You’ve just got to love the absolutely incredible word of mouth, and the almost unbelievable amount of ink expended in the touting of that product’s necessity. Or utility.
However, much of that word of mouth has come from the lamestream – sorry about the Palinite word – technology media that seems to cream themselves over every new-NEW! that emanates from Silly Valley.
That said, what Slack has done, is highlight the need for collaborative messaging platforms.
For which I give you, Symphony.
What is Symphony? 
It is engineered for businesses of all sizes, or far-flung teams working within, and external to a business. It is also highly customizable, and meets the complex regulatory, compliance, and data security requirements of that most demanding of sectors, the financial industry. Which, in fact, it was initially developed for.
Why we like it
The following thing about Symphony excite us the most:
- It is built to be secure. Symphony has end-to-end encryption for everything. Yes, including searches. That means your stuff remains your stuff. No peeking.
- Collaborative messaging. From one-to-one to group collaboration, both internal and external to businesses, collaboration is one of the foundational planks for which Symphony is built
- Cloud-based. It is available where you want it. iOS and Android apps are available today. Sadly, if you want Symphony for BlackBerry or Symbian, you’re out of luck.
- Partners. Symphony has partnered with several firms in order to bring richer content to their eponymous app. These include Dow Jones, McGraw Hill Financial, Selerity, FlexTrade, Ipreo, GreenKey and InFront.
- Bonus: apps. Symphony – the company, has exposed a set of API for developers to build value on Symphony – the product, allowing further customizations. Auto-workflow apps and bots are also there.
- David Gurle, Symphony founder and CEO. David’s pedigree in this space is unparalleled. His ideas have influenced the major trends in enterprise communications over the last 15 years. He defined Microsoft’s unified communications strategy with Skype for Business – formerly known as Lync; and as head of collaboration services at Thomson Reuters, he introduced federated communications to the financial services industry. Before founding Perzo/Symphony, he was VP and GM of Skype’s Enterprise Business.
Symphony takes what is available with Slack, and amps it up, making security and compliance cornerstones of the product. That security extends to searches, which is not available with Slack.
It is simple to use, and on-ramping is rather easy. We were able to get far-flung employees and external consultants collaborating virtually instantly.
It is now free, and unlimited to use for individuals and teams, with an easy signup process. There is a business version, for which prices are displayed at www.symphony.com. Both Symphony for business and enterprise offers include the full range of administrative and compliance features
Additionally, Symphony is very well funded, with a plurality of the world’s largest financial institutions investing in it from the get-go.
For businesses not subject to the whims of the blogorrhea emanating from the Internet, this is a secure collaborative platform that should take care of your needs.
As a result, it is a SmallBizWindows Most Exciting Current Technology Award winner.
I hope to deliver a more detailed review and more on this product over the course of the year.
© 2002 – 2016, John Obeto for Blackground Media Unlimited
Follow @johnobeto