Even though they are designed to be simple, the interface and functions of regular wikis can be a bit complex for the average user and the same can be said for applications like Sharepoint. That extra complexity can be just enough drive them back to email for exchanging documents. I have seen this happen on a number of occasions. Nuospace is designed to address this issue for small to mid-size businesses who need a simple application that can let them escape from the spaghetti and chaos of email for exchanging documents and other simple collaboration tasks.

Nuospace is the first product of Brightside Software, founded in June 2007. Last week I spoke with Dimitri Lisitski, co-founder of Brightside and leader of the Nuospace effort. It is their first product and will remain their main focus over the next few years. It is currently a SaaS offering but they plan to offer a version that can be hosted within the firewall in the third quarter of 2008. The key design principle behind Nouspace is to keep it simple and have it remain simple. However, they did not give up useful functionality for this simplicity. Dimitri took me through a demo.

Noupace allows you to set up a variety of pages. There are pages designed for document sharing, discussion forums, standard wiki pages for text creation, posts that work like blogs, and directories to organize the other pages. It was easy enough for me to use so that makes it pass the simplicity test. I especially liked the interface. The look of each set of pages was identical and the functionality was consistent so it was very easy to learn. With document sharing pages you can upload documents, invite others to participate in the editing, and make comments. Then you see on one page the evolving history of the documents and the comments. The same format is used for discussions and posting.

Currently, they offer the tool in a free trial version. The trial version can last forever but you are limited to 100 pages and 200 MB of storage. Then you can upgrade to a commercial account and the pricing depends on your usage. The commercial option will launch the end of this April. It will have SSL security and encryption for pages. You can also make anything confidential.

The plan is to keep the product simple which is a wise move. I heard what happen with Lotus Quickplace as it keep adding features as customers requested them until it lost its simplicity. Nuospace plans to adopt an integration strategy rather than an addition strategy. For example, instead of building a calendar feature, it will integrate with several leading calendars. It is also working on integration with Salesforce.com. I think they are taking the right path. This tool should liberate the non-technical business user from the tyranny of email for simple document exchange and collaboration, as well as a number of other group communication tasks.