There was a lot of discussion in the recent Enterprise 2.0 Conference posts by Bill Ives, Jevon MacDonald, and Jon Husband around issues in the deployment and management of the technology platforms for emergent 2.0 practices. As you know, we have always held that Search (the S in Andy McAfee’s SLATES model for E20) is the core “glue” in these platforms, pulling together concepts and people across the silos of project wikis, individual blogs, TownSquare-type enterprise Facebook projects, etc. Search becomes a core facility for knowing what you know as a firm and as an individual, and for keeping found things found and learned lessons learned.
As part of Microsoft, FAST is now working with the SharePoint team to help enable the growing base of 85 million Microsoft Office SharePoint Server licensees to integrate advanced search and discovery capabilities into their collaborative environments, including, of course, the SharePoint E20 applications.
It’s been around 45 days since Microsoft completed the acquisition of FAST, and now we are publishing tools to deliver interoperability between FAST ESP and Microsoft SharePoint Server in an open process. Today we posted a set of open downloadable FAST search Web Parts on CodePlex, Microsoft’s open source project hosting site for the developer community. See more about the details at the Microsoft Enterprise Search Blog or check out the SharePoint Team Blog.
These Web Parts are available as a free download and provide discrete pluggable services for such functions as including an advanced FAST ESP search box in any SharePoint project and for creating conversational results displays that allow SharePoint users to refine searches through navigating dynamic clusters of content. SharePoint administrators will be able to build FAST ESP-based search sites inside SharePoint Server 2007 by simply dropping in and configuring the appropriate components.
The Web Parts and Site Template are available as a free download from CodePlex at www.codeplex.com/espwebparts and are part of the Search Community Toolkit.
Look for the features, functionality and range of FAST ESP Web Parts to grow through contributions from the search developer community as well as further contributions from the Microsoft Enterprise Search Group.
Notwithstanding the points raised in recent and past posts about hesitation, resistance and other various challenges to E2.0 implementation and adoption as organizations circle it like a group of neighbourhood dogs nervously eyeing and sniffing a porcupine, it seems clear that eventually organizations will have to realize that the tools and services that comprise what we call Enterprise 2.0 are tools and services that address in fundamental ways how people do knowledge work.
It’s that simple … to do much of what we call knowledge work (other than filling in boxes on forms) people need to connect, talk, listen, point to sources and noodle together over ideas and new information. They look, in conversations, for ways to stitch information and knowledge together so that it becomes useful. That’s what humans have always done .. it’s only in the last 100 years or so that we have had the sequential arranging and measurement of tasks and highly-structured division of labour that we have understood as work during most of this lifetime. As Bill Ives points out in the previous post, things are changing, and (relatively) fast, even though I am fond of the phrase "it takes a long time for change to happen quickly" (think about that for a second).
One more piece of evidence that "organizations will have to realize …" is the recent announcement that Microsoft is testing, and may offer the corporate market, a Facebook-like application called TownSquare, a business-user-focused social networking application.. Whether one think Microsoft is the answer to E2.0 for their organization or not is not the point here … the point is that most or all of the large vendors are now adding features and functionality (or acquiring them) such that the platforms being used to support the work of knowledge workers will have been substantially re-tooled before another 5 years passes. And that re-tooling will consist largely of social computing capabilities.
Office Labs – an incubator within Microsoft testing business-focused technologies that may or may not end up part of future Microsoft products — is showing off this week yet another of its ideas.
The latest, known as “TownSquare,” is a business-user-focused social-networking tool. According to Computerworld, Microsoft will demo the new offering at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston on June 12.
TownSquare, via a layout similar to Facebook’s, provides internal company information, ranging from promotions and anniversaries, to a list of shared-document modifications pertinent to individual users.
TownSquare was launched inside Microsoft in January, according to the aforementioned report, and has been test driven by 8,000 Microsoft employees so far.
Microsoft has been stepping up its work on a number of other social-networking-related projects throughout the company. At its TechFest research fair earlier this year, Microsoft officials showed off a FriendFeed-like aggregation tool, codenamed C2, which is likely to find its way into Windows Live for Mobile some time in the relatively near future. And earlier this week, Microsoft rolled out a test build of a SharePoint Server plug-in for producing/managing podcasts.
I’m happy to report that Microsoft has filed with the Oslo Stock Exchange announcing that it is closing its tender offer for FAST shares (see Zia’s post back in January about the initial offer). The filing states that it has acquired 97.37% of the shares of the company. This means that FAST is now part of Microsoft, with the new designation: FAST, A Microsoft® Subsidiary.
The net of this is that the FAST team moves intact into a much-expanded Microsoft Enterprise Search Group (MESG, for those collecting new acronyms). We are particularly excited about the charter for this new group, which is to invest to be the industry leader developing the most innovative technologies for the widest range of customers and greatly expanding what has traditionally been viewed as the “search space.”
This direction is one that long-time analysts of the search space (myself included) have pointed to as the most likely development as search becomes more and more central to all of our online activities. We are still just at the beginning of the changes we see coming, which we see accelerating on the foundation of three core elements of the Microsoft search vision:
Search will be everywhere.
Search will enable unique user experiences.
Search will change the way people do business.
I wanted to share with FASTforward Blog readers what Kirk Koenigsbauer, Microsoft Sharepoint General Manager and the business executive behind the acquisition had to say today on Microsoft’s Enterprise Search blog. Kirk’s post:
FAST Tender Offer Complete!
Well, it has been a while since I last posted – but for good reason. Aside from our usual day-to-day efforts to deliver great enterprise search solutions for our customers, we’ve also been feverishly working on the acquisition of FAST Search & Transfer that we originally announced on January 8. Today, I’m excited to share that the tender offer is complete!
As I mentioned in January, FAST has an incredibly talented team of folks who bring great customer focus and tremendous expertise in the category – more than 60% of their people are engineers and close to 50 of them have PhDs in relevant fields. One of their true visionaries, John Markus Lervik, who has been FAST CEO, will transition to become Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President of Enterprise Search. John’s leadership will have an immediate impact on the development across our comprehensive portfolio of enterprise search offerings – including Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express , search for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and FAST ESP – and will result in the future delivery of a single enterprise search platform. I’m thrilled to welcome our new team members on board and am eager for them to get started!
By bringing together our two companies, customers will no longer have to compromise when evaluating the enterprise search solution that’s best for them. We can now meet all their needs no matter how basic or complex: Search Server Express available as a free download; SharePoint offers search integrated with other business productivity tools; and for those with highly sophisticated needs, FAST ESP provides best-in-class capabilities for the most demanding search applications in both internal and customer-facing scenarios. And, you can be assured that with our expanded team in place, we’ll be in an even better position to continue innovation across all three products, including FAST ESP on Linux and UNIX.
Speaking of Linux and UNIX, some people may be (mis)interpreting our continued support and investment in these platforms as a broader change for Microsoft – so here’s some color. We’re making a pragmatic decision to continue to delight a core part of FAST’s customer base that has chosen the Linux/UNIX OS. You can bet that we’ll innovate on Windows, too, and over time we hope customers will see .NET as a preferred platform choice.
Net, our approach doesn’t imply any kind of broader change for our company in its strategy (so conspiracy theorists can stand down ) and you shouldn’t expect to see SharePoint running on UNIX. We’re making a business decision for enterprise search and feel great about what it means for our FAST search customers.
Getting to this point has been quite a journey, but the most exciting part about it for me is that we are only just getting started. Whether it’s ensuring customers continue to get great service from the people and support teams they know or building on the span of our product portfolio, I’m confident that the combination of Microsoft and FAST will serve customers’ needs more broadly and help make enterprise search become a truly ubiquitous tool that is central to how workers find and use information.
I look forward to sharing more with you as the journey continues.
Kirk Koenigsbauer
General Manager,
SharePoint Business Group
I recently completed work on a survey report for Evans Data measuring the impact and trends shaping Web 2.0 projects within the enterprise.
The survey of 385 corporate managers and developers covered Web 2.0-based development mechanisms — such as mashups and gadgets/widgets — as well as social networking tools. Both types of environments are now very much a part of the corporate scene, and have become important tools for corporate applications, the survey finds.
Demand for Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 talent is hot, as a matter of fact. Two out of three respondents say their demand for such talent will increase over the coming year. That’s because there is a lot of strategic business-to-business and internal business development going on by software developers in the survey. Developers are working on Web 2.0 software for business applications in several areas, including interface design, gadgets and widgets, and social networking.
Most Web 2.0 applications are being targeted at internal corporate requirements, versus consumer engagements. Close to half of the survey participants are focused on developing applications for internal use inside their companies. Less than a third are building Web 2.0 applications intended for delivery on a subscription base to online users.
Forty percent of interfaces for Web 2.0 applications are “mixed” web-rich clients that include AJAX for fast downloads of pages that include live feeds of data (gadgets) and other dynamic components found in Web 2.0 applications. An overwhelming majority of respondents are using gadgets and widgets (portable Web parts) from Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! and others to deploy fast, lightweight business applications and services.
More than four out of ten companies encourage social networking; however, most feel the business value still needs to be demonstrated at this time. Social networking is strongest among developers in scientific and technical fields, who see social networking as a communications and collaboration medium, and among OEMs and systems integrators, who see benefits in product delivery.
… is that the contributors to this blog have for the past nine months or more been analyzing and opining upon the issues about Enterprise 2.0 takeup and implementation that are highlighted by this article in today’s ZDNet by Dennis Howlett.
Notwithstanding a substantial amount over the past two years of online and offline "press" about the Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 phenomena and the increasingly participative and interactive online environment (first for consumers and now increasingly apparent as "the" future for the workplace), decision-making about enterprise software in general continues to warily circle the issues involved with implementing community-based collaboration or more broadly defined, "social computing".
You’ll note that in the article (excerpt below) Dennis checks in with FASTForward’s Jevon Macdonald, who is of the opinion that Microsoft Sharepoint may well be the safe, "default" implementation of choice. Certainly Sharepoint has developed some key alliances over the past year that seem designed to support that point of view.
Here’s a You Tube video (also featured in Dennis’ article .. thanks for the pointer, Dennis) that presents a wide range of views on the question "Enterprise 2.0 - Hype or Happening?"
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Enterprise 2.0 – Hype or Happening ?
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In the ZDNet article Dennis (and Jevon) make a key point about value propositions. That said, getting an enterprise IT shop to listen seriously to the value proposition of a small startup is a key challenge in and of itself, regardless of how good it is.
I also believe (even after a decade or more of general agreement that functional stovepipes and silos are not helpful) that a large number of enterprises do not really know how to come to grips with regular and continuous flows of information across functional boundaries and throughout the organization. And it’s quite likely they won’t be able to come to grips with using such flows effectively (in any practical sense) until the architecture of their IT systems enables it and supports it, and the management learns, and practices with, using these flows to feed effective collaboration.
…as you know it. Right now I’m falling over startup vendors vying for attention in the so-called ’social software’ space. The fact enterprise people hate the term doesn’t seem to bother those who are bypassing IT as they sell into the marketing departments of companies at departmental budget prices. But there is a battle brewing on two fronts.
First, we have the mega vendors who think they ‘own’ the enterprise but have little clue what they’re doing when it comes to providing community style collaborative software. As Barry Libert, chairman of Mzinga said to me: “Does Microsoft have a relationship with me? Do any of the ‘monster’ vendors?” Second, we have the startups who are largely making their money by selling social media style solutions to marketers. While the two solution sets may look the same from the outside, they are being bought in fundamentally different ways and are setting up a tension that today is barely felt but which will have a disruptive effect on the software buying patterns of the future.
It is particularly appropriate that Phil Wainewright has penned an article dubbed Enter the socialprise as this plays directly to the themes I am currently exploring.
He says:
But enterprise computing is still designed for the old, stovepipe model in which every transaction took place within the same firm. There’s no connection with the social automation that’s happening between individuals.
[ Snip ... ]
I then spoke to another Irregular, Jevon MacDonald who has been working in the so-called Enterprise 2.0 (aka socialprise) space for some time. He said that where the startups fail but where the incumbents succeed is in identifying a specific value proposition within specific industries.
His view is that Sharepoint will be a ‘big winner in the next five years.’ If the amount of noise being made by Microsoft is indicative, then it should be a winner. But…he also says: “Sharepoint deployments are horrendous and I really don’t know why people put up with them.”
Join us for the Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2011 Oct 3-6, Anaheim CA
With over 240 sessions, SPC11 will provide you with the training, insight, and networking you need to develop, deploy, govern and get the most from SharePoint. You’ll also hear from Microsoft Engineers, Product Managers, MCMs and MVPs who will discuss topics such as cloud services, best practices and real world project insights. To see a preview of the sessions we will be presenting at SPC11, click here.
To register, click here.
RECENT EVENT
Christian Finn Keynotes 2011 Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston
Microsoft's Director of SharePoint Product Management Christian Finn, an Enterprise 2.0 keynote speaker, talks about SharePoint, the future of enterprise collaboration and the value of community.
To read more, visit, CMS Wire
Or view the video of the keynote below:
SharePoint 2010 SocialFest
A group of seven startups recently joined us at SharePoint 2010 SocialFest, an event hosted by the Emerging Business Team at the Microsoft Silicon Valley Campus.
The format: a week-long session focused on extending the SharePoint platform using their unique and innovative applications in the emerging social business space. In addition to intensive development time, the teams heard from various developer experts, SharePoint engineering, SharePoint product management and a panel of nventure investors.
The FASTforward blog periodically hosts webcasts - to hear a recent conversation with Denise Warren, general manager of NYTimes.com, and Alan Webber, author of "Rules of Thumb" and co-founder of Fast Company. The topic: how today's newspaper and magazine publishing companies are innovating to stay relevant (and profitable) click here.For the latest interview with Marty St.George, the CMO at jetBlue, click here
FASTforward 09: Video Interviews
Be sure not to miss our interview series with several dozen attendees of FASTforward'09, including all the contributors to this blog, as well as Clay Shirky, Charlene Li, and many other notable thinkers and doers. The interviews are tagged and can be accessed by topic.
Check out the first of a series of guides to the 2.0 world from the contributors of the FASTforward Blog. This and future FASTforward Blog guides aim to deepen understanding about topics we think critical to the future of the enterprise and how people and organizations communicate, collaborate, innovate, and more.
In this guide, Robert Paterson weaves together the many posts that have been written on the FASTforward blog about Twitter, the groundbreaking application that has attracted millions of users and is changing the way they provide, gather, and share information and insights.
This site is a companion blog to the FASTforward conference and summit series and is sponsored by FAST, A Microsoft Subsidiary. The blog, like the conference series, aims to drive and deepen conversation about how today’s companies can use technology to place users in control of information, and is home to ongoing discussion about the user revolution and Enterprise 2.0 opportunities and challenges. More info here...
