Reinventing Silos

June 29, 2009 at 3:07 pm · Filed under Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Social Computing

I’m interrupting a couple of pieces in progress, because this topic is too significant to wait on. It raised its head as I was listening to a great panel discussion from the recent Enterprise 2.0 conference, facilitated by Peter Kim, featuring the Social ’stuff’ experiences of Allstate, Jet Blue and Humana. One caveat, as with all 2.0 conversations, it’s important to separate the B2C and C2C-focused examples from other focuses (B2E, E2E etc.). There’s a heavy B2C/C2C slant to the discussion.

Ben Foster from Allstate made two great comments:

Enterprises and practitioners are often guilty of using Social Media as a cure chasing a disease.

We’re moving past the experimentation stage…

There were many more great insights shared as these companies find their own ’success’ around these technologies. There was something between what was shared that scared me — a repeat of the evolution of IT: fostering isolationism — reinventing silos. One panelist even mentioned the word “silos” but I believe his meaning was in transcending organizational (or other) silos via open conversation. While conversations may be more ‘open’, they’re only as ‘open’ as the application or format by which they’re bound.

This is an old issue — one I posed to Bill Gates circa 1990 (when he was the ‘guest speaker’ for nearly every event in Seattle, and common folk had direct access to him). I asked him, “When are you going to separate the files you create from the applications that create them?” His response, “I don’t understand your question.” He didn’t wait for me to explain either. The main issue: the things applications create are ‘locked into’ the format of the application that creates them.

Blogs and wikis provide specific formats to content. There are behavioral format clues that differentiate a blog from a wiki, but under the covers it’s all content. Content elements have value beyond the formats and applications that hold them hostage  — they’re enterprise assets that can be repurposed in other formats. The specific format of content (.pdf .doc .html) is really only relevant for consumption — to associate the ‘viewing’ of the content with an application that can display it. The semantics of the content itself doesn’t really care about the format (don’t hold me to that when I’m telling you how to create semantically-relevant formats), just ask your favorite search engine — it’s all words to them.

The significance and potential power of a format-agnostic architecture is evidenced in the recent demos of Google Wave. What we don’t have are the corresponding ‘drivers ed car crash movies’ to illustrate the disastrous end to conversations that are locked and isolated in disparate tools and formats.

Sadly, the significance of a well-architected application platform was something that was understood by the designers of Ventura Publisher, which applied format to the content via SGML — text, graphics, etc. were all managed in their raw form, and ‘assembled’ into the desired presentation format — in 1986. These were some of the same people from Xerox PARC who created the original graphical UI elements that Microsoft and Apple later fought over in court.

Consider a simple ‘hostage’ example (one that I’ve been aghast as many UX designers have missed the significance of), a UI with the labels “Blog” and “Wiki” as two separate options for navigation. If I’m looking for something (pick anything), which one should I look at to find what I’m looking for? You may suggest that I use the search feature (conveniently bypassing the original design issue altogether). This would have to assume that search constantly indexes all the conversations in real time — the results are typically grim, adoption fails.

Clearly, Microsoft contributed to ‘isolationism’ again with SharePoint — everything all neatly packaged in individual projects, with no ability to ‘watch’ for redundancies or facilitate cross-fertilization of conversations (ignoring for a moment that ‘conversations’ weren’t really supported anyway). And as David Armano pointed out in a Harvard Business Press post today, it all requires a healthy dose of seeding, feeding and weeding along the way (the continuous wetware element that IT rarely accounts for).

Sure, 2.0 technologies can increase transparency across organizations, but that’s all lost as you move across ‘closed’ solutions or formats, with no architectural layer to synthesize it all. One silo is simply replaced by another.

To capitalize on the potential of Enterprise 2.0, there has to be a total architecture that considers the full lifecycle and use of content, as it is leveraged for action (the part KM missed).

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Zappos: A 2.0 Company

June 12, 2009 at 8:44 am · Filed under 2.0 Business Model, Business Model, Enterprise 2.0, FASTforward'09, Innovation, Organizational Design, Social Work-net-ing, Socialprise

Just before flying home from FASTforward ‘09, in February, I took advantage of being in Las Vegas to visit Zappos, an online retailer that has been repeatedly recognized for its unique culture (not to mention their own book on the subject) and embracing social media. CEO, Tony Hsieh, was even on Oprah last October. So what more could I possibly add here?

I focused ‘between the lines’ and ‘outside the box’ — the larger experience of what makes Zappos, well, Zappos. I’ve watched a lot of videos about the place, follow Tony on Twitter, and even did a brief piece on them before, but as with other 2.0 experiences, immersion makes all the difference.

The ‘get to the chase’ version:

• The Zappos environment is a full-blown corporate anomaly: full of things that most corporations would dismiss as being “unproductive”, “chaotic”, “unmanageable” and “unprofitable”.

Between the Lines: Note on video…the flags on poles…critical artifacts of the culture.

• People LOVE to work here (earning a spot on Fortune’s coveted”100 Best Companies to Work For” 2008 list). Why not? They get to follow their passions (even if they want to invite Ellen to come to Zappos) and evolve their own path of doing ‘work’, all while having LOTS of fun.
• The results: 2008 sales = over $1BIL
• Bottom Line: This crazy stuff works and they’ll even tell you how to do the same.

The ‘insights’ version:

• The Zappos experience begins way before the on-site tour. Even vendors coming on sales calls are picked up in Zappos-branded vehicles (3 SUVs and a bus in the fleet) at the airport or their hotel.
• My driver, Zack, was the Shuttle Manager. He was eager to talk about just how much he loves the company and its culture (even as a New York transplant). He worked his way into his job because he just likes to drive, which he sees a lot of: 4-5 drivers make 150-200 runs a week!
• During major conventions shuttle runs get a bit hectic, but Zack was proud that they were able to ramp up and cover 300 runs during the February 2009 CES convention (having a work culture that allows them to tap into volunteers throughout the company, makes a huge difference).
• Walking through the doors is not like entering any other company: people in motion and endless visual stimulus. Everything has been thought of, including checking in your luggage, complete with a ticket, and getting you a drink.
• Tours at Zappos are like a parade — tour guides carry a flag/banner, which alerts employees to greet guests. My guide, Jerry, while retired from Nordstrom (a company also founded on great shoe sales and service) had infectous energy that belies his ’silver’ exterior. The tour itself cannot adequately be described in words — the videos are a must watch.

Between the Lines: Our tour was cut short as CEO Tony Hsieh was available, so we headed straight for the ‘jungle’ (the location of his office) to catch Tony for his interview where he reminded me again of their ‘other’ brand 6PM.com.

• Not to downplay my chat with Tony (he gets so much press already), I was anxious to talk briefly with Alfred Lin (@Zappos_Alfred) because he holds both the COO and CFO roles, which I asked him about. His answers were insightful and his presence clearly belies his kid-like avatar on Twitter.

• I was a bit surprised to find out just how far they take their Core Value “Do More With Less”. Clearly operating as a 2.0 company, internally they leverage only very basic technology (email, wiki, blog, newsletter, word-of-mouth), in very simplistic ways — allowing for natural collaboration and connections of a tight culture to carry the rest.
• To dip yourself into the Zappos culture on an ongoing basis, be sure to check out employee voices via their many blogs.
• Oh, and did I mention, they sell shoes, accessories and clothing?

The last half of the Tour is shared in two parts.

• On average, 4-8 tours come through every day — more during the annual shoe conventions. While Jerry and Donavon are the primary tour guides, any employee can take the tour guide course and serve as a fill-in. This wasn’t staged — this is the ‘norm’ in their culture.
• The entire environment is a testament to their culture, of constant motion, immersion and learning. There are 4 bookcases at the entrance with multiple copies of ‘current reads’ for employees to grab and enlighten themselves — including Tribal Leadership (Zappos sponsors a downloadable audiobook version).
• Learning is for EVERYONE, on both sides of the coin — giving and receiving. Classes are ‘live’ and taught by employees. If you’re moving ‘up’ to a role, you’ll be taught by people currently ‘in’ the role. Likewise, you’ll teach those coming in behind you.
• Inspired by some of the things gleaned from Tribal Leadership, a more structured “Pipeline” path was created for classes. Training Supervisor, Loren Becker, readily shared the outline of the Pipeline program (which she merely had to print from the Zappos Wiki and had in my hands within minutes). Simplistic, there are:
  • Core-Level Classes (in 6-month segments)
    For the first 18 months of employment, a total of 213 required hours — the majority of which is “Customer Loyalty Training”, plus books to be read.
  • Management-Level Classes
    Includes 37 required hours (with department-specific specialization added in) and 6 recommended books
  • Leadership-Level Classes
    Includes 32 required hours (including hours to ‘teach’ classes, as noted previously).
• “Introduction to Coaching” is taught by their own full-time coach for employees, Dr. Vik — who sold his Northern California Chiropractic practice to join the team (in the Part 2 video, just before we arrive at Dr. Vik’s office, someone asks Jerry to have Dr. Vik ‘come down’ when he has a moment — there are a lot of word-of-mouth activities going on all the time). Not only did I get my own Zappos Vision planner, I also got a copy of Dr. Vik’s DVD “Taking It to the Next Level” (explained briefly here).

Special thanks to Elizabeth Gregersen who handled all of my arrangements and who was patient with my questions after the fact (here’s Liz and Jerry just having fun — its encouraged to do so). My apologies that it took so long to get this posted (it’s been a steep learning curve to edit/load the videos). If there is any information in the videos that is out of date, please let me know.

For a ‘more professional’ version, check out the ABC Nightline segment.

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Bone Up on Biology…and Math

June 4, 2009 at 4:38 pm · Filed under FASTforward'09

I can still picture the day I saw this piece hit the business section of the Wall Street Journal — in 1999: A New Model for the Nature of Business: It’s Alive!

And yet we’ve still barely started to embrace what it suggests. Having not looked at the chart in some time, I was even more shocked to recall the “Principle Economic Constraint: Creativity”. In contrast to the ‘old’ focus of capital — is is any wonder Enterprise 2.0 runs headlong against old mindsets looking for things like ROI (a ‘backwards’ thinking mindset) vs. “cost avoidance” or “opportunity potential” (a ‘forward’ thinking mindset)?

I was having a related conversation with colleague Rob Patterson (@robpatrob). It sparked a whole new focus for him on the topic. He immediately penned the first of a great series: How the Natural Organization Works.

But the conversation started with my turning to Rob for a clue about assessing size issues (as in, how does this all scale) using the principles of Fibonacci (we’d had a great conversation about how the patterns can be leveraged, when we were gathered at FASTforward ‘08 — it was clear Rob was the designated expert among us on the topic). I hit a wildcat — the gush was on:

I think that all our HR and org design theory is based on nothing but dogma. As I study natural organization - the military and gaming and VC’s experience with new companies - I see how the Fibonacci sequence plays again and again.

…those whose work I find interesting on this topic … Chris Allen is worth a good look.

We keep coming back to 8 - 34 - 89 - 150 as the key elements

• 8 appears to the the building block - the core unit of intimacy
• 15 seems to be very difficult number…satisfaction dips in groups of 15
• 34, a platoon, is the ideal
• 89 like 15 is an interim number
• 150 is the ideal total human unit - where natural cohesion still applies…over that you need bureaucracy and rules

The Roman Army - where all these numbers were refined by experience over hundreds of year - settled on 8 men in a tent as its core. The Century is 80 men. The Maniple is 150.

The legion had a head office of 7. 6 interns, Tribunes on 6 month rotations and a legate on a 2- 5 year tour.

The management of the legion was embodied in the working leader - the centurion. Centurions were managed on an Empire wide basis and had over 8 ranks themselves. They would be shifted around the empire building experience in many fields and a network of colleagues.

In reality the legate relied on his 2 senior centurions to run the logistics and the military side.

In modern times we have to use too many managers because we pay no attention to the natural organization. A 5,000 person organization would have hundreds in HO. A Centurion is also a different type of manager. He was a leader/manager who had more experience and skills than his men. You still see this in armies with NCO’s who do not sit behind a desk separate from the work, the risk and their men. You still see this in the Fire Brigades. Same with the core numbers in both armies and firebrigades.

Why do these numbers and roles still remain there? Not I think becuase of some learned treatise. But because in war or in a fire, there is no fooling around. These numbers and roles have evolved out of hard experience. They work.

It is also interesting that the 8 man tent where you spent 25 years with the same people, is replicated in the firehall where the teams live with each other. I think this is where the push back really comes about women in the fire service. Intimacy is at the heart of the bond. Love. With women in the group, Pandora’s box is opened.

We separate work from home. In natural organizations, the two are the same. The deeply personal and the mundane such as housekeeping create trust and love that enables people to die for each other if they have to.

Ask why the attachment to the fire service is so great when the money is so poor? I think that we thrive as humans in this more natural tribal organization.

Tribal…Francois (@fgossieaux), I’m sure you’ll want to chime in on that lead-in?

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Enterprise 2.0 Isn’t a Checklist

May 27, 2009 at 1:46 pm · Filed under Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Social Computing, Organizational Design, Social Computing

When speaking at national Data Warehousing conferences years ago I was surprised by two clear patterns:

1. Each year, over 50% of the people in attendance were new to the field and often were there because they’d ‘inherited’ responsibility for a data warehousing initiative, but knew nothing about the industry or the practices.
2. Because of #1, the majority of the attendees were under tremendous pressure to perform. They were looking for recipes — checklists that they could take home and just start working on.

This appears to be indicative of all emerging disciplines/practices. But for Enterprise 2.0, unlike Data Warehousing, the predominant focus is NOT technology. And yet, from where does the funding or focus from such initiatives typically come? This is a much larger issue — one related to obsolete organizational design practices. The reason IT is the most obvious choice for sponsorship is that it is the only organization not vertically challenged — it delivers (or should) only horizontal services to an enterprise — crossing all other departments. Indeed, IT is one of the few organizations that takes on the battle to find common threads across organizations to weave the horizontal lines of the tapestry that holds the business together.

And yet, the approaches needed for E2.0 initiatives are the antithesis of typical IT practices.

1. There are no rules; there are no requirements
   An optimal E2.0 initiative evolves organically (hold that thought for further clarification). E2.0 initiatives are the canary for Business 2.0 — if they die, the business will as well (either absorbed by the larger market or re-emerging anew after an identity meltdown).
2. The goal is not Binary Code
   This is the realm for Design Thinking, not Analytical Thinking (previously noted: end of piece). As Roger Martin alludes to in The Design of Business (starting pg 6) this is an era to shift away from the locked down binary code of repeatability (optimal for machinery) and become more comfortable with the ’squishy’ realm of the heuristic (optimal for capitalizing on human wetware). It doesn’t mean that we abandon the right side of the continuum — mystery…heuristic…algorithm…binary code — but that we shift to the left.
3. Controls are Nooses of Death
   This is the realm of ‘middles’: neither chaos or order, but a powerful, constantly changing space called complexity (think practice of ’science’ not ‘lots of pieces’). IT is still focused on increasing controls to improve results — increasing compliance, embracing defined practices of Project Management, etc. If you’re building a spaceship and lives are at stake, these practices are a must. If you’re running a company in today’s turbulent marketplace, everything that is locked down and fixed prevents the real human capital of the organization from adapting to constantly changing circumstances. There is never an ideal process or system and there will always be exceptions. IT cannot respond fast enough to these changes. That means the flexibility has to be built into the systems. This is not to suggest that controls are abandoned — it simply means that all of the existing controls have to be questioned and likely changed for greater human oversight throughout the organization (managed via a distributed social governance model, not a hierarchy).
4. It’s not about a Blog or a Wiki
   A true sign of a E2.0 initiative destined for failure is one that focuses on the technologies. Certainly there are a variety of technologies that enhance and help to enable E2.0, but even as technologies, they are absolutely ineffective when implemented with a typical IT approach: install them. Blogs, Wikis, Mashups, and other Social Computing mechanisms are elements of a flexible infrastructure. As a solution they have to be architected. This will prove problematic for most IT groups for the same reason that SOA has failed — IT hires ‘drafters’ not ‘architects’. In company after company, the majority of people I’ve met who hold ‘architect’ titles know nothing about real design: they can draft solutions, but not architect them (the problem starts with the job descriptions — check out some postings).

So what IS Enterprise 2.0 focused on? People: tapping the human potential, helping to change the way business gets done by optimizing it not to the systems but to the people. Not shaping the people (via training and documentation) to the systems and the business, but changing the systems and the business to optimize the potential of the people.

Enterprise 2.0 is a mindset, framed by the orders of nature: enabling endless possibilities, organizing simple things in simple ways.

Enterprise 2.0 is about facilitating orderly chaos:

• Minimizing Structure, Optimizing Connections
• Tapping Existing Kinetic Energy
• Celebrating Flaw-Finding and Fixing
• Supporting Rapid Change

How do you get there?

• Truly Utilize Resources
  It’s not a destination — it’s a journey. You’re already on the path: embrace where you stand. First assess whether or not existing resources have access to one another: the people element. Finding people has to be the first priority. Determine the typical scenarios for problem solving and recognize that departments or hierarchies do not hold the answers to business problems/issues: people do. Warning: classic ‘expertise locator’ technologies will likely not be the right answer here.
• Shorten Distances
  Simplify all aspects of ‘doing’ business. Repeatedly ask: What can we stop doing? Leverage what’s working (from the perspective of all individuals impacted, not just those with ‘management’ responsibility to execute) — bypass the rest. From an IT perspective, being successful here the concept of software as we know it goes away. The desktop becomes a collection of functions that can be assembled into sequential processes, but are not locked into place. Existing applications can be tapped, bypassing inefficient UIs and raising the most relevant activities and functions to the ‘top’ (omnipresence). Even two years ago Dion Hinchcliffe introduced the concept of situational software.

• Embrace Organic
  Organic is not chaotic. A palm frond is distinct from a maple leaf. Nature has order, but that order is under rapid cycles of repeated construction and destruction. The question becomes one of determining what structure is necessary to support a specific, unique pattern (purpose), yet does not prevent the ability to adapt to constantly changing conditions — not only to survive, but flourish.
• Shift Focus
  Particularly for IT, the focus shifts from code (developers) to UI (designers). Coders are trained to make things binary; good designers are comfortable with the ’squishiness’ of heuristics. That doesn’t mean developers go away; it means that there should be a 1-to1 ratio of developers and designers. They’re two totally different kinds of mindsets — and while there are unique individuals who can do both, it’s rare that 1) you can find them or 2) you know what to look for and adequately assess. Besides, there’s an important phase of working through the natural ‘dissonance’ that will occur between these two mindsets. This can be lost when resolved in the mind of a single person (or it will just increase work-induced-schizophrenia, ala. stress). The fallacy of paired programming is not in the number, but in the resources and their focus. Pairs should be made up of two different perspectives.
• Shift Thinking
  Design Thinking requires a different approach: it focuses on trying out multiple possibilities (fail fast) to test an algoritm — a problem statement. Don’t think problem=flaw, but problem=mathematical equation. Different algorithms solve different problems. Many solutions fail because they either 1) started with the wrong question (the solution is the answer to the question) or 2) did not adapt to change the question (the problem statement) as more was learned along the way. Our current definition and funding of projects is a key contributor to this fatal flaw.
• Shift Culture
  A company that has been optimized for ‘machine’ design (command and control), will have a culture that reinforces such behaviors. Such a culture will undermine E2.0 potential. It will seek to eliminate the efforts as a ‘foreign body’. A different culture is not a prerequisite, it’s a corequisite. It should evolve as enabled by the other changes. Such cultures have to move from ‘rules’ to ‘guidelines’; from ‘fixed processes’ to ‘governance models’; from binary to heuristic (obvious exceptions will be for those industries and/or business artifacts subject to legislation).

A primary challenge is that we’re so used to operating in ‘binary’ that we attempt to turn everything into linear processes. This is not a linear solution space (in reality, neither is business — we’ve only artificially forced it to be so). Most of these things are codependent — they rely on small changes from the other dimensions to accommodate their own change. This is ‘informed change’ not ‘command and control change’. How is this possible? Social computing — facilitating conversations and exchange of business artifacts that are: transparent, persistent and accessible.

Now we can start the technology discussion…

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Deep Thinking Around Search

February 18, 2009 at 1:25 pm · Filed under FASTforward'09, Search

It became very clear by day three of FASTforward ‘09 that there has been a lot of deep thinking around search experiences. It has been FAST’s commitment to deep thinking (reflected by their support of this blog and the format of the FASTforward events) that has continued to gain my respect for them as a vendor.

On Monday of FASTforward ‘09, some of us got to participate in a thinking exercise expressed via a mindmap. The focus of the discussion was “Search-Driven Experiences”, clearly influenced by the messages from Jared Spataro’s talk to us that morning, especially:

“Turn information into business outcomes through engaging experiences:

• Visual — Help you identify patterns and discover new insights
• Conversational — Change how you interact with information, giving you better answers
• Actionable — Allow you to rapidly turn information into actions.”

I share the map my group did, not because of ownership, but because of familiarity with the journey and the insights along the way. With really great partners at my table to work on this exercise, I had recently started a similar list for “elements of a social economy” and pulled it out to see what might fit with this subject.

While seemingly ‘messy’, we learned the relevancy of the map’s visual context. One colleague tried to write up a summary list to report our findings and realized it would lose relevant meaning.

Reinforced by Wednesday’s presentations (and many great interviews esp. Euan Semple), it was evident that the need to find individuals is as important as finding stuff (the latter being the typical focus of search engines). This is not possible without access to an individual’s “Identity”. We noted that most search results focus on “you tell me” (a one-way broadcast). Telling is not the same as “advising” (allowing for choices), or “heralding” (featuring specific or related content).

A more conversational model would let “me tell you” as well (touched on in Bjørn Olstad’s interview). This goes beyond inference because individuals operate in different roles. Amazon tries to infer “interests” from my behavior, but there are exceptions such as when I’m buying for someone else, which we noted as “surrogacy”.

The individual identity becomes a group identity through “affinity” (the power and potential for collectives to form is the focus of Clay Shirky’s interview).

The ability for collectives to form and dissipate in a continuous adaptive way is critical to any living organism or system that supports living organisms. Adaptation is hindered by ‘fixed’ systems and solutions, which are often linear and “non-dynamic” (the html page paradigm of Web 1.0 is non-dynamic). Related non-organic barriers and gotchas we labeled “the swamp”, which is closely related to a need for “breaking the paradigm” (stepping away from what we traditionally assign to search as a function).

Even though we intentionally focused on “breaking the paradigm”, as the next group presented, we immediately saw some of the ways in which we had been ’stuck’ looking at the problem from one perspective, because we’d not included the significance of “social” in our model (the interview with Charlene Li touches on some of the relevant aspects of this potential).

The existing search paradigm assumes that individuals are “coming to your party”, rather than search meeting an individual where they already are in their normal activities and suggest relevant recommendations. We see such seamless recommendations starting to appear in examples such as the new gmail feature where emails with dates/time elicits an inquiry “Would you like to…add to calendar?”

But a recommendation is not a conversation. Without a  conversation an individual cannot suggest what does and doesn’t work for them — they “can’t say no” — to fine-tune what gets presented, to help suggest their specific “intent”. Having such conversations requires a persistent memory to facilitate an intelligent exchange. Without such, we struggle with repeated “wasted investments”, going down a particular path with a series of “relational operators” only to have to “start over” with another search. One search fails to build on the last and doesn’t facilitate a “series of intents”.

Often a search experience “assumes a perfect” scenario — the results are perfect, the individual is imperfect. It is the individual who is unable to tell the engine what it needs to know — a futile effort for something without a memory, thus no ability to ‘know’ anything. And yet, search engines boast about the “results #” returned or the speed in “seconds #” — celebrating the ability to return more wrong results faster.

We covered pretty deep territory in a very short period of time which makes you wonder why many search experiences are still so painful. Doing a better job of covering all of the points we mapped out (including those of the other groups) can be facilitated by technologies, especially search. Because the people behind the scenes at FAST think deeply about these challenges, their tools are architected to support better Search-Driven Experiences (Mark Stone’s interview highlights related examples), and the FAST team is clearly open and willing to discover more.

A big thanks to FAST for allowing us the time to engage in this interactive exchange of mutual discovery.

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Not To Seem Unappreciative

February 18, 2009 at 2:10 am · Filed under FASTforward'09

FASTforward ‘09 was a great event. I’m still just a bit confused by the MyFF09 site.

1. The site asks me to login even though it’s telling me “Hi…”, by name, at the top of the page.
2. Sessions that I’ve given feedback on are still asking me for feedback.
3. Many items on the home page, under the section “Interactive Media”  (I reported this before the conference) are all for another conference — I’m not sure how others haven’t been confused by this.
4. An email was sent out to invite us to look at the presentations loaded to the site. Can’t figure out where they are — the link in the email didn’t go to them and there’s nothing on the home page to add any additional insight.
5. I’ve not been too successful at getting access to the video replays from the virtual site (they were a lot easier to access last year from the my site).

Anyone have any additional insights?

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Microsoft Announces Plans for New FAST Products

February 10, 2009 at 1:55 pm · Filed under FASTforward'09

These are my notes and reflections from an analyst briefing on Monday, February 9th, given by Jared Spataro — Director, Enterprise Search, Microsoft. Let me say that I was impressed by the clarity of the messaging throughout the presentation. Focusing on the highlights, this piece includes many stand-alone soundbites and thought segments.

While FAST is best known for its search functions, its products are architected to serve as a data/content delivery platform. The following focus statement reflects this:

“Create experiences that combine the magic of software with the power of Internet services across a world of devices.”

“Search is the key to engaging information experiences across: Desktop, Enterprise, Online, Devices”. Note also that this list reflects the transitional history of Microsoft’s business focus.

“Turn information into business outcomes through engaging experiences:

• Visual — Help you identify patterns and discover new insights
• Conversational — Change how you interact with information, giving you better answers
• Actionable — Allow you to rapidly turn information into actions.”

Demos: Visual

Zooming in from large map of Yosemite National Park, a 2” thumbnail in high definition was magnified repeatedly to not only see the trees from the forest, but the branches as well.

Demos: Conversational

Here the focus was on content attributes and the ability to interactively leverage them to imply intent.

Using Kelly Blue Book data, a sea of very small car image thumbnails were displayed to represent all available cars, visually. Very quickly, attributes from the left column are selected to specify things like: body style, category, retail price, miles per gallon. The universe of images adjust (unrelated items disappear) as each attribute is selected. All at the RIA level, the feedback is immediate: Filtering on the fly. This dramatically changes the possibilities for interacting with content and data.

Getty Images (while what we were shown was not yet live, their home page is already very conversational): Via the search box, looked up “beach”. The results were disambiguated and presented in different perspectives (distinct “parts” across the page:

• Suggestions (tag cloud)
• Search For (drag tags as filters)
• Results (collection of visual images, thumbnails).

Moving tags to the filtering column quickly winnows the universe of possibilities. Jared noted that they are working on research where pictures are used as the attribute input, where an image could be used as a sample to find others like it. Much of this reminded me of features in Illustra in 1995, the first intranet-based platform we leveraged at MCI to create dynamic web pages from data (sans the browser capabilities available today).

Demos: Actionable

Seamless function where you don’t have to think through the attributes of the process in order to engage it.

Here the opportunity and value was demonstrated via the massive need for archiving images of newspaper pages. I see this as the replacement of microfilm and fische technology in libraries today. Full page thumbnails were returned with the section of the page highlighted where the relevant article is located on the page — taking the results not just to a particular page, but to the article as well — moving the individual closer to their desired goal.

Financial Times: A highly optimized FAST search results page looks like a portal with a variety of sections of focus. In the sample demonstrated, a search on “Obama” also included a graph across the top that showed the pattern of number of times Obama is mentioned in the content over time, which tracked in growth across the campaign. This offers a context of the whole of the results.

Globrix: Property search. Try this one out yourself. Note, this is not US-based. Type slowly and let the recommender show you options. Also see below the main search box there’s a selectable dropdown “Popular Searches” (in grey, so it blends into the page a bit).

Best Buy: Here the entire site is architected around search. In the main navigation, most of the dropdown selections execute a search to display the page results. The navigation and the experience is driven by search.

_  _  _  _  _  _  _  _

In reflecting over the past year, since the acquisition, Jared said, “When we acquired FAST it had the highest satisfied customers of all of our acquisitions. In this past year, since the acquisition, we’ve done more deals than FAST has ever done in its history in a single quarter. Very excited about the results.”

Strategy

• Increasing revenue on a company website
• Decreasing costs internally
• FAST ESP as the foundation

Plans for New Portfolio

Internet Business: Search as the anchor for monetizing assets online
Products: FAST Search for Internet Business and FAST Search for SharePoint Internet Sites

Business Productivity: Bring the power of high-end search to everyone
Products: FAST Search for SharePoint, FAST search for Internal Applications

Search Server: Express – Entry-level, Free download 100K (see banner)

FAST Search for SharePoint will include all of FAST ESP and SharePoint interoperatility (to be extended with capabilities like Social Computing, ECM, Business Intelligence and Collaboration).

The overriding philosophy for this release is: Microsoft Simplicity and Low Total Cost of Ownership.

• Simplicity and access to network of specialists
• Amplify the impact of knowledge and expertise
• Connect with Expertise
• Improve relevance with use (tagging, rating, click-thru’s serve as a vote)
• Use search as an entry point

Licensing for the new product will be similar to the current model: Queries per second, Data volume, and Permitted purpose.  However for existing SharePoint customers if you already have an Enterprise CAL agreement, you have everything other than the per server fee for the FAST instances. In this way customers get credit for their existing SharePoint investment.

While FAST Search for SharePoint will not be available until the next generally available release of Microsoft Office, current Enterprise CAL customers can leverage the pricing model to acquire the current ESP for SharePoint. There will not be a technical migration path in the transition to the final product. Effectively there is a licensing transition path, but not a technical transition path. ESP is not covered by existing software assurance agreements.

Web 1.0 gave us segmented capabilities: portals, search, content management. There is a need to combine these capabilities seamlessly — to avoid the need for extensive integration. Microsoft is placing a premium and pressures on interoperability across all product offerings. With SharePoint as a platform to build business productivity applications IT will begin to recognize and leverage the power and critical contribution search can provide to enterprises.

Conversely, there is much being done to get this capability in the hands of more people for a lower pricepoint, opening the way to move into smaller markets. In doing so Microsoft can grow their partner ecosystem further and make more customers successful. With these changes, search becomes new a ‘cottage industry’ for solutions.

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And So, It Begins: FASTforward ‘09

February 8, 2009 at 5:38 pm · Filed under FASTforward'09

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Come find the blogging team and say, “Hi”.

We’ve got a Tweetup in the works for Tuesday night. Join us after the reception.

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