Author Archive
by Bill Ives
December 2, 2008 at 11:04 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
Now there are a number of blogs that focus on Twitter, a sure sign of the Apocalypse. You may think I am being flip but Apocalypse is actually Greek for “lifting of the veil” and, according to the Wikipedia, is a term applied to the disclosure to certain privileged persons of something hidden from the majority of humankind. It also has come to mean the coming of the end of the world, as that is the main message associated with the term. Perhaps Twitter will be used to broadcast this event to the privileged inner circle.
One of these blogs is TwiTip run by the people who bring us Problogger, an excellent resource. The tag line is Twitter Tips in 140 Characters or More. I guess you move to a blog from Twitter when you get over 140 characters and when you want more permanence to your message. Many people started a blog because they were tired of hearing sound bytes on issues and wanted a broader forum. Now the sound byte people have a great channel with micro-blogging.
TwiTip recently had a post on Ten People All Twitter Beginners Should be Following by Mark Hayward. I will let you guess who is on it and then go to the post. It is no surprise that a number of top bloggers are one the list. I remember when I first set up a RSS feed over four years ago and there was a suggested list of who to subscribe to. Well some of these same people, Guy Kawaskai (31,390 followers) and Robert Scoble, (41,488 followers) are on the twitter list. A number of other top bloggers made the list also. I guess that a social media star’s fame goes across channels. Who are your favorite Twitter feed people? Perhaps Technorati will soon launch the Twitter 100.
Post Scrip: I enjoyed Jevon’s post, The uncertain future of Blogging, I think that blogging and Twitter can co-exist. With the continuing evolution of tools, blogging is becoming more focused on what it does well - moving beyond sound bytes and providing a permanent accessible record of thought. Some of its other earlier functions are being replaced. Inside the enterprise, blogs were often used for project management until more specialized enterprise 2.0 collaboration and project management tools came along but they stood on the shoulders of blogs. Now for quick fast breaking sound bytes, micro-blogging is a better tool. It is not surprising that many well known Mumbai bloggers used their blogs to point to their twitter feeds for updates on the tragic events. Twitter is a better tool for that purpose. But i think their blogs will be a better channel for reflection on what happen. The two complement each other.
Post Script Two: Also see Guy Kawaskai’s thoughts on how to use Twitter as a marketing tool. He says he goes fo a large following rather than an influential few. Guy says to get as many followers as you can but he is trailing Scoble at the moment on the other hand he has about 31,386 more than me.
by Bill Ives
December 1, 2008 at 9:02 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
I recently received a review copy of Forrester TechRadar For Vendor Strategists: Enterprise Web 2.0 - How Product Strategists Should Approach A Maturing Web 2.0 Market, Q4 2008 by G. Oliver Young with Gil Yehuda, Kyle McNabb, Peter Burris, Sara Burnes, Zachary Reiss-Davis. This is a very comprehensive document that goes into great detail on the future of enterprise 2.0 technologies. They focused on technologies considered most appropriate for employee collaboration and included 11 technologies: blogs, forums, mashups, microblogs, podcasts, prediction markets, RSS, social bookmarks, social networks, widgets, and wikis. They begin the report with useful definitions of each tool that also include use cases, some vendors, and estimated costs to implement.
One of the most interesting parts was a chart that conveyed the current status and predicted success for the Forrester 11. Some were just starting on their journey (microblogs), others had reached their high point (podcasts and forums) but none were on their way down. Here is the breakdown but predicted success:
Significant success: social networks and wikis
Moderate success: blogs, forums, mashups, prediction markets, RSS, widgets
Minimal success: microblogs, podcasts, social bookmarks
I would generally agree with these predictions on the tools as isolated entities. I would move mashups to the top category and social bookmarks to the moderate category. In my discussions with vendors, mashups are being increasingly used as the application development platform underlying many tools. So it is both getting harder to separate them and they are becoming more pervasive. I think social bookmarks provide a useful utility that is getting integrated into other tools.
However, my major concern is looking at these tools in isolation. I see an increasing movement among vendors to provide integrated platforms that make use of a number of these tools. Even a very focus tool like Connectbeam combines social networking with social bookmarking and integrates it with search. Broader platforms like Traction make use of blogs, wikis, forums, and, most recently microblogging. Deki Wiki and Central Desktop combine many of these tools with a wiki platform under the covers. I could go on. In fairness to the Forrester group, they did say that some tools such as microblogging will make it as a feature rather than as a standalone tool. I just think the analysis should make more mention of integrated platforms.
Some of the other highlights include the finding that none of the enterprise 2.0 technologies are at risk of obsolescence as no replacements are on the horizon. They also said that the business value will accrue at a relatively slow pace. They argued that while consumers can dramatically alter their behavior in weeks and months, it’s much more difficult to move thousands of workers in an enterprise to go in one direction. This may likely be the case for enterprise wide adoption in large organizations. The successes that I have seen are more at the small to midsize business level or divisions of larger organizations.
The reports adds that RSS’s function for repurposing content is underappreciated in the enterprise which is an excellent point. People need to be more creative here. Another conclusion finds social networks becoming the focal point for enterprise 2.0 in organizations. They wrote, “Social networks provide context to content. Whereas information management traditionally focused on the information itself, employees will seek to connect with the people who created and care about the same information they care about.” I could not agree more.
The report finds that wikis show evidence of helping transform collaboration in the enterprise. A number of the vendors, such as Traction, Deki Wiki, and Central Desktop mentioned above, as well as many others, are using a wiki platform but adding a lot of functionality on top. I think this is where the future lies. The report goes into great detail and I have just covered a few highlights. It appears to be a useful state of the industry. I have taken a few minor exceptions, as noted above, but it largely rings true. I want to see a next report on the trend towards integration of functionality into broader platforms.
There is also a version of this report for KM professionals – see Forrester TechRadar™ For I&KM Pros: Enterprise Web 2.0 - Wikis And Social Networks Are Ready To Deliver High Value To Your Enterprise, Q4 2008 by Gil Yehuda with Kyle McNabb, G. Oliver Young, Sara Burnes, Zachary Reiss-Davis. I have written on a number of occasions that the advent of enterprise 2.0 proivder knowledge management professionals with a great opportunity to play a leadership role in their organizations. This reports provides useful guidance on the some actions that KM people might take. It begins with some of options the organizations face.
On one hand, waiting for IT to provide approved Web 2.0 tools leads to competitive disadvantage. On the other hand, using the tools available externally puts information at risk. In addition, downloading and running Web 2.0 tools on internal servers increase IT headaches. I have argued before, as other have, that Web 2.0 is not enterprise 2.0. I agree with the report that none of these options are good ones. Within the enterprise you need to adopt tools that were designed for business use within the enterprise. Some of these tools can be cloud based but they also need to be business based. If you are a KM professional who wants to play a leadership role in the implementation of enterprise 2.0, this report will provide useful explanations and guidance. There is a lot of detail here.
by Bill Ives
November 24, 2008 at 5:44 pm · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
Kara Swisher reported today that Facebook offered to acquire Twitter for $500 million of its stock, in her post, When Twitter Met Facebook: The Acquisition Deal That Fail-Whaled. One of the reasons was the perceived over valuation of Facebook stock as the deal was not cash but Facebook’s perceived value of $500 million in their stock. However, Kara wrote that, “more important, it seems, was a feeling among Twitter investors and execs that the start-up should still take a shot at building its revenues–there are none right now–as well as it had done at building its growth.” There have been six million registrations, as reported in October, up 600 percent over the last year, for the San Francisco-based Twitter. However, so far the effort has focused on growth over revenue and there is actually no revenue at the moment.
Kara reported that “some sources at Facebook said Zuckerberg was becoming frustrated by the buzz Twitter was getting.” I guess he wanted to take over that buzz. At the same time, Zuckerberg called Twitter an “elegant model” and said that he was “really impressed by what they’ve done.” So he offered stock with no liquid value for a company with no revenue. Perhaps the government should do this for bailouts and save the taxpayers real money. On the other hand, it does seem appropriate that the consumer web Facebook should go after the consumer web Twitter. Neither is designed for enterprise use but both have inspired a lot of enterprise tools such as the Twitter for business tools: Yammer, Present.ly, QikCom, and SocialCast that have been covered on The AppGap.
It is hard to walk away from $500 million or even the $150 million that Kara reported Twitter felt was a more realistic value of the Facebook offering. So I hope they made the right choice. Since no cash was offered, I can see some real concern by the Twitterites here. Kara closed with the comment that one Twitter source said: “The question is, is it really a good idea to sell on the first chance you get?” More times that not, my experience is that you regret not doing it but we will just have to see.
by Bill Ives
November 20, 2008 at 2:53 pm · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
The AppGap bloggers are excited to announce the launch of a new section of reviews - The AppGap: Appopedia. The section brings together the growing number of enterprise 2.0 reviews (nearly 150 to date) that my AppGap colleagues and I have written. It has been fun interviewing vendor spokespeople, seeing demonstrations, and learning about all the innovation within the enterprise 2.0 space. Now you can better access the entire collection.
And while other directories of 2.0 apps exist, we believe Appopedia serves a particular purpose, focusing specifically on work-related tools that help you manage and grow your business rather than every Web 2.0 app in the market. Hylton Jolliffe and others at Corante have been developing the new section over the past month or two. We all hope you’ll check it out and provide input on what admittedly is a work in progress (there are already got a few tweaks on the way).
As you’ll see we’ve organized the reviews by various criteria, e.g., product category, we hope you’ll find useful. If you’ve used any of the tools please feel free to weigh in with any feedback in the comments of the respective reviews.
For vendors: if you’re a company with a tool that’s already been reviewed, we encourage you to visit the review and provide any information on updates in the comments or contact us if you think your tool could be better classified by product category or function. For those that are interested in having your app reviewed, please visit our contact page where you’ll be prompted for information that’ll help us add you to the queue.
Again, we hope you find Appopedia a valuable resource. It builds on The AppGap’s mission - to help individuals, large organizations and small businesses better understand how work and our tools for working are changing - and aims to provide a practical destination for those looking to assess which apps can help them better manage and grow their businesses.
by Bill Ives
November 19, 2008 at 2:54 pm · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
Many people have been writing about the explosion of information through web 2.0 for some time and the need to provide better ways to understand it. Let me start with a fable I have mentioned before in connection with the web. Here is a summary of Borges Library of Babel from the wikipedia:
“…his universe consists of an endless expanse of interlocking hexagonal rooms, each of which contains the bare necessities for human survival—and four walls of bookshelves. Though the order and content of the books is random and apparently completely meaningless, the inhabitants believe that the books contain every possible ordering of just a few basic characters (letters, spaces and punctuation marks). Though the majority of the books in this universe are pure gibberish, the library also must contain, somewhere, every coherent book ever written, or that might ever be written, and every possible permutation or slightly erroneous version of every one of those books. The narrator notes that the library must contain all useful information, including predictions of the future, biographies of any person, and translations of every book in all languages. Conversely, for any given text some language could be devised that would make it readable with any of an infinite number of different contents. Despite — indeed, because of — this glut of information, all books are totally useless to the reader, leaving the librarians in a state of suicidal despair. However, Borges speculates on the existence of the “Crimson Hexagon”, containing a book that contains the log of all the other books; the librarian who reads it is akin to God.”
Well, the Crimson Hexagon has arrived and it came from Harvard. Now this one is a bit more focused than Borges version. Crimson Hexagon, the software service, provides brand monitoring that takes analytics beyond counting mentions or positive / negative / neutral ratings to focus on finding and understanding relevant opinion. It enables marketing professionals to measure and understand opinion according to their own business criteria. Crimson Hexagon is currently available via consulting services and will be available via Software as a Service (SaaS) in 2009. The technology within Crimson Hexagon was developed under the direction of Gary King, a Government professor at Harvard and director of its Institute for Quantitative Social Science. Crimson Hexagon has an exclusive licensing agreement with Harvard University’s Office of Technology Development.
I spoke with Perry Hewitt, their VP of Marketing. Perry said that in the old world, information was expensive to acquire. Now it is free or almost free but it is expensive to make sense of it. This is especially true for brand related information. Some companies have a person, often an intern or new hire, sit in a back room and go through Google Alerts or some other tool. However, the information glut will soon drown this strategy. Crimson Hexagon is designed to let the computer manage the analytics, after a person teaches it what to look for. This education occurs by providing the system with a sampling of 10 to 20 instances of specific types of opinion, either positive or negative, you would like the algorithm to be able to recognize. Then it can cover millions of new content examples looking for what is said and when the opinions reflected in this content.
For example, looking at comments about wait time at a help desk can help a consumer electronic firm understand if there is positive or negative climate and what are the causal factors. You can track these opinions over time to see the effects of new events or programs. Do you see lasting effects, positive or negative, or do the effects fade over time.
In another example, I saw the tracking on public web content about the iPhone and you could see the range of opinion on: Apple apps, web access, third party apps, app store, interface, and other positive. You can also see temporal events such as favorable reviews or announcements and see if there are correlated changes in opinions in any of the categories.
There used to be a saying that any publicity was good as long as they got the spelling correct. Perry said that Crimson Hexagon lets you go beyond the buzz to understand the nature of this buzz. They have a saying, stop counting and start learning. The Tower of Babel is built on numbers. Crimson Hexagon plans to go beyond this. I am going to learn more in the coming months about how this will work and will do a more detailed post on the AppGap. In the meanwhile, they have a Crimson Hexagon blog where you can follow the story.
by Bill Ives
November 13, 2008 at 12:58 pm · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
RightNow Technologies 2008 recently released their Customer Experience Impact Report conducted by Harris Interactive. I have written about RightNow a number of times (see - RightNow Offers New Features with August 08 Release) for the most recent. The survey polled 2,112 US consumers* online about how they engage with companies both online and via phone, what they find frustrating and how negative and positive customer experiences affect them.
For the third year in a row, an increasing number of consumers indicate they will stop doing business with an organization or company because of a negative customer experience. This year it was 87%, up from 80% in 2007 and 68% in 2006.
The study was done recently but before the major economic down turn. However, the results indicate that the significance of customer experiences does not go down in bad financial times. More than half (58%) of consumers said they will always or often pay more for a better customer experience during a down economy. Consumers also said the most important thing companies could do to encourage them to spend more is to improve the overall customer experience. As a consumer I would agree with all of this.
In recent years, contact centers have faced mounting pressure to move from being a cost center to both supporting the customers and generating revenue. The study addressed this issue and found that more than half of consumers (58%) are at least somewhat likely to make a purchase during a service engagement, and 24% of them have already made a purchase based on an agent’s recommendation. This is consistent with my own experience. For one major telecom’s call centers, we found that call center agents who used the knowledge management system to improve the customer experience were three times more likely to successfully cross sell during the call.
This extends to referrals. They study found that 58% of consumers said outstanding service is the number one reason they would recommend a company to someone else; up from 51% in 2007. This beats service low prices (44%) and quality products/services (43%) in the recommendation-stakes. The flip side is that customers are almost twice as likely to tell others about poor treatment. The study found that 84% of US adults who had a negative experience with an organization or company said they would spread the word about a bad experience – up from 74% in 2007 and 67% in 2006. In addition, 26% of customers said they have sworn at bad service; 17% have shouted and 9% have felt sick. I stopped doing any of these things. I just do not go back.
These results are very similar to another Harris Study sponsored by Tealeaf – see Online Customer Experience – What is Going On? It found that early 9 out of 10 (87%) online adults who have conducted an online transaction in the past year have experienced problems. Those who experience problems conducting online transactions also reported feeling disappointed (55%), angry (41%), and confused (23%). As I said then, I usually feel all of the above even though I do not actively engage in the reactions found in RigthNow study. Tealeaf addresses the issue with web analytics (see Tealeaf Brings Visibility to Online Customer Experiences) and Rightnow provides technology to support online and call center customer support. (see Customer-centric CRM from RightNow). It seems these solutions can work together.
by Bill Ives
November 10, 2008 at 8:30 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
Jevon MacDonald posted an interesting piece, In uncertain times, Enterprise 2.0 takes the stage. He began with the statement that, “for many people the positioning of Enterprise 2.0 as a cost reduction engine is not new. Complexity reduction, efficiency increases and fast response times have been the cornerstone of many Enterprise Social Software pitches in the last 5 years.” He concluded, “In a time of uncertainty such as we have seen in the past several months, new and promising technologies may prove to be the safest harbour for those who must continue to deliver growth.” I certainly agree.
In a related post, I wrote on Potential Social Software Winners in our New Economic World. In that post, I reported a conversation with Ali Riaz of Attivio about the potential impact of the current economic crisis on technology adoption. He noted that some of the large enterprise application providers are seeing decreasing sales. For example, SAP, has recently issued earnings warnings (via Jevon MacDonald). At the same time, Ali said they are finding an increasing demand at Attivio for their BI-search combination as companies want to better understand what is happening within their enterprise and customer base.
Now another enterprise 2.0 vendor, MindTouch, has now announced significant growth in Revenue, Customers and Partners. They are the developers of MindTouch Deki, a wiki-based collaboration platform for enterprise collaboration and mashups. (see my post - Deki Wiki Tees Itself Up as Your Intranet) Their reported growth benchmarks include: 368 percent increase in customers in the last 12 months through October of this year, 612 percent increase in revenue over the previous year, 132 percent growth in partners, value added resellers and system integrators and thousands in daily distribution and millions of users globally. MindTouch said that “customers and industry experts cite the immediate gains in productivity and operational efficiency afforded MindTouch Deki users as the cause for the dramatic growth in customer acquisition and new partners.”
Mindtouch also quoted Michael Coté, industry analyst with analyst firm RedMonk.
“When belts tighten, businesses don’t have the option to do less, they just need to pay less. So called Enterprise 2.0 software has been trying to streamline and modernize aging approaches to collaborative software for sometime now, and products like MindTouch Deki are results of those efforts. For companies looking to keep their collaborative applications up-to-date and cut back on costs at the same time, the crop of Enterprise 2.0 software that Deki belongs to is worth investigating.”
I think this is good news for MindTouch but also good news for enterprise 2.0 in general. It also makes sense to me. These tools are both relatively lower cost and also potentially led to both innovation and cost reductions. I have heard similar comments in informal conversation with other vendors in this space. What are you hearing from venders? If you are a vendor, do you have similar results to report?
by Bill Ives
November 6, 2008 at 4:55 pm · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
This is part four of a four part series on AIIM’s Automating Document-centric Processes – Is SharePoint Enough?” Seminar. In each case I will start with the title and quote the session description before going into my notes. Here is the session description
“SharePoint’s immense collaboration benefits driven rapid proliferation, but many companies are losing control of the very content they had hoped to better manage. While the benefits far outweigh the risks, SharePoint does not offer the requisite technology necessary to meet legal eDiscovery needs or to comply with regulatory demands.”
Autonomy led this session and the speaker noted that while Sharepoint offers many collaboration and content management benefits, it provides lightweight records management. Sharepoint is designed as a collaboration product and is not designed for heavy duty records management. Automony Information Governance Architecture integrates with Sharepoint to help with this issue, see their site on Record Management, Information Governance and Disposition. This is consistent with Microsoft’s strategy of integration with best of breed players.
The Autonomy Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL) connects with Sharepoint and 400 other content management systems. You can auto categorize content. It integrates through web parts and users do not know they are using another tool besides Sharepoint. Autonomy can get inside MOSS and replace the lightweight MOSS records management with the Automony heavy weight records management. With this system, you can put in expiration dates and other record management features. IDOL offers more than 500 advanced functions as SharePoint Web Parts.
Autonomy allows for the placement of content in the most appropriate and least expensive place. It also provides for context-based search across all file types through Autonomy Federated Search for SharePoint, enabling customers to index and search all content inside and outside the SharePoint environment. Sharepoint supports 16 file types. Autonomy supports over 1000 file types (e.g., old Word Prefect files, PDF and Blob support, audio and video, as well as structured formats). The interface works within the Sharepoint environment. The application automates record classification and management. You can move content in their content management system but leave a context link so users do not know this. Records are captured without having users enter the metadata.
Statoil was offered as an example. It is a Norwegian oil and gas company with 30,000 plus employees. Statoil partnered with Microsoft for a Sharepoint and Autonomy combined solution. Sharepoint is used for collaboration with Autonomy used for centralized records management for compliance. In addition, the UK Ministry of Defense has carried out the world’s largest Sharepoint implementation coupled with Autonomy with 400,000 users and over a million documents in a distributed environment.
Their Autonomy site provides a number of recent white papers on the topic: Autonomy’s Information Governance eDiscovery Solutions for SharePoint. Autonomy’s Rich Media Solutions for SharePoint, and Autonomy’s Advanced Search and Scalability Solutions for SharePoint.
by Bill Ives
November 5, 2008 at 10:52 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
This is part three of a four part series on AIIM’s Automating Document-centric Processes – Is SharePoint Enough?” Seminar. In each case I will start with the title and quote the session description before going into my notes.
The full title is: Transcending the Federated Search: Unifying and managing multiple content repositories such as SharePoint, with robust ECM Services. The description reads, “SharePoint has changed the face of ECM, yet organizations are suddenly realizing that the utopian view of a single repository for all of their content is unrealistic. In fact, AIIM and Forrester have stated that multiple repositories in an organization are now considered the norm.”
Tim Kanaley of Clearview, a Microsoft partner, led this session. It is an ECM provider that offers a Sharepoint based ECM suite. When Tim asked, about 25% of the room has Sharepoint now but none are using it for ECM. Sharepoint now offers more robust ECM capabilities but this audience Is not using them yet. At the same time, Tim has found that many companies with existing ECM are trying to figure out how to get Sharepoint involved with their ECM efforts. This theme was also covered in the first two sessions.
Tim summarized that ECM handles these cycles of document management capture: manage – store – preserve – deliver. Instead of using an ECM system to manage content, in many companies, people use email or file folders to manage documents and this can create chaos. I did this with my Lotus Notes email and my file folders when I worked for a large consulting company.
The same thing can happen with the proliferation of Sharepoint sites. Tim found that one company has 528 team sites and they do not have 500 employees. So Sharepoint can add to the ad hoc chaos of content management if not used right. There is a real challenge here. In addition, even with companies that use ECM, most have multiple content solutions in play. Those companies that do not have multiple content management systems can get acquired by a company with a different system. So there are many chances to develop silos of content.
To be really efficient, you need to be able to look into these multiple repositories from a single source. You also need to be able to audit what is happening. One bank wanted to bring together multiple systems: core banking system, loan processing, check imaging system, signature card application, and Sharepoint team sites housing Microsoft-centric content. The bank needed to implement a workflow solution for common business tasks, provide report management, single sign-on, single interface, extreme ease of use, best of breed solutions for addressing individual components. Tim said that Clearview connected all the silos while maintaining the systems as independent entities. It provided a virtual content repository to meet above requirements. Clearview is built on built on .NET and can make use of appropriate Sharepoint functionality. Multiple touch points for users are provided through web services. This session makes sense to me.
by Bill Ives
November 4, 2008 at 7:24 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
This is part two of a four part series on AIIM’s Automating Document-centric Processes – Is SharePoint Enough?” Seminar. In each case I will start with the title and quote the session description before going into my notes.
Here is the session description: “With the ever increasing speed of business, everyone now wants everything yesterday. We are definitely in a services-based economy where paid access to information is crucial. End users are striving to find better ways to automate data capture and related processing. Learn how the world’s leader in imaging can help you to enable faster processing, easier collaboration, quicker retrieval and better retention.”
Andrew Chapman of EMC Documentum asked the question. Why do customers want enterprise content management (ECM) and Sharepoint? Often they find out that they have both and wonder if this is a good idea. Andrew said that both can work together, which was the consistent theme of all the sessions I attended. He covered three ways the two can work together.
First there is archiving – You can move something from Sharepoint to ECM. So it is now owned and managed by ECM.
Second there is aggregation. Sharepoint puts content into SQL server and then the content is moved to ECM so is stored in one place instead. The content is still owned by Sharepoint and managed by ECM.
Third, you can use Sharepoint as a portal into ECM. Here the ECM owns and manages the content.
These three use modes can operate at the same company for different reasons.
When Sharepoint started doing content management, Documentum first thought it would be competitive. Sharepoint has been very successful. Microsoft sold 100 million seats in a year. Documentum sold 15 million seats over many years. EMC discovered that Shareppint is actually an avenue into content management. So now Documentum sees Sahrepoint as a good thing. They can coexist and Sharepoint gets more people to use ECM.
There are challenges with Sharepoint as the proliferation of many team spaces can create too many silos. Microsoft recognizes this. Microsoft is working with Documentum for better aggregation. ECM is the 6th biggest partner with Sharepoint. Documnetum sees Sharepoint as another entry point. Microsoft will focus on making access easier while Documentum can do some of the heavy lifting under the covers. Documentum provides a web services layer to communicate with Sharepoint plus some additional things to make the communication easier.
Sharepoint is a .NET development platform, as well a collaboration tool out of the box. The latter is the entry point. Companies can move to build more complex applications with Sharepoint .NET pieces. You can end up with applications that do not look like Sharepoint but are built on the platform.
Documentum is working on more ways to integrate with Sharepoint. They want to facilitate getting metadata out of SQL server for better scalability and also aggregate data in one place. Also, SQL server uses more expensive hardware. With Documentum you can move little used content (but still needed) to lower cost storage. So use Sharepoint when working with the content. Then move to Documentum for long-term storage once the team is longer working on content but the company still needs to store it.
Andrew Chapman writes the blog, Never talk when you can nod where he covers more of these issues. See his post, SharePoint as a replacement for Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems? I recently covered some of Documetum’s enterprise 2.0 moves on the AppGap blog – see EMC Documentum Makes a Series of Moves into Enterprise 2.0.
by Bill Ives
November 3, 2008 at 8:40 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
I started October with a four part series, The Sharepoint Sessions, based on a local Boston event sponsored by Knowledge Management Associates, “Real World Sharepoint Experiences.” Well I am at it again. This time I am sharing my notes from AIIM’s Automating Document-centric Processes – Is SharePoint Enough?” Seminar. I am going to cover four AIIM sessions in individual posts. Each session was led by a Microsoft Sharepoint partner and discussed how their products complemented Sharepoint. In each case I will start with the title and quote the session description before going into my notes. So here goes.
Business Process Management - Extending SharePoint Beyond Collaboration – “Enterprises are grappling with the SharePoint phenomenon. And, while it is a great tool for basic content management, extending it to document- centric business processes like Accounts Payable, Contract Management, logistics etc. can be very expensive and challenging. Attend this presentation to learn how to extend SharePoint and get more out it.”
SpringCM (CM stands for content management) was started in 2005. It is a cloud based content management system that can be integrated with other tools or standalone. Tim Kanaley of SpringCM mentioned that Sharpeoint is the fastest growing technology ever. It is on millions of desktops but many people do not know what they have. The base price is cheap but extensions can be expensive. It is good for sharing files. However, vertical applications such as accounts payable are not there because you need integration with other tools and technologies. So it is not as robust as an enterprise content management tool that has more of these.
Extending Sharepoint to specific business processes can be challenging. You just get the .NET building materials. You need extensive integration services and some more hardware and software if you are going to develop a traditional on-premises solution.
SpringCM believes that the cloud offers a cost effective alternative to all of the above challenges. All the required tools are already integrated so you can shift away from big integration costs. Now you can focus on the business process and move much of implementation to the line of business people. There is drag and drop business process application development for ease of use. SpringCM is designed for SMB and divisions of large organizations. It is created for document centered processes. The SaaS delivery means that SpringCM can be adopted solely for a specific process. You can more easily measure ROI because the application is tied to a specific process and you can see the effect on this process. You can also move to outward to integration to other systems. To get back and forth across the firewall you have web services on both sides talking to each other.
The cloud option takes away many of the challenges of the on-premise applications. Integration, upgrades, maintenance are handled by the cloud provider and there is less upfront cost. You need to have IT vet the platform once and then it can be extended to other areas without new vetting. This wider adoption allows for enterprise wide processes, standards, compliance, etc.
These are all standard SaaS selling features but they also make sense. I have long been a big supporter of work process oriented knowledge and/or document management so this extension ability appeals to me. Getting content management embedded into business processes is where the real ROI lies so Tim’s points resonated well with me.
Tim shared some best practices. First, start with an enterprise wide content management strategy. Then build an inventory of existing content management applications. Next, define the business requirements and technical and functional needs before starting with Sharepoint – don’t just plug it in – and get the business people involved up front. I might switch the order of steps two and three but this still is consistent with what we have been saying about knowledge management for years and still is good practice that is often overlooked. Next, Tim said to examine the integration points between Sharepoint and the existing content management solutions and determine what needs to be done to get them working together. Finally, establish the governance on when and when not to use Sharepoint. Again, I might move this up and, to be fair, Tim did not explicitly say his list was a sequence.
Tim said that creating formal document centric business processes is a good fit when there is a long-lived document centric process. It is not a good fit for short-term efforts or small transactions.
To no surprise, Tim recommended a combination of SpringCM and Sharepoint, not one or the other. He said use Spring CM for business processes and Sharepoint for collaboration. Documents can be in SpringCM (while in workflow) and end up back in Sharepoint. You can also do federated search across both environments. This was the theme for many sessions at the AIIM event. The ECM vendor said they were recommending working with Sharepoint and did not see it as a competitor. This comes up more explicitly in the next session from EMC Documentum.
by Bill Ives
November 2, 2008 at 7:47 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
Here is a useful intranet 2.0 survey, especially if enough people respond. It is being run by Toby Ward at President, Prescient Digital Media. I have taken it as they said you could even you do not have intranet tools. My blog is my personal knowledge management system but there is no firewall at Portals and KM. There is total transparent here. It just takes ten minutes and you will get the results. The more participation they get, the better the results and findings that they share all with you.
by Bill Ives
October 23, 2008 at 5:21 pm · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
I recently saw a great YouTube video, Jeff Han’s Multi-Touch Sensing, thanks to my friend Thierry Hubert at Wikigazette. Jeff showed a computer display that senses multiple touch points. So you can use all your fingers and others can join in. So you can take two sides of a photo to expand it in two directions at the same time, as Jeff showed. You can also have more than one person working.
He said that there is no reason that people should conform to computer interfaces, but rather the computer should conform to people, like the use of all your fingers. This should be a big plus for data visualization as Jeff suggested. He also went to NASA World Wind and showed how the interface seems to be transparent as you just work with the maps with both hands to move around and go in and out.
I was amazed when I saw the Apple Lisa visual interface in the very early 80s while doing some work for Apple. This seems to have the potential to have a far greater impact to change the way we interact with computers.
by Bill Ives
October 19, 2008 at 9:25 pm · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
I wrote about the Cisco I-Prize a few months ago – see Mining the Web and the World for Innovation a while back. This week they announced their winner and I spoke to David Hsieh, Senior Director of Marketing for Cisco’s Emerging Technology Group about the wining team and the contest in general. First, to summarize the contest, Cisco launched a contest and invited the world to give it great ideas. The winners get to join Cisco and is funded to make the idea real. More specifically, the winning team has the opportunity to join Cisco , drive the development of their business idea and are eligible to receive a $250,000 cash prize. Cisco may then invest approximately $10 million over three years to staff, develop, and go to market with a new business based on the idea.
The winning team contained two Germans and a Russian. It is led by Anna Gossen, a computer science student at the Karlsruhe University in Germany. The other members include Niels Gossen, a computer science student at the University of Applied Sciences in Germany, and Sergey Bessonnitsyn, a systems engineer from Russia. They are looking at the ways to using the network as the platform for visibility, manageability and, ultimately, optimized control of energy-consuming systems. David said their approach will look at more energy consumption at a more granular level to better forecast energy needs at a more granular and effective level. If the power company guesses too low there are “brown outs.” If they guess too high, which is the usual case, power is wasted.
In the initial phase, the contest attracted more than 2,500 entrepreneurs from 104 countries who presented 1200 ideas. The ideas were posted on the public site and others could promote or demote the idea. New teams were also formed as people saw potential partners with similar ideas. Cisco also encouraged this. The winning team acted together from the start like 25% of the other teams who went on to the next phase.
To participate in phase two, 32 ideas were selected. In some cases existing teams carried them forward and in other cases new were teams were formed. A third of these teams were multi-national like the winners. These teams were given Cisco’s collaboration portfolio of Cisco TelePresence, Cisco Unified Communications and the new Cisco WebEx® Connect application platform, to brainstorm their initial ideas, collaborate on the business plan, and virtually present their ideas to Cisco. See my recent App Gap post, Cisco WebEx Combine Strengths to Launch New Enterprise 2.0 Collaboration Platform)
In the third, and final phase, twelve teams carried forward. They were given a lot of support and each had a Cisco team mentor who worked with them to further develop their business plan. At this phase, there was much more interaction with team via telepresence. There was a new emphasis on the people, as well as the idea, as the winners were to be offered jobs at Cisco.
Cisco is pleased with this experiment and investment. It validates the open collaboration model. They were one of the first large companies to try this. It is very counter to the current VC model in Silicon Valley. These funding and support resources are not available in most of the world and Cisco was able to engage people in 104 companies through the web. They did not do major promotion for this effort and did no marketing in many of the 104 countries were the participants live. They found that many people wanted their ideas to work as much as they wanted to make a lot of money on the idea. Many of the other eleven finalists are looking for ways to continue their idea.
I asked David about their lessons learned. The first one was to validate the desire to collaborate on the global scale. Cisco hoped this would happen but there was no certainty. Next time they may go bigger and bolder. I liked this idea when I first heard about it. I am very glad it succeeded. Perhaps the G7 should have a similar contest on alternative energy solutions and efforts to curtail global warming.
by Bill Ives
October 14, 2008 at 9:01 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
I recently wrote on this blog on why the enterprise 2.0 market might continue to grow in a down market, see Awareness Report Shows Significant Rise in Enterprise Social Media - Will It Continue? My blog colleague Jevon MacDonald covered the concept in more depth in his post, In uncertain times, Enterprise 2.0 takes the stage. I really like the series of points Jevon made. He concludes with this statement, “In a time of uncertainty such as we have seen in the past several months, new and promising technologies may prove to be the safest harbour for those who must continue to deliver growth.”
Forrester is leader in promoting the enterprise 2.0 market. More recently, Oliver Young provided a new report with some cautions, Vendors: Prepare For Falling Prices For Enterprise Web 2.0 Collaboration And Productivity Apps. It was likely written before the recent market downturn. The summary states, “The enterprise Web 2.0 market is experiencing an explosion of activity among enterprises seeking collaboration and productivity improvements. While that explosion is placing Web 2.0 technology in the hands of millions of knowledge workers, cutthroat competition, commoditization, bundling, and subsumption are all offsetting the associated license revenue growth. How bad will it get? Forrester expects that most Web 2.0 tools will experience falling average deal sizes over the next five years, with some deal sizes dropping by more than half. Product managers must take steps today to manage increasingly competitive times ahead.”
Part of this prediction is the normal evolution of new software markets. Oliver points out that in many cases the tools have moved into a period of refinement rather than breakthrough innovation. This may be largely true but I still see some new genres or expansions on existing ones as I interview application suppliers for the AppGap blog.
His next major point is that bundling creates a more homogenous set of competitors. Here I completely agree. Many of the best of breed providers are moving away from their initial starting point (e.g., blog, wiki, social networking, etc.) to providing more a consolidated suite or platform. The newest entries such as smaller players like Qtask and big guys like CiscoWebEx are talking about integrated platforms. Others like Attivio are combining capabilities (business intelligence and enterprise search in their case). Even Microsoft, which announced a number of integration capabilities with best of breed vendors, is moving to adding a lot of those capabilities into Sharepoint – see upcoming Sharepoint investment areas.
Oliver then talks about subsumption (a word surprisingly not liked in the Microsoft spell checker) which is an extension of bundling. He writes, “Microsoft and SAP, are rolling Web 2.0 features into existing software packages; in many cases, they are providing the technology at no extra cost. Microsoft, for example, bundles lightweight blogging and wiki tools into SharePoint.” My recent experiences with Sharepoint implementers supports this idea.
Getting down to details, Oliver predicts the price for blogs and wikis will fall the most. They were part of the original selection of web 2.0 tools so this makes sense, especially as other tools have picked up some of their breakthrough functions like project management. He says that social networking will follow blogs and wikis and become commoditized with Sharepoint being a major reason. On the brighter side, Oliver predicts that mashups will continue to grow in maturity and use. Once again I agree with Oliver as mashups become more of the underlying plumbing in enterprise 2.0 tools like Deki for CRM. Mashup providers like Serena should do well as they refine their offering and firms like Nexaweb that use mashups for deep enterprise application integrations should also do well.
There is much more and I recommend the report. I wonder how these trends that support some falling process might intersect with the potential for increased demand that Jevon mentions and I referenced in the opening paragraph of this post.
by Bill Ives
October 10, 2008 at 3:42 pm · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
Here is another of the growing reports on research that indicates enterprise 2.0 is on the rise. Recently Awareness released a report on “Trends and Best Practices in Adopting Web 2.0 in 2008.” It shows that social media initiatives are on are increasing and continue to evolve. There is a focus on the deeper and broader integration of Web 2.0 technologies with other enterprise systems, enabling greater participation from both internal and external audiences. This is consistent with what I am hearing from others sources ((e.g., Forrester, AIIM, Aberdeen, Gilbane, etc.).
More than half of the respondents were management or senior-level executives, with their roles evenly between marketing, business strategy development and technology. Highlights include:
Employers are starting to allow social media participation more freely in their organizations: The number of organizations that allow social networking for business purposes has increased dramatically to 69 percent in 2008 up from 37 percent last year. The numbers in this paragraph and the next really struck me.
Employers are finding the benefits of using social media: 63 percent are using social media to build and promote their brand, 61 percent are using it to improve communication and collaboration, and 58 percent re using it to increase consumer engagement.
Seventy five percent of employees are already using social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn for business purposes, up 15 percent from 2007. I think it is fine to do this for business social networking. I do it also. However, I would not pick one of these tools for the enterprise social networking tool. (see Enterprise 2.0 is not Web 2.0 nor is it an Oxymoron)
Use of internal-facing communities is on the rise with 6 percent of organizations already reporting they deployed internal-facing communities, while 33 percent indicate their organization plans to implement internal-facing social media initiatives.
Similarly external-facing communities are increasing: 27 percent of respondents said their companies were planning to deploy external-facing communities while only 13 percent indicated their organizations already have external-facing communities.
Online communities directed at specific interests and groups of people allow for more targeted marketing techniques and better results so for this reason 37 percent of organizations have specific areas of focus for their communities, It is great to see the continuing positive research on web 2.0 and enterprise 2.0.
I wonder how the economic downturn will change things. Forrester has predicted that prices will fall for enterprise 2.0 applications. This was not necessarily in response to the current economic crisis bur rather to competition, commoditization, bundling, and subsumption. I will write more about their report soon.
On the other hand, there should be an increased demand for virtual communication to offset the time and costs of physical meetings. Social media partially addresses this issue. There should also be an increased interest in innovation and companies should be more open to change. I recently read a similar thought by Jonathan Schwartz the Sun President and COO and long time blogger. In a recent blog post, Innovation Loves a Crisis, Jonathan shared a memo he sent to Sun’s leader about the role of technology in helping with the current economic crisis, Innovation Loves a Crisis. He writes that many businesses will be most open to change now and he wants Sun to help its customers achieve greater innovation and boost productivity in response to economic challenges that many face.
What do you think?
by Bill Ives
October 5, 2008 at 9:02 pm · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
This is part four and the last installment of my notes from a local event sponsored by Knowledge Management Associates, “Real World Sharepoint Experiences.” Tara Seppa is a Microsoft Information Worker Solution Specialist who works with small to midsize businesses in New England. She covered Microsoft’s Sharepoint Investment areas. Tara started by saying that the latest launch wave – Windows server 2008 will include virtualization. There will also be SQL2008 enhancements to better work with Sharepoint including compression and high availability.
The Microsoft Search Server 2008 will be better suited for intranet searching with new federation capabilities and no preset document limits. It will be available in two versions including a free express version for a single server. Search will use mashups to include content form multiple sources in one result set. Currently, there is federation – search from other sources now. The next move will be to a combined mashuped set of results. Sharepoint will also allow for tagging and rating of content while maintaining the taxonomy.
The next release of Sharepoint, Microsoft will be investing for the paradigm shift to more web 2.0 capabilities. The consumer web is influencing the enterprise and search is getting bigger. Microsoft feels that software + services is the best of both worlds – combine SaaS and desktop apps. There are limits of Sharepoint online that can be handled by desktop apps. Social networking and social software are on the rise and success here is about building trust. Social networking is an important first step for collaboration and finding documents. Currently, knowledge is modern organizations isn’t just 80 undocumented, it is 95% invisible. The Sharepoint social networking capability, Knowledge Network, was not implemented in last version of Sharepoint but they are planning to implement it in next version.
Other new investments include making lists more relational and they will be the backbone of Sharepoint. Social networking will get more emphasis as mentioned above. Microsoft made a big investment in Facebook. The Sharepoint My Site profile will be seen as the hub of network. Knowledge Network integration is likely to happen as mentioned above. It indexes what’s on your system to determine your expertise (but you can turn it on and off). So the Knowledge Network will cover more than just what you put on your profile to My Site. It will look at how you are really working.
Finally she said they want to get beyond sequential collaboration. Influences from both the Groove acquisition and wikis will help them get past the limits of check in and out.
I asked about the announced commitment to integration with best of breed players who now offer some of the new directions she described for Sharepoint. Tara said Microsoft will continue its integration with best of breed players, especially in vertical market applications. Sharepoint is more of a platform and wil
