Attivio and Traction Software Bridge Worldwide Scientific Community with Enterprise 2.0 Technology

Monday, February 28, 2011 - Company Release

Attivio, Inc. and Traction Software today announced their work with the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (BGRI) and Cornell University to create a community portal, bringing together scientists, biologists, universities and agricultural organizations from more than 45 countries to collaborate, educate and disseminate details on wheat rust research and best practices to prevent its spread. To date, the portal has been very successful and was recently honored with a 2010 Forrester Groundswell Award in the category of "Social Impact".

Wheat rusts are serious fungal diseases affecting wheat and other cereal crops that pose a significant threat to worldwide wheat production. The Borlaug Global Rust Initiative, a collaborative effort led by Cornell University, was formed to systematically reduce the world's vulnerability to wheat rust diseases through international agricultural collaboration in wheat research.

The Project organizers selected Traction Software's TeamPage, a social software solution that combines wiki, blog, tagging, activity streams, discussion and social networking capabilities in a secure, scalable Enterprise 2.0 platform. Additionally, the TeamPage Attivio Search Module, which includes Attivio's Active Intelligence Engine (AIE), was selected to power search and information access, which are considered vital functions for the organization due to the vast amounts of scientific reference material it offers.

"Within the scientific community, knowledge is typically spread through presentations and the publication of research within leading journals - a process that can slow the exchange of knowledge by months and years," said Stefan Einarson, director of IT for the Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat Project at Cornell University. "Given the severity of the threat to the world's food supply, the BGRI could not afford to operate on that kind of timeline. We needed a collaborative platform that could be easily organized and updated and be accessible from anywhere in the world. The combination of Traction Software and Attivio gave us exactly what we were looking for."

In a short period of time (within a month), the BGRI was able to launch Global Rust (www.globalrust.org), a publicly available web-based knowledge source for scientists, the farming community, universities, policymakers and others. The portal enables research (past and present) to be published, shared and collaborated upon. Further, the site offers resources and training for the farming and scientific communities who have never witnessed wheat rust first hand to help identify new occurrences. There is a public domain for information sharing as well as private communities where researchers can collaborate.

The combination of Traction's TeamPage and Attivio's Active Intelligence Engine has enabled the Global Rust site to deliver key content to more than 300 researchers daily. Because of the immediacy in which research and data are available, the community has been able to get information to the public in a more timely fashion, including crucial wheat breeding data from nurseries in Kenya and Ethiopia. Further, the collaboration has resulted in studies and reports that have enabled additional funding opportunities for new research projects.

"With Traction TeamPage, project leaders can use the same system for public communication, collection, analysis and public dissemination of research, as well as more private collaboration on work such as grant proposals," said Greg Lloyd, president of Traction Software. "The BGRI community's use of Traction's Enterprise 2.0 technology opens up new lines of communications, sharing of best practices across country and continent borders and enables the community to better leverage expertise."

"Effectively, TeamPage and Attivio satisfied the BGRI's need for a virtual intranet; project management and collaboration; private communities; and a public wiki resource." said Ali Riaz, CEO of Attivio. "These advanced capabilities have provided the BGRI and its constituents with an easy-to-use access point for information that can help combat and eventually eliminate this disease."

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Attivio and Traction Software Case Study: Borlaug Global Rust Initiative