The ability to share Calendars and Address Books with fellow computer users would seem like such a trivial thing, but in fact, it is not readily available, and it’s not easy. You would think that Microsoft, Apple, and the Linux community would enable such a feature. And interestingly enough, they “sort of” do, but not really….. and until XC Connect from Xchange Network was released, there has been no easy way for a PC user to share a Calendar or an Address Book with a Mac user… XC Connect allows users to create, modify, and share (synchronize) data between any combination of Microsoft Outlook, Mac Entourage, Mac Address Book/iCal, and Novell Evolution.

The “Why can’t we be friends” line was actually the headline used for an article written a while back about Xchange Network in the Ann Arbor News, our local newspaper. The reporter, Scott Anderson, was very quick to pick up on the fact that there was no other application out there, other than XC Connect, that allowed users to share data across the disparate operating systems and desktop applications. He was actually very surprised that there was none other – it seemed like such a logical thing to have. After all, the computer world consists of different types of computers, so it would make sense that there would be a mechanism to allow these computers and their desktop applications to share data amongst themselves. But alas, there really was not, save XC Connect.

XC Connect is really an initial implementation of a larger solution. As I stated above, XC Connect allows users to create modify, and share (synchronize) data between any combination of Microsoft Outlook, Mac Entourage, Mac Address Book/iCal, and Novell Evolution. But it’s not limited to just those four applications – we have a number of “alpha” and “beta” versions of connectors for other applications – we have simply chosen not to release them. For example, we have a connector for Word Perfect Mail, Corel’s email client. (If you are a Word Perfect Mail user and are interested in being able to synchronize Calendar and Address Book to/from WP Mail, let us know… info@xcnetwork.com.)

The point here is that XC Connect can, by virtue of its very flexible and powerful server architecture, synchronize data (the key word here is “synchronize”, not ‘move’, or ‘push’….there IS a difference) between virtually ANY application. In other words the structure is there for you to be able to synchronize Address Book data between, for example, QuickBooks and Outlook, or calendar data between Google Calendar and Mac Entourage and Outlook, or, or, or….. you get the drift. And thus the byline “Why can’t we be friends?” is a good one – because we can make it so… allowing users to do what they do best on their desktop applications and still allow the data to flow to other users on different desktop applications…. (now I have that song stuck in my head….)

If you’d like some more info – let us know… info@xcnetwork.com