Analysts: Enterprise 2.0 to Get Even More Affordable

November 3, 2008 at 9:25 pm · Filed under Blogging, Enterprise 2.0, Microsoft, SOA, SharePoint, Wikinomics, Wikis

One of the advantages Enterprise 2.0 approaches offer in many situations is the relatively low or incremental prices at which technology is made available to organizations. It looks like things will even get more affordable.

A recent report from Forrester Research predicts the Enterprise 2.0 market is about to see impending “price drops” on tools ranging from blogs to wikis to social networks. Forrester analysts cite three specific reasons for the price drops:

“Commoditization, bundling, and subsumption. Increased competition and slowing innovation means that there is less differentiation between blogging solutions. Further, many vendors, from Microsoft to Six Apart, now offer a complete, enterprise-oriented suites that bundle a mature set of essential tools, which drives down prices for individual tools and specialized solutions.”

The increasing ubiquity of SharePoint — which supports many Enterprise 2.0 features — also may help to drive down prices from many other vendors, Forrester predicts.

The only area that may see price increases is software for handling mashups, Forrester predicts. “IT departments will prioritize mashup technology as part of portal, business intelligence, and business process management software investments as well as a major component of SOA implementations.”

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The Sharepoint Sessions – Part Four – Upcoming Sharepoint Investment Areas

October 5, 2008 at 9:02 pm · Filed under Enterprise 2.0, SharePoint

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 will not try to bring in all features into the product.

She closed with the announcement that Office 14 will be out soon and a new release of Sharepoint will come out at this time as well. Office 2007 separated language from function. It works so well they will be doing it from Sharepoint in next release. There is a Sharepoint blog to follow the latest moves.

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The Sharepoint Sessions – Part Three – Sharepoint Best Practices Conference

October 3, 2008 at 1:39 pm · Filed under Enterprise 2.0, SharePoint

This is part three of my four part notes from a local event sponsored by Knowledge Management Associates, “Real World Sharepoint Experiences.” Tim Farrell and Marcel Meth gave a recap of the recent Sharepoint best practices conference. This event sold out quickly and I understand that Microsoft may offer them more frequently because of the popularity. Last year Microsoft sold over 1B$ (US) worth of Sharepoint. Here are the headlines for the event that they attended.

Tim and Marcel said that the walls are collapsing between intranets and extranets and this change is reflected in applications. In addition, virtualization is now supported through many vendors. There is a move for Sharepoint to support non-Windows browsers such a Linux (this would shift one of Sadie’s points in part one). At the conference there was some mention of Sharepoint online – it does exist.

Search with Sharepoint is improving. It is important to remember that Web search and intranet search are different. It takes a while to get it set up with manual adjustments to the thesaurus, rank ordering, etc. You need to create a consistent taxonomy and single version of the truth. Also, ensure the taxonomy can be updated and create content types – (e.g. artists, album, track).

Sharepoint workflow is not ready for prime time as it requires a lot of expertise to get it right. I think this will be a critical feature. My experience has been with Sharepoint that if you have a very skilled developer that they can do almost anything but it becomes expensive in terms of implementation costs.

Companies are finding that the My Sites profile pages are starting to be used creatively. This is not surprising given all the practice many people have with sites like Facebook. They also cautioned to not replace the network drive with Sharepoint as these tools serve different functions. Be sure to do capacity planning and get sufficient hardware.

Do not assume front office administration staff can manage Sharepoint. It requires more IT skills than are usually found there. Devote the same time to training as you do to building Sharepoint. This is consistent with the Pam Conway’s session.

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The Sharepoint Sessions – Part Two – Training Approaches

October 3, 2008 at 1:36 pm · Filed under Enterprise 2.0, SharePoint

This is part two of my four part notes from a local event sponsored by Knowledge Management Associates, “Real World Sharepoint Experiences.” Pam Conway from Compuworks spoke on “Training Approaches to Drive Sharepoint Adoption.” Pam began her session by noting that acquiring skills is only one part of training. You also need to inform users on the why they should use the tool. There is a sales component here. You also need to build connections between users so they can help each other and reassure users there is real value to the tool.

Sharepoint is an application that needs training. As Sadie mentioned in the first session, most obstacles are change management issues, new workflow, new policies, cultural change, and the shift to tighter collaboration. You need to show how current problems are solved by Sharepoint – users will feel excited if they feel their problems are being addressed. Your training plan should cover all the features of training above. It should be business role based training, not tool based training. Sharepoint provides an e-learning add-on. You can use it as a supplement to custom ILT. It is also necessary to provide documentation in the form of custom job aids, quick reference cards that are role based.

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The Sharepoint Sessions – Part One – Dispatches from the Front Lines

October 1, 2008 at 7:30 am · Filed under Enterprise 2.0, SharePoint

I recently attended a local event sponsored by Knowledge Management Associates, “Real World Sharepoint Experiences.” Having been through a few of these myself in the past, I wanted to see the latest thinking on what it is likely the largest platform for enterprise 2.0 in terms of users. Last year Microsoft sold over 1B$ (US) of Sharepoint. Some may argue whether Sharepoint is really enterprise 2.0 but that is their goal and they are increasingly moving in this direction.

This is the first of four posts on the event. The session was led by Sadie Van Buren of KMA, who also writes the blog, A Matter of Degree. Here is a related post from her blog, Eleven ways to make your SharePoint implementation more user-friendly. The session, Dispatches from the Front Lines, drew on 19 Sharepoint implementations that Sadie has been involved with and on feedback from these clients. They are mainly small to mid size businesses.

First – what Sharepoint is: A Swiss Army knife – best of breed solutions are available but they have a more limited range. In addition, it is a development platform – not an out of the box application. It is also securable, provides personalization, is email-enabled, and integrated with MS Office

Second – Sharepoint is not (except with work arounds) relational, transactional, anonymous (everything tagged), or Blackberry friendly. It is also not a cross-browser platform – not Firefox and Safari friendly. There is no rating ability and no granular backed up at this point.

Sadie found the frequent starting points for clients were team collaboration and intranet management. Some clients use blogs, wikis and social bookmarking because they are baked in but these tools are not a starting point. Sharepoint is seen as more effective than other tools for team collaboration but less for wikis and blogs

The main challenges for Sharepoint success are cultural: the clean up of existing files is too steep; there is not a culture of sharing (people see their work outputs as their own and not the company’s); management wants change but will not hire for it; they underestimate the need for change management, there is no governance established, unplanned demands are placed on IT, the organization strategy is not aligned with the intranet. I have seen all of the above myself. There are some technology challenges with multiple versions of hardware and software but cultural challenges are biggest.

Some success factors include: the need to obtain executive buy-in and sponsorship, the need to develop useful applications, the need to not call systems by the tool name, as well as the need to create community and provide training and support. All of these are often underestimated or overlooked.

Microsoft announced at the Enterprise 2.0 conference its integration capabilities with a number of best of breed applications by third parties such as Connectbeam and Worklight. Sadie said that in her experience clients are not asking for this best in breed integration. They do not seem ready for it. But remember these are mostly small to midsize businesses. I think the large enterprises will be the more likely drivers of this integration.

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