Friends - Power - Social Software - Everything?

April 30, 2008 at 10:34 am · Filed under 2.0 Design Thinking, Community, Culture, Enterprise 2.0, Long Tail, Social Media, Social Networking

As the web moves from a village - 60,000 blogger in 2002 - to a megacity - where will the structure be found? Where is the value? Fast is working on that problem through behavioral search. I would like to add to that the core human organizational design.

How will be get through all the noise that is building on the web? How will we find the value along the Long Tail as content grows to the infinite?

Many of us agree that in a world of infinite content, that the value will no longer be in the mass market but in the niches in the Long Tail.

Our intuition tells us that it is in the niches where the scarcity and hence value lies - attention, attraction and hence energy. If this is true, then how do we find the right niche and unleash this power? What is the best filter?

I think that our best filter is our small circle of trust. It has both the power and the reach. I believe that this “circle of trust” is defined by our biology and not by software. Real “friends” are not an infinite resource but exist only in small numbers that fit the “Magic” or “Dunbar Numbers” that in turn fit the Fibonacci sequence.

So here is the data - based on the early part of the Fibonacci sequence and where I have assumed that the Circle of influence may be to the Power of 4.

So a circle of 8 - the ideal Trusted Space - can attract, affect and influence 4,096 people. If I have 144 in my circle we can reach just over 400 million others. BUT my bet is that just as the reach goes up, the gravitational pull goes down.

2 - 16

3 - 82

5 - 625

8 - 4,096

13 - 28,561

34 - 1,336,336

55 - 9,150, 625

89 - 62, 742,241

144 - 429, 981, 696

Notice anything? As we look at the sequence we see a Pareto or power curve - it’s the Long Tail.

So what do I also “see”?

I think that there are two power curves here. One is reach and the other is power or gravity.

The greatest gravitational pull is at 2 - the most effective reach is 144. There is likely a “sweet spot” along the curve where reach and pull are best found in concert.  My bet is that it is in using the circles of 8 - 13 - 34. You can reach more than a million people with 34 and you can really attract 4,096 powerfully at 4.

If my intuition is correct, then the full power of social software might be revealed as we explore these numbers and their meaning. Does this not put a new face on marketing? Does it tell us how we will find and attach to content in a universe of infinite content? Does this say something about how to organize anything?

I am a historian by training - can you help by testing this and also by drawing it?

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Enterprise 2.0 is not Web 2.0 nor is it an Oxymoron

April 29, 2008 at 3:51 pm · Filed under Enterprise 2.0

I noticed that the subtitle of this blog is a “hosted discussion on enterprise 2.0” so I could not resist the challenge that Fred Wilson (aka A VC in NYC) recently tossed in his post, Is “Social Enterprise Software” An Oxymoron? While Fred did not use the term enterprise 2.0 in his post, he referenced two other blog posts challenging enterprise 2.0 at the end with the implication they supported his concerns. The technology part of enterprise 2.0 is often referred to as social software or some variation on this theme so we stand accused. Let me take this on in two parts.

First, enterprise 2.0 is certainly not web 2.0. It is easy to offer up a few consumer web 2.0 applications in an argument that social software does not belong in the enterprise. Fred offers the wikipedia definition of social software that only lists consumer web examples. Someone needs to update the definition. Forrester was careful to exclude this class of software in its Global Enterprise Web 2.0 Market Forecast: 2007 To 2013. They did not include consumer services like Blogger, Facebook, Netvibes, and Twitter when they predicted the enterprise web 2.0 market would grow to $4.6 billion globally by 2013. At the same time they said that that enterprise web 2.0 will get absorbed into the fabric of the enterprise (see Social Networking is Climbing the Revenue Projection Ladder on this blog). More on this last issue in the second half of this post when I cover the oxymoron part.

Consumer web tools are often designed to increase traffic and generate ad revenue, not exactly enterprise goals. I generally do not feel that they should form the basis of enterprise social computing with some possible rare exceptions. But should we go to the other extreme and have consumer web tools banned from the enterprise? That was the subject of a recent debate between two Garner analysts, Nikos Drakos and Ray Valdes. I think this is going too far. There is a role for social activities at work whether they be actual or virtual. Puneet Gupta put this in a clear perspective in his post, The Role of Facebook in the Enterprise: A Post Script, that was a follow up to his post on the Drakos Valdes debate.

Puneet said, “I do not think the debate was asking the right question. Facebook is a consumer oriented networking tool that is increasingly being adopted by business people as a social networking tool for business purposes. In this way it is like a “virtual social event or other recreational activity” that can be effectively used for business networking. I would not ban my sales force from attending social events in the real world with customers during business hours if this activity has the potential to lead to sales or helps with customer relations. But if my salesperson goes to social events in the real world every day or surfs Facebook all day and does not make any sales, I might “ban” that person. In the end you need to use good judgment.”

He added that he does not ban Facebook in his company (Connectbeam) and concluded with “I think the more important question is what social networking tools are right for your business. In this case I would pick a tool that is designed for business use, and not one designed for recreational use and built to generate high traffic.” This is a good transition to part two.

Enterprise 2.0 is not an oxymoron. Not that I especially like the term but it seems to be sticking as did web 2.0 that no one liked at first, either. What is more important than the term is the existence of an emerging class of business software that does not simply take consumer web tools behind the firewall. These tools are developed for businesses to solve business problems. Businesses are run and operated by people, for the most part for now, and these tools look at the social context of information. There are many communities within an enterprise: project teams, divisions, etc. Then there are the communities that enterprises want to have with their suppliers and customers. In 2006 McKinsey issues the report, The Next Revolution in Interactions, in which they said, “In today’s developed economies, the significant nuances in employment concern interactions: the searching, monitoring, and coordinating required to manage the exchange of goods and services.” They say that traditionally the focus of business and IT investments has been on production rather than interactions. They added that in today’s post-knowledge economy it is interactions that count for the most.

Many of these enterprise 2.0 tools support, monitor, and make accessible these important business interactions, the social side of the enterprise. Many of them have been written about on this blog and on the AppGap blog, as well as many other places. My colleagues and I have interviewed many of them. Forrester likely interviewed even more for their market prediction and they seem to take this market seriously. But instead of only looking at numbers, here is just one of many examples, Changing Organization Behavior at XM Radio through Enterprise 2.0 and QuickBase.

XM Radio brought in an enterprise 2.0 tool, QuickBase, to help bring more rigor, order, collaboration, and transparency to the processes. XM first used it for project management around the launch of XM Radio’s newest product called the XpressRC. QuickBase facilitated global communication amongst the many partners involved in the successful launch of the XpressRC throughout the end-to-end supply chain. QuickBase provided a robust program management database that made the key issues transparent so they could be addressed and resolved in a timely manner. The transparency promoted accountability and a clear and concise escalation process. The right data was in place for all to see and progress could be posted in QuickBase via a very effective metrics dashboard. It was the first time they produced a product on time and on budget.

A variety of uses emerged. QuickBase was utilized by XM to manage outsourced partner management throughout the Supply Chain. It was used for collaboration with manufacturing partners. Operational and logistics issues could be listed in QuickBase and resolved within the tool. Emails on issue resolution were eliminated as all progress was entered real time by the respective parties. QuickBase was applied to assist XM with end to end visibility of product throughout the supply chain and is used as the primary inventory reporting tool. The graphics for all product artwork and packaging resides in a repository within QuickBase and can be quickly accessed and used by XM and all of their supply chain partners. XM radio also uses QuickBase to many cost reduction and efficiency improvement projects to provide a common platform and toolset so the all projects are managed consistently and transparently.

There are many other enterprise 2.0 tools that have produced similar stories. Here is a partial list of Enterprise 2.0 Success Stories from 2007. I am hearing many more in 2008 but have not consolidated a list yet. Fred mentioned the security issue and this is real and one that the business oriented enterprise 2.0 venders have recognized and are tackling (e.g., Central Desktop Acts on Enterprise 2.0 Security). In fairness to Fred, he said he would keep an open mind and watch with interest what Jeff Dachis builds in this space. I will also, but I think we do not have to wait for Jeff to look at the social side of business transactions and benefit in ways that XM Radio did.

Have said all this, the last thing I would recommend is to go out pushing the enterprise 2.0 banner as a sales approach. As Jevon MacDonald rightly said, “Enterprise 2.0 budgets do not exist, except where some early adopters create them.” You sell solutions to business problems but, since people still run and operate business, there are a lot of business problems where making the social side of transactions more transparent and better supported will provide real business benefits.

I have said enough for one post and will close with one of the emerging trends, the integration of social software and traditional enterprise software. More on that later. Thanks Fred for getting me charged up a grey, rainy day.

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Making the new more relevant

April 29, 2008 at 8:13 am · Filed under ABC News, CBS, Information Management, Interview, Messy World, Michael Skoler, News, Politics, Public Insight Journalism, Public Media, Public TV, Social Networking, Trust, Trusted Space, User Revolution

It’s ironic isn’t it, that at a time when the problems that confront us, such as the end of cheap oil, a war that we cannot get out of, an education system that fails 40% of Americans, a healthcare system that serves only a few, that our news is so awful.

CBS put all their eggs in Katie’s salary and now are thinking of leaving news. ABC spend half the debate on stuff that doesn’t matter. We now know that most of the experts called in to advise us about the war were on the payroll of the Pentagon.

News is becoming entertainment or has often been bought just when we all need to be informed.

How can we get a sense of how these issues, or any issue, really affects us?

I interviewed Michael Skoler of American Public Media to find out how he is using new technology to draw on the real experience of over 50,000 citizens to ground their news at a price that they can afford. His project is called Public Insight Journalism and may be part of the foundation of a more relevant way of offering news.

Over 55,000 people are in the network and are tapped for their experience - how are gas prices affecting your life rather than what do you feel about rising gas prices.

This network is facilitated by a new kind of journalist and by a new kind of social software that keeps the system healthy.

The experiment is now 5 years old and has gone beyond the experiment into the operational and is now starting to spread.

What do you think about the news today? Do you think this may help?

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Why do people like Twitter - Using Twitter to find out - Instant Research too

April 28, 2008 at 1:05 pm · Filed under Social Media, Twitter

Thanks to John Proffitt

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FAST, A Microsoft Subsidiary, Opens New Chapter

April 25, 2008 at 11:10 am · Filed under Enterprise 2.0, Microsoft, Search, SharePoint, enterprise software

I’m happy to report that Microsoft has filed with the Oslo Stock Exchange announcing that it is closing its tender offer for FAST shares (see Zia’s post back in January about the initial offer). The filing states that it has acquired 97.37% of the shares of the company. This means that FAST is now part of Microsoft, with the new designation: FAST, A Microsoft® Subsidiary.

The net of this is that the FAST team moves intact into a much-expanded Microsoft Enterprise Search Group (MESG, for those collecting new acronyms). We are particularly excited about the charter for this new group, which is to invest to be the industry leader developing the most innovative technologies for the widest range of customers and greatly expanding what has traditionally been viewed as the “search space.”

This direction is one that long-time analysts of the search space (myself included) have pointed to as the most likely development as search becomes more and more central to all of our online activities. We are still just at the beginning of the changes we see coming, which we see accelerating on the foundation of three core elements of the Microsoft search vision:

Search will be everywhere.
Search will enable unique user experiences.
Search will change the way people do business.

I wanted to share with FASTforward Blog readers what Kirk Koenigsbauer, Microsoft Sharepoint General Manager and the business executive behind the acquisition had to say today on Microsoft’s Enterprise Search blog. Kirk’s post:

FAST Tender Offer Complete!

Well, it has been a while since I last posted – but for good reason. Aside from our usual day-to-day efforts to deliver great enterprise search solutions for our customers, we’ve also been feverishly working on the acquisition of FAST Search & Transfer that we originally announced on January 8. Today, I’m excited to share that the tender offer is complete!

As I mentioned in January, FAST has an incredibly talented team of folks who bring great customer focus and tremendous expertise in the category – more than 60% of their people are engineers and close to 50 of them have PhDs in relevant fields. One of their true visionaries, John Markus Lervik, who has been FAST CEO, will transition to become Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President of Enterprise Search. John’s leadership will have an immediate impact on the development across our comprehensive portfolio of enterprise search offerings – including Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express , search for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and FAST ESP – and will result in the future delivery of a single enterprise search platform. I’m thrilled to welcome our new team members on board and am eager for them to get started!

By bringing together our two companies, customers will no longer have to compromise when evaluating the enterprise search solution that’s best for them. We can now meet all their needs no matter how basic or complex: Search Server Express available as a free download; SharePoint offers search integrated with other business productivity tools; and for those with highly sophisticated needs, FAST ESP provides best-in-class capabilities for the most demanding search applications in both internal and customer-facing scenarios. And, you can be assured that with our expanded team in place, we’ll be in an even better position to continue innovation across all three products, including FAST ESP on Linux and UNIX.

Speaking of Linux and UNIX, some people may be (mis)interpreting our continued support and investment in these platforms as a broader change for Microsoft – so here’s some color. We’re making a pragmatic decision to continue to delight a core part of FAST’s customer base that has chosen the Linux/UNIX OS. You can bet that we’ll innovate on Windows, too, and over time we hope customers will see .NET as a preferred platform choice.

Net, our approach doesn’t imply any kind of broader change for our company in its strategy (so conspiracy theorists can stand down ) and you shouldn’t expect to see SharePoint running on UNIX. We’re making a business decision for enterprise search and feel great about what it means for our FAST search customers.

Getting to this point has been quite a journey, but the most exciting part about it for me is that we are only just getting started. Whether it’s ensuring customers continue to get great service from the people and support teams they know or building on the span of our product portfolio, I’m confident that the combination of Microsoft and FAST will serve customers’ needs more broadly and help make enterprise search become a truly ubiquitous tool that is central to how workers find and use information.

I look forward to sharing more with you as the journey continues.

Kirk Koenigsbauer
General Manager,
SharePoint Business Group

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FAST

Enterprise 2.0 Surely working with nature vs against?

April 24, 2008 at 2:39 pm · Filed under 2.0 Design Thinking, Chris Corrigan, The 'Phoric, YouTube

Isn’t an underlying principle of 2.0 that it uses nature’s rules and hence should make everything a lot easier?

But because we have all spent a life time working against nature - using effort and control to hold back chaos - many of us don’t know what working with nature might look or feel like.

I who blather on about nature all the time am as guilty as any of us - I know this failure of mine to be true when I saw the 2 videos in this week’s ‘Phoric that were offered up by the incomparable Chris Corrigan.

Here is a taste - a video that shows that we need only use small tools to do big things - reminds me of the power of Twitter. Just as an aside, over 3 million people have seen this video. The power of 2.0! The other videos show why control is overrated as are goals!!!! Wow think of that Goals overrated? Give up control - NEVER!

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“Patterns In The Flow” … Pending Interview

April 23, 2008 at 6:25 pm · Filed under 2.0 Design Thinking, Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Social Computing, Interview, SOA, User Revolution, Web 2.0

Over the past two weeks in between a lot of work and some more hard work, I managed to pop in to several sessions at the OpenWeb Vancouver conference, a two-day conference focused on "showcasing open web technologies, communities and culture, and evangelizing the Open Web to developers, designers, organizers and the community at large".

At OpenWeb I was introduced to one of the presenters, Duane Nickull, Senior Global Technology Evangelist for Adobe.  According to Duane, he is Adobe’s only Vancouver employee (nice work if you can get it, jetting all over the world whilst coming home every once in a while to this lovely little corner of the globe).  Duane has also just co-authored a book with Tim O’Reilly … I’m pretty sure it’s about SOA but I can’t quite remember.  I’ll clear that up soon and report back in the interview (see below).

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The main focus of my professional career has been working for both the United Nations CEFACT committee and OASIS for the purposes of writing and building new architectures for global integration of multiple systems. I also work for Adobe Systems which I love. Great company!

I have worked on many other interesting technologies including the first contextual XML Search Engine, an Alternative fuel hydrogen project and the new UN/CEFACT eBusiness Architecture and related technologies. The next level of this work will probably be linked to Ontology work. I participate in the Ontolog Forum which is a great group.

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Duane’s OpenWeb Vancouver session was titled "Web 2.0 Design Patterns, Models and Analysis".

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"Many enterprises seek knowledge of the design patterns used by successful Web 2.0 companies. This session starts with Tim O’Reilly’s list of Web 2.0 examples and distills the abstract architectural patterns from behind the examples. By using the patterns notation, the core knowledge of the design principles is preserved in a template which can be reused in multiple domains including government."

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I asked Duane if I could interview him … about Adobe, it’s plans for Enterprise 2.0, what flows of information mean to him and his colleagues at Adobe and insights on noticing, and using patterns  to design and build better, easier-to-use, more flexible and more powerful applications.

We’re still looking for a mutually convenient date (he travels a lot and is speaking at the Web 2.0 conference at the moment, so this really means when will Duane next be back in Vancouver ?), but it looks like I will interview him sometime in the first week of May.  I hope you’ll check in for what I will strive mightily to make an interesting and educational interview.

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onaswarm - How might Lifestreaming look in your organization?

April 23, 2008 at 10:24 am · Filed under Enterprise 2.0

Onaswarm.com got a nice review form Mashable today that says it just might be the service to give FriendFeed a run for its money.

I played around with Onaswarm for the first time in a few months last night and there have been a lot of improvements. It is the only lifestreaming service that addresses many of the concerns I have expressed.

For those of you who aren’t sure what Lifestreaming or NewsFeeds are, they are reverse chronological updates about an individual’s activities. It is a format that was largely brought in to prominence by Facebook.

Tools like Onaswarm give us an idea of how this information flow format might be useful inside the enterprise. As we introduce more and more social, collaborative and intelligence tools, keeping track of activity becomes a practical impossibility, and the dashboard format becomes unwieldy and unreliable.

Onaswarm lets you break down the lifestreams of those you are following in to groups, and it lets larger groups form in to “swarms”. These kind of natural and ad-hoc groupings offer a huge advantage over more rigid and established models.

Could Lifestreams and News Feeds be the next generation of the enterprise dashboard?

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Social Networking is Climbing the Revenue Projection Ladder

April 22, 2008 at 3:14 pm · Filed under Enterprise 2.0

Forrester’s Oliver Young and a cast of five others recently came out with their projections for the Global Enterprise Web 2.0 Market Forecast: 2007 To 2013. In the summary they said that, “Enterprise spending on Web 2.0 technologies will grow strongly over the next five years, reaching $4.6 billion globally by 2013, with social networking, mashups, and RSS capturing the greatest share. In all, the market for enterprise Web 2.0 tools will be defined by commoditization, eroding prices, and subsumption into other enterprise collaboration software over the next five years; it will eventually disappear into the fabric of the enterprise, despite the major impacts the technology will have on how businesses market their products and optimize their workforces.”

I like the big numbers and major impact. I might prefer to say enterprise 2.0 will get integrated with the fabric of the enterprise (rather than disappear) as more enterprise 2.0 providers are providing open APIs and ways to integrate their social wares into the enterprise applications. I have seen this with BroadSoft, Connectbeam, InsideView, Nexaweb, Serena, SynerG, and others that I have interviewed for this blog and the AppGap. Mashups or some form of composite applications through data integration appears to be the pathway here.

I have not seen the full report and I am sure it will provide many interesting details. ReadWriteWeb offered a useful summary. In defining their subject the report did not include consumer services like Blogger, Facebook, Netvibes, and Twitter. They felt that these types of services are aimed at consumers and are often supported by ads, so they do not qualify as Enterprise 2.0 tools. I agree with their assessment. There are possible roles for these tools within some enterprises but they are the foundation for enterprise business processes except for some rare exceptions. Instead they included many of the vendors we have been discussing on this blog and the AppGap.

The report found that the larger the firm, the more likely that they will invest in enterprise 2.0 tools. I guess they have the budgets but they are often the most security concerned so perhaps some of these concerns are dropping away. The least likely are the very small companies, 6 to 99 employees. Perhaps they can still yell across the hallway but these companies often do not have any collaboration infrastructure to replace and should take advantage of the low (and sometimes free) cost tools available on the low end of enterprise 2.0.

One of the most interesting findings was their projection that most of the revenue growth will occur in social networking tools.. Enterprise 2.0 is often defined as social software so this should make sense. They rank social networking ahead of blogs, wikis, podcasts, and widgets on the growth curve. Mashups come in second. Now here is where it gets tricky as many social applications are using mashups to integrate with other enterprise applications as noted above. I also find that many blog and wiki providers are adding other features, including mashups and social networking. Some my prediction is that it will get harder and harder to separate these functions. However, I do agree that social networking is the big new thing and that mashups are the highway for social software integration.

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The fine line between Business Intelligence and Business Irrelevance

April 22, 2008 at 8:59 am · Filed under Enterprise 2.0, Social Media

Business Intelligence, known as BI, is an area of enterprise software and strategy focused on the collection, integration, analysis, and presentation of business information. This can be just-in-time data from business operations, market data, trends or any other business related information.

The prominence of BI has been rising in recent years, primarily due to the fact that more business data than ever is now available and we finally have reasonably priced systems for collecting and presenting that data.

The presentation of BI data is typically in the form of a Dashboard interface. Dashboards have been available in an enterprise setting since the late 90’s. While the polish of these offerings has improved, and there has been significant (in breadth) but slow movement toward open standards for dashboard elements (known as Widgets), there has been very little progress in improving the overall user experience and business value of the tool itself. Instead, the improvement in data, both in volume and quality, has driven most of the progress so far.

Open source projects such as Pentaho and JBoss portals are raising the status quo for the quality of the underlying infrastructure while companies like Mendix are driving the most significant interface and process-enhancing progress.

Smart, but could it drive you to irrelevance?

The opportunities made available by higher quality and highly relevant data can not be understated. Business Intelligence tools represent some of the most exciting possibilities in recent years, but it also has the potential to be the single biggest missed opportunity in the enterprise yet.

Do you remember the smartest kid in your school? (it may have been you — kudos!) There is always a sort of tragedy about just how smart a kid can be, as unless they posses the requisite social skills their smarts may never take them as far as a Ph.D and no further. More importantly, no matter how smart a person is, we all need to have a personal dream and vision, without those we lumber in obscurity.

The same is true for your company. In getting too smart about your business, there is a risk in alienating yourself from your staff, your partners and ultimately, your customers if you do not provide them with the ability to benefit from this new level of business data.

The Intelligence Funnel

Business Intelligence tools must be viewed as part of a stack strategy to not only improve business data, but to radically change how that data can be acted on. There are three core components of this strategy

Raw Business Intelligence

This is raw, real-time data from your operations. On-Time performance, costs, spend, etc. These are all critical data-points for monitoring the performance of your organization. The real-time nature of this data also means that you can react quickly to any trends or shifts that you observe.

Social Intelligence

Social Intelligence is your ability to understand what your customers, employees and partners perceive regarding your organization, product and strategy. The inability to listen closely is the achilles heel of the modern organization. So few resources are focused on listening and synthesizing information that the skill is almost non-existent.

Social Collaboration
This is the final, foundational, layer of your Intelligence Funnel. The volume of information you will be dealing with will mean it is a practical impossibility for a finite number of people to filter, manage and synthesize all of the available sources.

Your Intelligence Funnel will federate this component out as far in to your business network as possible. Can your restaurant managers do a better job of monitoring and troubleshooting your supply chain than your corporate staff can? Can your branch office staff provide more significant and timely feedback on the effectiveness of a new marketing campaign than a call center worker can? Will the clerk at your car rental shop have a better and more timely understanding of customer requests than your annual survey?

The list goes on, but the point is that the volume of data will continue to increase at an incredible rate and if you do not have a scalable plan in place to leverage that data than it will be both a wasted asset and eventually a liability and a cost driver.

New Business Processes
The end result of the Business Intelligence Funnel is the ability to identify, create and implement new business processes which are cheaper and better timed than what you are able to create and deploy now using a centralized model.

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SaaS enters e-learning Through SkillSoft

April 21, 2008 at 8:40 am · Filed under Enterprise 2.0

In the 80s I was heavily involved in technology-enabled learning. Then knowledge management caught my attention in the early 90s and I drifted away. I still kept a sideways glance at what became e-learning and occasionally got involved in a project. Last week I got a nice update and was pleased to see the e-learning is joining both the on-demand world and enterprise 2.0. The last e-learning firm I worked for was a division of NETg as they had acquired our mid-sized Bedford, MA based firm, Spectrum Interactive. How I learn that NETg was acquired by SkillSoft a few years ago to help make it one of the major players in this field.

SkillSoft now has over 6,000 e-learning titles and many performance support products and services. In the past few years they have begun to offer their courses and services as an on-demand solution. Now 98.5% of the customers who use their SkillPort learning management system are using SkillSoft’s on-demand service to host their content. The other 1.5 % still host their SkillSoft courses within their firewall. This on-demand hosting is up from last year when 95% choose the cloud. SkillSoft even finds that many clients who develop their own custom e-learning courses are giving them to SkillSoft to host. Since custom learning materials often contain strategic company information, here is one more example of the growing confidence in the security within the cloud.

Recently, I spoke with Stephanie Pyle, Manage, Product Marketing, at SkillSoft. It is nice to hear from Stephanie that e-learning is keeping well up with the times. One of the reasons for the popularity of the on-demand service is the ease of maintenance. SkillSoft takes care of course updates for materials within the cloud. Customers who host their material behind the firewall get monthly updates on CDs and have to make the changes themselves.

Another major initiative from SkillSoft is the introduction of portlets that integrate within major portal vendor products such as IBM Websphere, Microsoft Sharepoint and SAP NetWeaver. These portlets operate through the WSRP standard and provide an easy way to embed personalized, relevant learning into enterprise portals, reduce deployment time, cost and effort. This ease of access for employees also increases learning content usage and makes it easier for customers to make learning assets available to everyone. In addition, the portlets allow administrators to track data, perform maintenance, launch new content, and can be scaled to any amount of new users without down time.

There are five portlets appearing soon. First, the search and learn portlet allows employees to search across SkillSoft assets with the portal. They do not have to go to a separate learning management system. The portlet also only allows access to courses they are entitled to see by their company and all activity is tracked. There is a “my plan” portlet that allows then to set up their own learning plan and have their manager also provide input. The “my favorites” portlet allows them to bookmark stuff. They can also create a specific learning curriculum with another portlet. Finally, SkillSoft offers a Books 24 x 7 service that will now be available through a portlet.

The Books 24 x 7 offering is a performance support tool that allows for full text search of all the books in the catalog. You can go directly to a specific section of a book to learn how to do a specific task such as set up an Excel table or discover someone’s best practice on a particular topic. Reading books online does not sound like fun to me. However, I think this is an excellent use of on-line access to books as you are finding and then going right to the part you need to solve a current work problem. It turns a library into a custom performance support tool. It also gives firms more control over the quality of what employees use as many employees will simply turn to Google if the company does not provide an easily discovered solution. With the portlet you do not have to leave your work environment to access company sanctioned material. SkillSoft has found a lot of interest in portal integration as companies are looking for more useful content to better leverage their, sometimes sizeable, investment in portals.

We have long known that learning activities are most effective when delivered at the time of need. Placing access to learning activities through the portal makes sense and opens up new ways of integrating and tracking these employee learning activities. Learning becomes less a separate training activity and more a part of the job.

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How to Gently Encourage Enterprise 2.0 Adoption

April 20, 2008 at 11:37 am · Filed under Enterprise 2.0

In many enterprises, Enterprise 2.0 ends up getting adopted under the radar, especially when clueless corporate types won’t see the light. Then there are those who attend a seminar or read a business journal article, and decide “we have to have this ‘Enterprise 2.0 stuff’ now or else.”

Geek & Poke’s Oliver Widder gives us an example of a corporate effort to sell E2.0 to the enterprise. You know, shades of “the floggings will continue until morale improves.”