Friday, September 26, 2008

Adenin ponders Hub HQ

By Christopher Calnan

Germany-based software maker Adenin Technologies Inc. opened an office in Boston in January and now claims half of its customers are based in North America, leading it to consider a more significant corporate commitment to the area.

The company develops “enterprise 2.0” applications, or software that provides businesses with wikis, blogs and other collaboration tools associated with Web 2.0. The 9-year-old company’s revenue is growing faster in North America than Europe, founder and CEO Martin Amm said.

About 70 of Adenin’s 150 customers are North America based, so Amm is considering moving the corporate headquarters to the Hub, he said.

Adenin doesn’t disclose revenue figures, but the self-funded company said it grew its top line about 70 percent during 2007 versus 2006. This year, Amm is projecting a slowdown to only 25 to 30 percent growth, mostly because of the sluggish economy.

In April, WinnResidential, a Boston-based property management firm, adopted Adenin’s product to launch a portal that shares forms, documents and policies for the 2,000-person company, said Gennaro Cataldo, WinnResidential’s vice president of information technology. About 600 company employees based throughout the United States use the portal on a daily basis, he said.

“For them to be connected to the home office via technology is really important,” Cataldo said.

Local enterprise 2.0 developers include Burlington-based Mzinga Inc. and Waltham’s Awareness Inc. But Amm considers Microsoft Corp.’s (Nasdaq: MSFT) SharePoint product to be Adenin’s main competition.

Adenin claims 50,000 users with the biggest customers being steel companies in Europe. The 32-person company is too mature for venture capital, but small enough to attract interest from investors, Amm said. “I think we’re a late startup. So we are slowly growing.”