I went to an interesting session at the Enterprise 2.0 conference on Wednesday led by our very own Jevon MacDonald. It had a large software firm – Microsoft (Lawrence Liu) a small firm – Jive (Sam Lawrence), a custom effort, – Sabre for travel (John Samuel), and a company that includes consulting and software, nGenera.

Jevon asked each person: “why would people want to buy from them.” Here are responses.

Sabre –we specialize in travel and are already in the majority of Fortune 500 companies. (they also owns Travelocity). They have developed a social computing solution to allow for user input to go with travel. (I think this is great that they are including social computing components. Here is an excellent example of this type of user content added to a web site for foot travel (Appalachain Mountain Club Goes Web 2.0)

Jive – we have 2500 clients, 15% of Fortune 500 use our products. We are platform independent – java – and less expensive, best of breed. I think there are markets for each of the three approaches on this panel. (I certainly agree with the multiple markers)

Microsoft – We embrace small companies as partners to open up possibilities. We announced many partnerships at this conference to allow for quicker access to new capabilities. For our part, we focus on things people want for 5 – 10 years. We want to support long term solutions. (I like Microsoft’s strategy to open up Sharepoint to multiple partners to bring in additional functionality)

nGenera – we see the change to enterprise 2.0 as a 20 – 30 year transition. The cultural change is the big deal, not the technology. The new generation and globalization will drive this change. The command and control hierarchy will be broken down. We are working on leading companies through the transformation. Then bring solutions to play once these change issues are worked through. We bundle consulting with software. (I agree with the major nature of the transformation but not sure it will be 20 – 30 years)

Jevon then asked: “are you acting as thought leaders or responding to market?”

Jive – we have a strong client base – we meet with them constantly to understand problems and challenges – we include clients in our development process – we produce many iterations to incorporate these changes from clients

nGenera – we run forums and offer online communities to get client feedback

Microsoft – many of our partners do this – we focus on basic infrastructure and long term needs so work with partners to bring in fresh client input

Jevon – then asked: “why shouldn’t a company just hire a web developer than come to you/”

Microsoft – companies that see the evolution as a long term process need to make decisions on how to invest for the long term – they need something that will remain over time – which is more than a few web developers can provide

Jive – this transformation will be quick but there is more to it than just throwing in a blog or wiki – you need to have people who understand the enterprise – it is complex – a few web developers will not address this - it is more than just social networking – people need to be able to work together once they find each other – they need capabilities to work with all the complexity of the enterprise

Microsoft – we want to make sure MS platform that has key elements that work with all components – e.g. not just tags in wikis but also in enterprise applications – we want the integration of all data – like tags (I think Microsoft and Jive both made good points here)

Jevon – people buy Sharepoint because it is already there – is this the biggest reason

Microsoft – no – people buy for many reasons – one reason is that they want a product that will be around – also software that addresses all generations

The next question was whether they offer – on an on-premise vs hosted solution

Sabre – hosted

Jive – we allow for both – sometimes the issues is internal collaboration vs also external collaboration – customers tend to think hosted when arrive – three drivers, HR, business, IT – different questions so might change to an on-premise solution

Microsoft – goes either way – many partners provide hosted if want it quick – Microsoft in this space more now and wants there be a choice

(I later talked with Vassil Mladjev of Blogtronix who said may of his clients test the application int he cloud and then go inside the firewall for implementation.)

Audience Question – Jive and MOSS customer where people are using other wikis – how to support these people?

Jive 1. We are removing wiki markup in next release to make it easier for users

Microsoft – we built rich text editor so customers can change to other text editor – we design stuff to be extensible – we support a lot of upgrading and migrating to support our work with partners – we provide an ecosystem to make things happen at your pace – next version of Sharepoint will be less radical so migration next time will be easier.

Audience Question: Is there an issue when providing a general tool versus a focused one like the travel tool?

Jive – we are more focused than Sharepoint – we try to make it easy for people to find each other, connect, and work together – we provide a very specific focus so it is easier to use – you need to make easy it so everyone can use it so you get the large network effect

Microsoft – when Jive starts to be used more widely they will face the problems we face now - we try to provide inter-operatability to allow for multiple uses

Jive - we have clients with 40,000 users so we face such issues now

IBMer asked – what is source for next big innovation in your product?

Jive – become seemless in an effective way – since so many options in play now – tools need to get stuff to the right people – the tools need to bring things together in a clear way

Microsoft – like IBM we have a research division that looks out long term, we also have an intermediate research group that looks at office issues – one application to gather input on med-term issues is our Town Square – it is like a Facebook news feed –– we can see what people are doing – we are testing this with a large client – then maybe we will make it open source depending what happens (interesting idea – see Jon Husband’s TownSquare … Social Networking and Social Computing R&D for more)

nGenera – we run user forums for new ideas – we are looking at how enterprise computing is going to change