Hot in my email box this morning is a notification BT Tradespace will cease offering the Workspace software – see the actual text below.
This is obviously bad news for anybody who’s built the app into their Business Internet architecture and for the whole sector interested in moving business off the desk top and onto the web.
It’s probably good news for Central Desktop (and others I haven’t come across) although I’m in no position to suggest that’s an appropriate migration, or even that Workspace had enough customers for this to be interesting. Obviously Workspace can’t have been that successful – otherwise SMBlive (which isn’t live for long by the sound of it) wouldn’t be shutting it down.\
And in a minor way it’s good news for me, simply because it’s another prediction coming true. I wonder if I dare predict the end of BT Tradespace?
The problem all these big companies have in the new many to many markets is twofold. Firstly there isn’t enough money in these services to cover the overhead costs which burden big companies. Second, marketing muscle doesn’t do it.
BT may be universally hated as a bloated, exploitive, ex monopoly which prefers confusing customers about price plans to working at customer service. It surely isn’t loved by anybody I know.
But it’s still an awfully big name, with a huge customer base in the UK. If any company should have been able to make Workspace (and Tradespace) work it would be BT.
But they haven’t and we only need to look at the software to know why. It pressures users toward the paid plans with grotty, old fashioned software, when they can get a much better job elsewhere for free.
Typical BT. Decisions get made on the basis of what suits the people in the business, rather customers interests and that’s why it can’t cut it in markets where it doesn’t hold all the cards.
Here’s the email:
BT Workspace – Product Withdrawal
You recently received an email from BT in relation to the product withdrawal of BT Workspace. SMBlive operates the BT Workspace service, and your relationship as a customer of BT Workspace is with SMBlive.
The purpose of this email is to provide formal notification that SMBlive intends to shut down and cease operating the Workspace service on 20th November 2009. After this date you will no longer be able to log in to your BT Workspace account or access any of the files that you have stored on your Workspaces.
If you wish to retain any documents or files from your BT Workspace account, you must download them and store them in an alternative location. SMBlive will not store any documents or files after the service is shut down, and all information stored on the BT Workspace platform will be deleted.
If you have upgraded previously to the paid-for variant of BT Workspace, no further payments will be collected after 20th October 2009.
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BT Workspace was brilliant when it started, but after it was released that was it – they stopped developing it. In the 24 months since I first signed up for it, Basecamp and the others have caught up and blown BT Workspace out of the water. That doesn't change the fact that I still have a massive project archive stored on it with no apparent way to download or export it – save from making a few hundred screen grab printouts.
Contrary to the email you quoted above, BT never sent anything out in relation to its closure. That email was the first I heard about it. But the signup page is still live: https://signup.btworkspace.com/Step1.aspx
It seems to me that neither BT or SMBLive want to take any responsibility for this product and both are as bad as each other when it comes to dropping the ball.
There's a lesson here about building a service division based entirely on co-branded white label products. Don't.
Hi Heather, I absolutely agree with you. BT has been a pet hate of mine for years, mostly because of the way it keeps changing its price plans with sole objective of confusing people. It's a typical infrastructure business trying to exploit a near monopoly.
The worst thing of all is not providing users with a transition path. It really couldn't be that difficult to provide an export to any number of free services.
I had a workspace account but never used it so don't know anything about the tools if offers or what you've been using it for.
Have you looked at Evernote? that might offer an alternative, and maybe even Posterous?
Best of luck – Steve
Hi Steve,
I have never used any BT services myself aside from Workspace, but I have a client who had a very difficult time giving me their list of their customers' email addresses because it was all stored on their BT webmail utility, cobranded with Yahoo. You could not copy the list, forward it, print it out, or include it as an inline list. All you could do with it was insert it into an email's “to” field. I said to them that as things stood, they did not actually own their own business data. I find it really shocking that any company would adopt such a careless, white-label-driven model for a whole service division, all the while touting themselves as the small business's best friend.
Evernote is more of a note-taking utility, useful for storing and categorising all those things that normally get scribbled on dozens of pieces of note paper (who me?)
I use Basecamp now but it is not the right fit for everyone. Here is a great selection of other PM tools:
http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/03/26/16-pr...
Hi Steve,
I have never used any BT services myself aside from Workspace, but I have a client who had a very difficult time giving me their list of their customers' email addresses because it was all stored on their BT webmail utility, cobranded with Yahoo. You could not copy the list, forward it, print it out, or include it as an inline list. All you could do with it was insert it into an email's “to” field. I said to them that as things stood, they did not actually own their own business data. I find it really shocking that any company would adopt such a careless, white-label-driven model for a whole service division, all the while touting themselves as the small business's best friend.
Evernote is more of a note-taking utility, useful for storing and categorising all those things that normally get scribbled on dozens of pieces of note paper (who me?)
I use Basecamp now but it is not the right fit for everyone. Here is a great selection of other PM tools:
http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/03/26/16-pr...