by Jevon MacDonald
September 15, 2008 at 8:59 am
· Filed under Enterprise 2.0
When Yammer was announced as the winner of the TechCrunch50 last week, we were all a little surprised. There is no doubt that the idea of micro-blogging in the enterprise has legs, I first wrote about it in January, but I think the question that came to mind was “will it be just microblogging?”
Where Twitter solved a social/human need, Yammer falls down. Bringing social tools in to the enterprise is not as simple as just cloning a consumer tool. We see this all the time with Facebook clones that are unsuccessful inside large organizations. The reasons are simple: as an employee, people have several motivating factors. The primary one, I would argue, is still social, but it is wrapped in the added constraints of modern business processes.
I predict that the trend of creating carbon copies of consumer tools for the enterprise will continue, but these copies will also continue to ignore enterprise and SMB purchasing habits as well as security and governance requirements.
The dream of a governance-free, credit-card-purchasing world of enterprise customers is a dream I share as well, but it is not reality.
When evaluating these tools, Enterprise customers will look at
- Governance capability (user management, LDAP integration, permissions handling)
- Security and Data integrity (can the data store be audited, taken inside the org)
- Business Processes and ROI (if a tool can be tied to a business process, then it is much easier to quantify the leverage provided and what that means in terms of an ROI)
- HR policies and management (does the tool tie in to HR systems, how good are the reporting tools that are baked in or that can be integrated)
- Standards compliance
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Good post, Jennifer Leggio had a post talking about what enterprises will look for. To me, security is the first thing, esp as these internal conversations span the firewall
Also, here’s a list of alternatives to Yammer
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/09/08/list-of-enterprise-microblogging-tools-twitter-for-the-intranet/
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naffisSeptember 15th, 2008 at 11:25 am |
Jevon, if you’re interested in micro-blogging and yammer check out Present.ly http://present.ly it’s a micro-blogging tool for businesses similar to Yammer, but with added features like media sharing and groups. The enterprise version is also available for orgs to bring in-house.
My current thinking space is on how to allow these tools their own autonomy, but yet ‘offer’ them as part of a framework for getting work done. Thoughts?
Paula: I think the tools naturally demand autonomy, but it seems to me that the real power is when we manage to connect them to existing systems,. then they can act more like an agent of change and it might be easier to quantify the ROI than it has been so far.
Fundamentally, then, serving as independent ‘functions’ (oversimplified) that can be leveraged in a larger scheme, but not ‘hard leveraged’ (like SOA elements). A bit of mashup, but not really. More thoughts…
Fits in with fundamental premise: the value is in the connections. [first you have to have the things to connect 
]
Nice summary, Jevon. I agree that enterprise customers require features that aren’t necessary in the consumer space. Your bullet list is a good set of considerations to start.
A couple of these vendors (Yammer, present.ly) have built really compelling products, but they’ve gone wrong right off the bat. Companies like mine will not embrace social messaging unless they retain complete control over the information. If users can’t discuss sensitive topics, then just use Twitter. If the information exchanged is sensitive, then storing that data in the public cloud is entirely out of the question.
I’d love to believe that companies will adopt this model sooner than later, but for now I’m a skeptic.
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naffisSeptember 15th, 2008 at 3:52 pm |
Jen, I don’t believe Present.ly has “gone wrong right off the bat.” The enterprise version of Present.ly is meant to be installed in-house and behind the corporate firewall to give businesses the highest level of security.
Furthermore present.ly does not allow employees to create their own ad-hoc networks and communicate sensitive company information unless the company has signed up for an account - in other words we don’t hold companies “hostage” for their own data as many have described.
Naffis: If it’s true that present.ly may be installed behind the firewall, then that’s great news! My understanding was that it’s only available as a hosted application. Mea culpa. How ’bout you send me a beta invite so I can take a look around?
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naffisSeptember 15th, 2008 at 4:02 pm |
Jen, no problem. Just want to make the distinction clear to everyone. We put the security and integrity of our customers data above all else and don’t want to be lumped into the ransom category.
The product offiicially launches tomorrow so if you want to wait until then you can sign up for an account with a 60 day trial. If you really want to get a peak today though shoot us an email at support@present.ly
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