Many of you were affected by service restrictions at Conceptboard for several days starting March 21, 2024.

As of the publication of this post, the situation has been largely resolved.

A fire in a data center of one of our DNS service providers resulted in some of our customer environments being temporarily inaccessible. Additionally, several internal processes were affected, including the ability to receive emails from you.

We would like to emphasise that the cause of the disruption was a failure of a name resolution. The global Domain Name System (DNS) could no longer find our services. Neither our customer environments nor any other of our systems were affected. There was neither data loss nor a data breach. Data protection and data security were guaranteed at all times.

Nevertheless, the impact on you, our affected customers, was significant.

Immediately upon becoming aware of the disruption, we worked tirelessly to eliminate the interruption for you as quickly as possible. However, a lock-in effect with the DNS service provider made it impossible for us to restore name resolution without the support of the DNS service provider. This support was denied to us by the DNS service provider.

In parallel, we developed workarounds to keep our services and customer environments accessible despite the DNS restrictions. Many customers actively supported us in this effort. One of these workarounds is the temporary access through the domain conceptboard.eu.

In this way, we were able to offer every customer at least one workaround for accessing the systems. Communication was carried out on all remaining channels available to us, such as social media.

We understand that the service interruption and limited communication led to disruptions in your work processes and a lot of frustration. We are very sorry for this and would like to sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused.

At the same time, we would like to thank the many customers with whom we were able to implement workarounds and solutions together and in a very short time to keep the service available for customer groups and make it available again.

Thank you for your cooperation and support during this difficult time.

We hereby assure you that we are doing everything we can to ensure that such an incident does not happen again in the future.

We will keep you promptly informed about further developments here.

With warm regards,
H. Schmitz, CEO

]]> https://conceptboard.com/blog/dns-outage-management-statement/feed/ 0 https://conceptboard.com/blog/conceptboard-partnership-ionos/ https://conceptboard.com/blog/conceptboard-partnership-ionos/#respond Thu, 23 Feb 2023 09:53:26 +0000 https://conceptboard.com/?p=175601088 Right from the beginning, German software provider Conceptboard pioneered as the most secure solution for digital and remote collaboration. Data protection is our top priority. By constantly developing our services, we maintain the highest possible security standards for our clients – so they can enjoy our intuitive and efficient whiteboard solution. Starting February 2023, we will reach the next possible level of security standards: Conceptboard expands its hosting selection by collaborating with IONOS.

Why is Conceptboard and IONOS the perfect fit?

The hosting provider IONOS is part of United Internet AG (1&1) and has a long standing within the German IT landscape. For most Conceptboard clients, the European data protection regulations are a central issue concerning their internal IT infrastructure. Public institutions and government agencies, as well as companies that belong to critical infrastructure have highest security and compliance requirements. For regulatory reasons, they can’t work with German data centers with non-European owners. IONOS has set up the DE Enterprise Cloud specifically for this problem – with a data center in Frankfurt. 

Daniel Bohn, Co-Founder and Product Lead at Conceptboard, says: “Privacy is part of our DNA at Conceptboard. By working with IONOS, we can meet the high security requirements of our customers even better and are also setting an example for European data sovereignty.”

Authorities, government ministries and NGOs can rely on it.

Conceptboard expands hosting offer 

Conceptboard simplifies virtual collaboration and enables hybrid teams around the world to work together in real time – with a wide range of functions and ready-to-use templates for countless use cases. We meet the highest security requirements and offer tailor-made hosting solutions: hybrid, on-premises or cloud-based. Our customers have absolute data sovereignty and complete data control:

• 100 % GDPR compliant
• ISO 27001 certified
• Use of highest current encryption standards (256-bit AES)
• Hosting on-premises, hybrid or cloud based

With IONOS as partner, Conceptboard is taking another important step and expanding its hosting services to include the public cloud. 

Conceptboard commits to Europe as Internet location

By using IONOS servers, Conceptboard promotes Europe as a cloud location and contributes to European data sovereignty: long-term independence from non-European providers and control over the legal situation can only be maintained through cloud infrastructure in the EU.

Hosting in the IONOS cloud

IONOS servers meet the following security standards:

• C5 of BSI 
• ISO 27001 certified
• BSI basic protection
• Gaia-X pioneer (GAIA-X | Die europäische Cloud Plattform | IONOS Cloud ).

The IONOS Cloud environment remains physically and technically separate from the AWS Cloud and is specially designed to meet requirements of government institutions and their stakeholders. Both users and boards can be moved to the DE Enterprise Cloud while being actively used.

It is also possible for our existing enterprise customers and business customers to move from an on-premises deployment or the AWS Cloud to the IONOS Cloud – we would be happy to advise you.

Contact us

Conceptboard is already being used by over 6,500 customers and 15 million users, including SIEMENS and the Würth Group, and many federal ministries and companies belonging to critical infrastructure.

Why is this important for Conceptboard?

“Representing a vote of confidence from real software users, these awards also spotlight those that have risen to the top among thousands of companies.”, said Sara Rossio, Chief Product Officer at G2. “With 2 million+ verified software reviews, the most in a single destination, our marketplace features more than 145,000 products and services across 2,100 different categories. Congratulations to all those named, as buyers will continue to lean on these awards as a trusted source to inform their software decisions in the year ahead.” 

Thank you, Sara, we are proud to be named and hope that the trust you give us also reaches buyers.

How does the “Best Software” Award ranking work?

The top 100 companies are ranked based on a combination of Satisfaction and Market Presence scores for each vendor, and the top 100 products are ranked based on reviews across all categories they are a part of. To be recognized as a Best Software Award winner, a software company or product must receive at least 50 approved and published reviews during the 2022 calendar year. Scores reflect only data from reviews submitted during this evaluation period. 

To learn more, view G2’s 2023 Best Software Awards and read more about G2’s methodology.

About G2

G2 is the world’s largest and most trusted software marketplace. More than 80 million people annually — including employees at all Fortune 500 companies — use G2 to make smarter software decisions based on authentic peer reviews. Thousands of software and services companies of all sizes partner with G2 to build their reputation, manage their software spend, and grow their business — including Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoom, and Adobe. To learn more about where you go for software, visit www.g2.com and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

What makes Conceptboard unique?

Conceptboard has built a strong market position through its experience in providing secure digital collaboration for government, public sector entities, businesses and many more security sensitive organizations.

As a German software provider, we promise that the highest security standards are met at all times. Guaranteed. With our GDPR-compliant online whiteboard, teams of all scales and sizes, can share sensitive information and collaborate remotely with confidence and compliance.

Conceptboard says “Thank you”!

These awards are based on user reviews, so we want to thank each and every one of you who has tested, worked with, collaborated on, and helped improve our platform. We couldn’t have done it without you.

Sign up for a free 30-day trial to see what Conceptboard can do for your team.

Every month we get more and more inquiries as to whether we have an official partner program. Now we can finally say: YES. Of course we do!

New: The Conceptboard Partner Program

You want to work with Conceptboard? Good thing, because Conceptboard wants to work with you. With our official partner program, we want to support you even better in your work and celebrate success together.

In this article, you will find out which benefits are waiting for you and how you can apply for the program.

What we offer

For using Conceptboard in meetings and workshops with your customers, you will not only be rewarded with a better workflow and increased efficiency. As a Conceptboard partner, we want to actively support you in your work and thank you for your commitment with exclusive benefits.

Free premium licence. Forever.
You get a free premium licence for you and your team (number of users by agreement). This licence will be free forever.

Stay up to date. Always be the first to know about new features.
Know what’s coming even before new features are introduced. And if necessary, you will receive a separate introduction.

It couldn’t be more personal. Your Conceptboard contact.
Questions, feedback and feature requests? Your account manager is your direct connection to the Conceptboard team.

From amateur to professional. From professional to coach. Free Conceptboard Masterclasses.
Take part in our masterclass and become a Conceptboard pro in no time.

You want to be featured? Get presence on our social media channels.
We share the most exciting and best Conceptboard projects and success stories of our partners on our extensive social media channels and on our blog.

Official Conceptboard Partner. Be proud of it.
Include our partner logo on your website or place it in seminar invitations to communicate your exclusive status as a part of our team and collaboration specialist.

How to apply

Our partner program is deliberately open and not focused on a specific target group. You and we know that if you are a trainer, coach or consultant and can introduce our product to a broad group of clients and participants, you are almost certainly on board. You’re the one we’re looking for. But even if you don’t fall into this group, our door is open to you. We carefully review each application and only then make a decision.

You think you have what it takes to become a Conceptboard Partner? Then simply apply on our page for our Consultant Community!

We are looking forward to working with you!💙

The team at the US Air Force Academy set out to find the answer. They sought to identify the best web-based tools to facilitate concept ideation activities for product design sprints, over 6-9 month product development projects in teams of 4-12.

They identified over 100 web-based collaborative tools and evaluated them based on eleven key requirements required during design collaboration. And *spoiler alert*, we’re thrilled to say Conceptboard came out on top!

The full study was published in the American Society of Mechanical Engineering’s “Journal of Mechanical Design,” but we’ve summarized the findings below.fsprint

Read on to find out what the team loved about Conceptboard.

The four basics essential in design sprints

Although over 100 platforms had the potential to facilitate online ideation and other product design activities, only 18 were found to have the following four basic attributes deemed to be essential in design sprints:

1. A virtual collaborative sketching environment (whiteboard)
2. Real-time collaboration
3. Archival record of activity
4. Widely available

The market requirements

These 18 tools were then put to the test to evaluate how well they enable teams to work together both asynchronously and in real-time on design sprints. Across the 11 market requirements, we’re thrilled to see Conceptboard received full marks in the following areas:

• faithfully and quickly represents user input
• is easy to learn and us
• allows resumption of previous work
• is compatible with standard technology capabilities
• is usable by undergraduates as well as guests while remaining secure.

These tests enabled researchers to narrow the field down to just five final candidates for specific use case testing.

Final testing the relevancy to designers

To ensure the final tests were relevant to designers, the researchers tested Method 6-3-5, mind mapping and collaborative drawing activities.

Again, we’re thrilled to see Conceptboard outperforming all the other tools in each of the three use cases in the following areas:

• the tool supports positive team dynamics
• enables smooth audio, pictorial and text communication
• faithfully and quickly represents user input
• is easy to learn and use
• allows simultaneous, independent input from multiple users
• supports concurrent creation and editing of text and shapes

We’re thrilled to know that Conceptboard is helping designers conducting their design sprints as efficiently as ever, regardless of location.

But perhaps the biggest compliment is the fact that while the research itself was instigated due to the pandemic, it is now apparent that tools like Conceptboard can greatly enhance the engineering design process, now and into the future. Templates, assistive sketching tools, copying and duplicating existing designs and built-in presentation tools all help designers work smarter, not harder, both remote and in person.

We’ve always believed this, but we’re thrilled to see others discovering that too.

If you want to give Conceptboard a try, sign up for a free 30-day trial today.

Happy collaborating!

Keep reading:

• How remote collaboration tools can help boost sustainability in business
• How do you manage hybrid teams? Everything you need to know