Kincaid, Jason (2008-07-09). "Dimdim Gets $6 Million For Open Sourced Web Meetings". Washingtonpost.com. Retrieved 2008-10-03.
  10. ↑ Wauters, Robin (2008-12-03). "Dimdim Exits Beta With New SynchroLive Platform, Releases Source Code". techcrunch.com. Retrieved 2008-12-22.
  11. ↑ Archived June 3, 2010, at the Wayback Machine.
  12. ↑ Dignan, Larry (2011-01-06). "Salesforce buys Dimdim for $31 million, bolsters Chatter collaboration". ZDNet. Retrieved 2013-07-30.
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