Deltek’s Kona Social Collaboration Platform For Home And SMB

Deltek’s Kona Social Collaboration Platform Launches to Help People and Businesses Connect, Organize and Get Things Done

Herndon, VA, December 21, 2012 - Kona, a free cloud-based social collaboration and productivity platform that empowers individuals and groups to privately connect, organize, discuss and get things done together at home and at work, is now gaining traction with consumers and businesses around the world.  Kona is the only social platform that can bring all the components of people’s busy lives together into one manageable space, suitable for use in the boardroom, living room and community hall.

Realizing the frustrations people have using email, social business and other social networking sites when trying to get purposeful things accomplished with others -- and recognizing people’s desire for a solution that can bridge this need in both their work and personal lives, project-based software leader Deltek  created Kona to solve these problems. Kona uniquely delivers organization and context to a group’s conversations, collaborative tasks, shared calendars and files.  Kona provides one common place for a group so that everyone can access it from anywhere.  

Kona is focused on providing people with the ability to more easily manage activities within the groups across their lives – and is now empowering over 12,000 users to solve real problems and do more each day. This often involves the dissemination and collection of information that leads to tasks and schedules … but it all stems from conversations. As industry-leading analyst and author Charlene Li (Altimeter Group) highlights, collaboration drives value by:

·         Encouraging sharing

·         Capturing knowledge

·         Enabling action

·         Empowering people

 “We live in a society where social collaboration drives how we interact with each other, and this has led to fragmentation in communication where no single platform meets all the need of its users. Kona changes that,” said Scott DeFusco, Vice President of Product Strategy and Management for Kona. “Each day, people and businesses are facing the challenges and importance of collaboration and productivity –especially as cloud computing, mobile and social become the norms. As we all have learned, email has become the go-to point, but it’s not interactive or collaborative by nature. Businesses and multi-layer organizations will find Kona as useful as busy parents, students and local sports and community groups. Kona is changing how people work, play and get things done -- individually and collaboratively -- across the groups in their lives. It’s social, with a purpose … because life is our biggest project.”

“Kona is built to get me, my people and my projects together. The adoption rate within my accounting and operations team is 100%, with a reduction of emails from department members at 20-30 per day,” said Rana Blair, Principal of ECOM Engineering.  “It is not a panacea to all of the ills related to working in a group, but instead reduces the headaches related to administering the group, its information and activities.” [See more about Rana and others using Kona to get things done in this video segment.]

People are utilizing the Kona platform to:

·         Engage with co-workers on projects, especially  when the team is dispersed

·         Plan their wedding and organize multi-family vacations through the ‘conversation’ , ‘task’ and file sharing features

·         Coordinate, organize and execute professional, personal and volunteer events (company conferences, PTA fundraisers at school, Girl Scout activities and more)

·         Manage their children’s sports teams, car pools and after school activities through the interactive calendar

·         Create virtual to-do lists with the ‘task’ feature for hosting a dinner party with friends and managing household projects (like painting the nursery or building a new deck)

·         Stay synched on decisions and progress with a spouse, realtor, builder and banker while building a new house

Information on Kona is private and secure.  Only the people invited into the group can access details and conversations in the space, with additional privacy controls available inside each space. Kona provides a generous space allowance supported by cloud infrastructure, so the documents and files do not need to be saved elsewhere -- letting users have the information wherever they go. Kona also provides group tasks, which makes it easier to assign to-do items to individuals or everyone for completion.

Previously available in beta, Kona has thousands of registered users across the globe, comprised of individuals, business users, non-profit organizations, clubs, groups and teams.  Kona is fully integrated with Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Docs and Yahoo!, with more enhancements and features in development. Kona is also available as a mobile application, compatible with both Android devices and iPhones/iPads through the Apple iOS platform.

About Kona

Kona is a free cloud-based social collaboration and productivity platform that empowers individuals and groups to connect, organize and get things done at home and at work. People from all demographic backgrounds and walks of life rely on Kona each day to keep abreast of their busy schedules and complete their tasks. Launched in late 2012, Kona has thousands of users and is growing rapidly. Kona –Connect, Organize and Get Things Done … together.