Content Log

How Web 2.0 will change the face of business

2008-07-03T22:58:53+01:00

The following is an article that I wrote recently for a magazine...I'm sure the marketing team will shorten it.:-) Feedback welcome...unless of course you are posting a URL to cheap watches.

Speaking to the IT architects of multi-national corporation about their plans around using Web 2.0 in enterprises from the largest oil and pharmaceutical companies to global banking and accounting firm, it is clear that most, but not all, have plans and intentions to use the new technologies that have changed the way we use the internet. Forrester predicts that by 2013, social software, the application of Web 2.0 for the enterprise, will grow at an annual rate of 43% per year to $4.5B by 2013. This is quickly becoming the fastest growing sector in the Enterprise software industry. However, many people are generally confused by what Web 2.0 is and it's significance in the workplace and in culture, including those planning to adopt it. The term has been for around four years old now and was coined by technology gurus Tim O'Reilly and John Battelle to describe the resurgence in activity, venture capital and huge audiences that surrounded new emerging web sites. However, in that time, there is no concise definition of what Web 2.0 is.

Web 2.0 is explained more by example than by defining the technologies that make it up. A collection of brands provide the metaphors for what exactly is different in the way we use new web technologies, such as Google for search, YouTube for video, Flickr for photos, MySpace and Facebook for social networking and Wikipedia for wikis. There are a few more examples and there may be new sites, like Twitter, that may expand our understanding of Web 2.0, but we are coming close to a complete list. These brands as metaphors become the nouns and verbs of describing Web 2.0 as a new way of socializing, communicating and sharing with each other in huge, consumer-scale markets. By being the first to create critical mass in the internet space, these brands have been able to define the way we will live and the way we will work. After all, it wasn't really a PC until IBM named their desktop computer a Personal Computer.

However, Web 2.0 is not really so much a revolution in technology, but in how people use technology and how people interact with each other as a result of that technology. The amazing technological innovations have really been happening behind the scenes with the huge build out of inter-networking and creation of new scalability technologies through open source. The open source sharing of code used to build these sites have made it possible to build and manage the sites on a modest budget and deliver incredible new content and services to absolutely anyone with great performance. This in turn has allowed a whole new class of people have come to use technology that wouldn't have had access to it before. Now even your granny was connected to the internet. The internet and desktop technology was no longer the domain of the geeks and nerds. Real people, average people, artistic people, old people, young people were connecting to the internet and discovering each other. The web sites, in turn, were reacting and evolving a very rapid rate to adapt to these new users. Sites that appealed to these new users grew out of a Darwinian natural selection and became a lot more facile and adaptable in the process and very large and profitable.

As a result of the introduction of the internet, rapid infrastructure build-out and the new generation of Web 2.0 sites, we have seen one of the most dramatic democratizations of technology since at least the PC, if not the telephone. Through universal access, users discovered that computers could be used for far more than information; that they could be used as a medium of expression, sharing and revelation. Although the PC gave access to computing power to most office workers and many home users, it was generally within the constraints of software created by others using information created by others in business domains defined by others. The information that users created and shared tended to be very textual, columnar, organized and very factual. If you wanted to liven this information up at all, you would add in a few sappy clip art pictures to express what you were really trying to say. In short, it was an environment that was invented by geeks and nerds (like me!) and generally appealed to similar personality types.

By broadening access to information and technology and broadening the types of users accessing that information, new and more expressive types of people looked for ways to use the technology that suited their personality. Users voted with their mouse for sites that appealed to their personal sense of expression. If you were musical, visual, artistic, auditory, adventurous, sympathetic or caring, you could share art, prose, music, visuals or images with those who shared your interest, rather than a production studio in the State of Washington. The place that these people met were generally at sites that catered to introducing one friend to another - first Friendster, then MySpace and slightly more recently Facebook. Depending on your mode of expression, you may end up going to Flickr for photos, YouTube for video, or Last.fm for music and then linking it all into your personal page on your favorite social networking site. The socialization and communication enjoyed by this expression and sharing created a truly different feeling that no spreadsheet or presentation could ever possibly provide. You were Flickring, YouTubing, Googling, Twittering on your MySpace or Facebook, sites that almost have a feel like a real geographic location. For many people, these activities have become compulsive and addictive in the process. This is why the average age of television watchers in the US has now risen to 50 years old and a new generation of users will not be willing to go back.

These compelling experiences have attracted huge numbers of people, which in turn makes the experience even more compelling in a positive feedback loop. Just as in any revolution, once critical mass is achieved, the revolution takes on its own momentum and is self-adapting. A critical mass of people were dictating what is interesting and what is not. What is acceptable is far more likely to be those sites and capabilities that minimize constraints and empower people. Those that put constraints on reasonable behavior were quickly discarded. Sites that allowed individuals to write, like WordPress blogs, to edit, like Wikipedia, or to tag interesting content, like Digg, rose quickly up the internet charts of popularity. Once Facebook removed restrictions on who could join or who your friends could, it quickly grew exponentially to over 60 million users. Web 2.0 became a very democratic revolution with core principles of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly on the internet. The notions of controls are not determined by central authorities, but by the users themselves in terms of their access to the site.

By lowering the barriers to participation, this provides platforms for anyone to contribute to a site like Wikipedia or YouTube. Actual active contribution of content can be a relatively small number, less than 1% of all users according to an article in Time on the 25th April 2007 and much lower for YouTube, but as high as 4.5% for Wikipedia visitors. However with a critical mass of large numbers of people, this can still represent hundreds of thousands of authors and contributors. It also doesn't take into account social networking sites where everyone is a contributor by simply creating their home page and being compelled to enhance and adorn it in response to their friends doing the same thing. I have seen several large corporation that have skills or profile pages for their users, but even senior executives may be more likely to update their Facebook or LinkedIn profiles than their corporate skills page. In addition, this doesn't include what might be the most powerful aspect of this participation - feedback of the masses. Many people comment on blogs when they feel passionate about a particular subject and are more likely to rate information provided such as reviews or products available on-line. In a world swamped in information, feedback on popularity and rating, hallmarks of Web 2.0 sites, provides a valuable indicator of what is important and what are leading trends.

Dubbed "Wisdom of the Crowds" by James Surowiecki in 2004, a mass of individuals on average is smarter than anyone person or expert could ever be. At some point excesses of disclosure and impropriety go off in their own direction and those seeking refuge of appropriateness find it in communities of like minded people. Those looking for accurate or appropriate information just move off to more appropriate communities. This provides the feedback loop of control through democracy of participation. Wikipedia is a good example of this as it has demonstrated that it can be just as accurate as encyclopedia Britannica, but much faster at correcting mistakes. "Lord of the Rings" provided feedback to the community on their website on how the story was evolving prior to filming and ultimately became one of the most popular series of films. The "Da Vinci Code" kept everything secret and, despite the popularity of the book, did not fare well in the box office.

Michael Lynch, CEO of Autonomy, suggested in Financial Times on the 30th of June, that Web 2.0 was something that must be tamed. Perhaps this is missing the point. Web 2.0 is not anarchic nor is it necessarily bad for business. Web 2.0 To try to control Web 2.0 is like trying to put one's finger in the dyke. It is happening and there is nothing that business can do to prevent it. In fact, when companies try to restrict access to Web 2.0 they either find that the roadblocks have been circumscribed or that potential employees will go elsewhere. Generation Y, the generation born between 1978 and now, is expected to grow from 25% of the US workforce to 47% by 2014. This is a generation that has only known the empowerment of the internet and have become accustomed to their vote counting. To try and control it now would only disenfranchise them. To empower them would yield not only an optimistic workforce, but also provide an engaging conversation between employees, their customers and their partners in a participatory and enlightened collaboration. In addition, my generation, the Baby Boomers, are starting to retire now, taking with them some of the most valuable knowledge ever accumulated in some of the biggest numbers ever. Knowledge management programs over the last two decades have failed to capture that knowledge, is Web 2.0 our last hope of retaining it? Interestingly, the Time article suggests that those over 35 are more likely to contribute content to Web 2.0 sites, so this may be an indicator that older generations want to contribute their knowledge from experience and are willing to do this through Web 2.0.

Software vendors are now jumping on the bandwagon with social software and collaborative features smelling a bit opportunity. Many are repackaged capabilities from another era of enterprise software. Some are looking at their portfolios and asking whether this is what they were doing all along. This misses the point. Web 2.0 has so far outstripped enterprise software as we know it in usability, accessibility and empowerment, that it causes mass rolling of eyeballs at its mere sight of not just the new generation, but most others as well. Those who are familiar with the ease of use and empowerment of Web 2.0 sites like YouTube, Wikipedia and Facebook are aware of what is possible and have much higher expectations. I believe that the enterprise software vendors will get there, but with much coaxing and coaching of a new generation. It will take a few years, but eventually they will figure out that Web 2.0 is not just a few new collaboration features and highly interactive web technologies, but empowerment of their users and the ability to draw in a critical mass of users from outside the trusted circle.

Enterprise systems won't change immediately, but it will probably change faster than people expect. Care should be taken in what is opened up. However, rather than treating Web 2.0 content and technology suspiciously, corporations should ring fence the information that must be controlled and open up the rest to participation. At the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston this June, Pfizer presented how they were using open source technology to enable Web 2.0 collaboration. This is a brave move in the highly regulated world of pharmaceuticals, but they have recognized clear boundaries of what must be regulated in content, particularly in manufacturing and research practices and what can be opened up, such as redefining process or identifying new potential areas of research. The scenarios of "Doctor 2.0" are available on the internet, but they have created a vision and a reality that uses the same technology as Wikipedia to create Pfizerpedia, a wiki of process and ideas that feed into the main areas of research and manufacturing.

Change in the Enterprise is more likely to come from outside as well. In all likelihood, if you are information worker, you use Google more than any of your internal IT systems. You may even rely on blogs to track what is happening in your industry more than you rely on industry press. You and your co-workers are likely to use these and other Web 2.0 technologies to track what is happening in your business world as well as your social world. These web sites will set further expectations on the internal systems you use and a requirement to integrate internal information with these external sources of information. Web 2.0 has an answer for this as well with an integration technique known as "mash up", the ability mix information from multiple sources using the web browser itself as the point of integration. These external sources of information also provide something that our internal information systems could never provide, a critical mass of opinion utilizing the Wisdom of the Crowds. We will ultimately need to combine external opinion with our internal opinion to get more accurate predictive decision making with our own unique insights inside the enterprise.

Ultimately, the most profound effect Web 2.0 will have is on the way we do business rather than just the technology we use. Employees will use this freedom of speech to provide valuable and fearless feedback for the business. Employees will have the freedom to assemble teams with customers without interference. Customers will become part of the decision making process and allow us to design the most imaginative products and services. Control will be limited those areas that ultimately must have control and free up the creative process to speed and enhance business. Empowered employees will build more productive businesses and become more fulfilled participants in the business. With any opportunity comes risk and embracing Web 2.0 is not without its risks. However, smart businesses can already see the opportunities and are willing to take those risks.

50/50 chance that ice will disappear from the North Pole this summer

2008-06-27T13:58:49+01:00

Extent of polar ice at the end of Summer 2007 - far less than three decades ago

Tree Hugger reports that scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, CO have an informal betting pool that ice will melt away from the geographic north pole by the end of this summer. I saw the above image in a Ted Talk given my Al Gore recently, which made me nervous. I'm no climate specialist, but if the potential for a melting away to the north pole is true, I can't imagine this not having consequences on world weather patterns.

Adobe embeds Alfresco Repository

2008-06-17T23:04:17+01:00

It's been quite a while in the making, but I am very pleased with the news today that Adobe will be embedding Alfresco technology as part of its LiveCycle Suite. A while ago, I wrote a blog about embeddable content repositories. It was clear then and more clear now that the old generation of content repositories is not really designed to be embedded as part of content-oriented applications. Yet, we all know that there is more information in content than there is in databases. Why can't applications use a set of services for managing content the way they manage data in embedded databases?

On this particular news, ComputerWorld reports Raja Hammond, Group Manager for Adobe LiveCycle, as saying, "Alfresco has a fantastic lightweight installation. It is J2EE server-based, so it is very much aligned with our architecture. We're able with this release to totally embed it. We've done extensive customization to the UIs to add additional capabilities to them. We've integrated them tightly with the various solution components within LiveCycle."

At InfoWorld, Brian Wick, Director of Product Marketing at Adobe said, "It's much easier, much quicker for our customers to build LiveCycle apps with the content services piece built in." This should be the sentiment of any product manager whose product handles content. This clearly the case of LiveCycle which handles potentially huge numbers of PDFs and forms.

Over at CMS Watch, Alan Pelz-Sharpe, a long-time ECM observer, blogged on the announcement that, "It's been a while since there was a big product announcement in the ECM world, but today's announcement by Adobe that they will be embedding Alfresco into their LiveCycle Enterprise Suite will doubtless garner a few headlines. Alfresco, the UK-based open source ECM company, has certainly done a great job of marketing themselves since their launch a couple of years back, stealing some limelight from more established and much bigger vendors such as Interwoven, Vignette, and OpenText. The question we have to ask is whether this announcement is another marketing triumph, or whether it suggests something more substantial. First off is the fact that it is a real OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) deal, and the technology will actually get embedded into the Adobe offering, so it is more than simply a paper partnership."

It is also significant that the Alfresco platform is open source. Open source allowed Adobe and our dozens of other OEMs to try out Alfresco before even approaching us. Open source also provides a level of comfort and confidence in a platform for services like content services and content repository. It is much better than providing code in escrow. it actually provides a community as well to ensure the long-term success of the platform.

We look forward to a fruitful and simbiotic relationship with Adobe. We believe that this is the beginning of looking at content management as a peer of database management of an essential component of any enterprise-class application. Congratulations to Adobe on all the hard work and the new release.

Impressions of Enterprise 2.0 in Boston

2008-06-15T22:33:18+01:00

Boston at five in the morning before I had to take off on Friday.

This past week, I was on a panel at Enterprise 2.0 in Boston with Bob Bickel of Ringside Networks and Jeff Whatcott of Acquia, the commercializer of Drupal. The topic was open source options for delivering an Enterprise 2.0 Experience. Both Bob and Jeff are excellent speakers and bring a wealth of experience behind new companies. I think that Kathleen Reidy at the 451 Group did a very good job of covering the panel, so I will move on to my impressions of the conference.

On the panel, we spent much more time talking about open source and less about Enterprise 2.0. However, this doesn't mean that there was a lot of clarity on the meaning of the term Enterprise 2.0 at the conference. Although Web 2.0 had no less than Tim O'Reilly and John Battelle to define what that term means (barely), Enterprise 2.0 has no such authority. Consensus says that it is just Web 2.0 for the enterprise. However, researching the concept a couple of years ago, E2.0 is about taking the social aspects of Web 2.0, collaboration, social networks, user contribution, wisdom of crowds and social tagging and voting and applying it to information, documents and content in the enterprise. There are no fixed patterns for how to do this, although popular Web 2.0 sites, such as Facebook, Google Maps, Digg, YouTube and Wikipedia, provide at least paradigms for how these can be accomplished in the enterprise. It is very difficult to describe Enterprise 2.0 without drawing analogies to these web properties.

On Wikipedia, the topic "Enterprise 2.0" redirects to Enterprise Social Software. In August 2007, a "Ruud Koot" permanently redirected it from Enterprise 2.0. The last direct version of an Enterprise 2.0 article in Wikipedia extolls an Alan Wurms as the person who apparently coined the term in 2001. That is the power of Wikipedia, it can get rid of the rubbish. Most people's problem with the term is that it does not describe what it does and it sounds like it is just riding on the tailcoat of the Web 2.0 phenomenon. Is this really a new version of the Enterprise? I sat in a session with Carl Frappaolo where he equated Enterprise 2.0 with the evolution of Knowledge Management, but made the point that enterprises have not fundamentally changed as a result.

Some people believe that Enterprise 2.0, like Web 2.0, must be delivered as a whole hosted platform on the internet in order to be Enterprise 2.0. For some people this is absolutely true, but a majority still look to keep this information under enterprise control for bandwidth and security reasons. The majority of vendors in the exhibit area provided Software as a Service solutions. Most likely they used open source in creating those solutions.

I apparently missed the highlight of the show, which actually occurred on Monday before the opening. This was a shoot out between Microsoft SharePoint and IBM's counter to SharePoint, Connections. As an IBM product manager at the IBM booth said, "We don't fuck up demos." Everyone seemed to agree with him. Poor Lawrence Liu of Microsoft was not so lucky. The Microsoft demo did not have the business process coherence in which IBM is very well versed. There was a lot of hand-waving about how various Enterprise 2.0 features were supplied by partners. The performance issues that Lawrence faced may very well be related to the terrible internet connectivity provided by the Westin Hotel. Imagine an Enterprise 2.0 conference where no one is connected. Both companies are talking more about Social Software, Social Computing and Social Networking more than Enterprise 2.0, so my feeling is that this emerging market will be named more along those lines rather than E2.0.

Peter Fields of Wachovia

There were three customer presentations on their usage of Enterprise 2.0 and these present probably the best understanding of what these collections of technologies are, what they are trying to accomplish and what market is forming as a result. Despite the fact that he was using Microsoft SharePoint, I really liked the presentation from Peter Fields of Wachovia. Peter seems to think about the business problems and technology solutions the way I do. (Or probably the other way around.) He described the need to empower employees as a way of tapping into the intuitive sense of employees and he is the only other person I have ever seen that has uses Myers-Briggs to describe this paradigm shift. In a session just before, I got shot down in flames for daring to suggest that the change in enterprise software is the result of shifting demographics and a new, incoming generation of worker - the Millennials. Here Peter was backing it up with data that suggests that in less that five years, this generation will move from 25% of the working population of the US to 41% of the working population. He discussed an imperative that I had not really considered as well, which is that the baby boomers are retiring and this will represent the single largest loss of implicit knowledge in industrial society. Enterprises MUST facilitate capturing what the baby boomers know now and lower the barriers dramatically toward capturing that information.

Simon Revell from Pfizer

Peter is roughly my age, but Simon Revell from Pfizer, who looks a lot younger, presented a view of what the new generation wants - seemingly both Generation X and Generation Y. Pfizer has created a couple of sets of slides describing life in a networked world. Pfizer does use the 2.0 word and even describes a "Doctor 2.0" as a female researcher who also seems to spend a lot of time on Facebook. But rather than trivializing what that means, Simon presented a set of tools that Pfizer is using (open source by the way) that allow researchers to collaborate. Pfizerpedia is a mediawiki implementation modeled on Wikipedia and used as a single instance. Its primary purpose is to capture best practice in an informal way, which Pfizer codifies and controls after the process is discovered or developed. The result is actually a knowledge base of information that can be used for many other purposes. My sense has been that wikis that are single, highly interconnected instances rather than many team or project wikis. Bob talks about one wiki, Peter is hoping for 10,000 wikis. My take is that we need two words for what is now described as a wiki.

I wish I could have seen more the conference, although many of the break out sessions didn't add a lot. The subject of wikis and blogs have been covered better at Web 2.0 conferences. Some of the sessions on community didn't really say anything at all. Neither did a session by Mark Woollen from Oracle CRM. Mark is a good speaker and there was some good content at the end. Too bad that the beginning didn't say much except that social networking will probably be important in the future.

The direction that Oracle's Mark Woollen's presentation took

Enterprise 2.0 is not just about wikis, blogs and forums. These do not make communities. A whole bunch of the vendors in exhibit area are likely to be gone in a couple of years if not sooner. Open source, although played down in this conference, will likely be one, if not the, major driver of this new market. Companies are actually using this and it is those that hope to attract and retain not just a younger generation of employee, but also customer. The smart ones are also recognizing that they need this stuff to make sure that critical knowledge is not retired when their baby boomer employees have.

London to Brighton Sponsorship

2008-06-09T13:59:34+01:00

May I ask if you could sponsor my wife on the London to Brighton Bike Ride this weekend, 15th June 2008? The ride is 56 miles long and covers lots of hilly country. Basically its like two marathons in one, only on a bicycle. The ride is in aid of the British Heart Foundation.

Please sponsor her on her British Heart Foundation web site.

Thanks for giving. It's a good cause.

Kevin Cochrane

2008-06-09T11:54:20+01:00

Kevin Cochrane has decided to leave Alfresco to pursue other opportunities in the US. After a year in the UK, Kevin really wanted to move back to the San Francisco bay area and we have both agreed that it would be difficult for him to take an executive role from there. Kevin has made a tremendous contribution to Alfresco's WCM product and strategy, customer engagements, and the Alfresco product as a whole. We are very grateful for his efforts and dedication.

We are still very committed to Web Content Management and investing in and progressing the WCM product with more enterprise features and scalability. We have increased the number of engineers working on WCM and are continuing to hire more. Our new 3.0 release will be a tremendous step forward in the creation of easy to use, but powerful web applications and the basis for our future Alfresco Dynamic Web Framework (ADW). In addition, we will be filling Kevin's product management role with two people who understand usage of Alfresco in customer environments. Mike Farman will become Director of ECM product management and Michael Uzquiano, originally from Vignette, will become Director of WCM.

Alfresco's business continues to go from strength to strength. We have just finished our 9th straight record quarter having more than tripled in our last fiscal year. We are planning on more than doubling easily in the current year. And we continue to add dozens of marquee customers per quarter like Federal Express in the US and Saint Gobain, the giant $54B glass conglomerate in France, in the last quarter.

I feel very positively about our future and the prospects for WCM. Our blend of capabilities and strong WCM position us to compete effectively with traditional vendors and Microsoft as SharePoint becomes their WCM solution. More importantly, I feel confident in our ability to provide a more compelling platform for our customers for their knowledge worker and web-based content applications and web sites.

Jay Leno, Howard and Me

2008-06-06T18:12:14+01:00

Found this on the Documentum Alumni Facebook page. This was about 10 years ago at the Momentum in Las Vegas. That's Howard Shao on the right, the other co-founder of Documentum, obviously Jay Leno in the middle, and me on the right. Howard must have scanned it in. Always working with my black and red notebook in case Jay had any insights on scalable collaborative systems.

I almost forgot that I once didn't have gray hair.

Reviewing Microsoft 2.0 - Life after Bill

2008-06-06T14:29:35+01:00

About six months ago, when I saw that ZDNet blogger Mary Jo Foley was planning on releasing a book titled "Microsoft 2.0 - How Microsoft Plans to Stay Relevant in the Post-Gates Era", I pre-ordered it immediately on Amazon. Mary Jo's blog is one that I have been reading for quite some time and I can't think of anyone who provides better insight on what Microsoft is thinking than she does. I finally received that book a few weeks ago and have been reading it in my spare time. Unfortunately, I am not the world's fastest reader.

I like the way that the book is written. It reads like a CIA brief should be. This is no sexed-up Iraq brief, but a clearly laid out organized analysis of Microsoft, the company, the state unto itself, the empire. The prime thesis is that Microsoft is organizing for life without Bill and beyond. In attempt to make itself relevant in a world that seems to be passing it by, Microsoft is hiring and promoting new people and to challenge its fundamental thinking. Or not. She writes as though she is an insider, or more closely to a spy network watching its every move. HUMINT, ELINT, SIGINT, MASINT, analysis etc. are all at work here to provide a comprehensive picture for anyone ready to wage battle with Microsoft.

The book is organized into the language and buzzwords, the people and the "Baby Bills", near term radar on visible product, big bet or long-term, strategic products, and the business model challenges, both tried/true and untried/unavoidable models. The style of writing is very approachable and conversational and reflects the style of her blog, much of which I assume the material has been culled from. This in no way detracts from the usefulness of the book for someone, like Alfresco and the rest of the ECM industry, who both has to deal with and compete with Microsoft. The summary cut-outs on each page are also very good for just browsing the book and picking up something new. Microsoft's empire is wide and unwieldy, so it is difficult to pay attention to all parts, but the summaries help draw in or back attention. The only thing lacking are some charts and diagrams for all this fits together, particularly an org chart.

For someone in open source, the people section was particularly interesting. My assumption was that Steve Ballmer was the primary antagonist against open source, which was validated. (Something I have experienced first hand!) However, the wan characterization of "Borgized" Ray Ozzie were interesting. Even as Chief Architect, his power is obviously limited by the raft of Microsoft Lifers and Baby Bills. It reminds me of the de-classified intelligence analyses that I used to read on the Soviet Military in the 70s and 80s - who are the apparatchiks and who are the reformers? What Mary Jo clearly states is that although outwardly Microsoft is trying to change its stance toward open source, the company is schizophrenic and confused towards it. Ballmer in the space of 5 minutes can say that open source must pay its way and then say that he wants Windows to be the platform of open source innovation such as evolution of PHP. Mary Jo says. "So, has the 'Open Source = Evil' wall fallen? ... In a word, no." Poor old Bill Hilf.

She also asks if SharePoint is Microsoft's next killer OS. This is a topic that she explored on her blog late last year. She says that in an attempt to avoid blatant violation of US DoJ instructions against baking integration of other Microsoft products into the operating system, Microsoft is taking the route of baking in reliance on SharePoint and charging very pricey CALs to use Microsoft servers. She says, "On the server side of the house, Microsoft slowly but surely has been tying more and more of its products to SharePoint...Microsoft is gunning to make SharePoint Server and Services an inextricable piece of its customers' product fabric." Wake up and smell the coffee EMC and IBM! Microsoft is ready to use the new monopoly, Office, which she says has a 95% market share to beat into a new server lock in.

I really like the following quote in the buzzword section, "What does Microsoft mean by 'interoperable'? Anything that can run on multiple versions of Windows, the old saying goes."

Definitely a recommended read for anyone in the software industry regardless of whether you partner or compete with Microsoft or most like both.

Doing Davos Does Not Help Blogging

2008-06-05T18:58:40+01:00

Me in a Davos collaboration session on building new resilience into business

Where I last left you, I was on my way to Davos and the World Economic Forum. I tried twittering to keep up with what was going on, but it's really tricky spending any time writing when you are at an event like that. In the central lobby area, there are only a few seats and I would always see Justin Fox, correspondent for Time Magazine, occupying some of the few sofas along with his wife and other "Young Global Pioneers" of the World Economic Forum. I asked Justin if he had been to any of the sessions, which he said he had, but it seemed like he was always blogging. It was good that he was there though. He had a Mac and I could borrow a recharge every once in a while.

A giant YouTuber addressing 1000 people in the WEF plenary hall, while the President of Switzerland sitting alone below him is probably trying to figure out what is going on.

Chad Hurley, founder of YouTube, apologizing for mistakenly showing the previously shown video for the video greetings from George Bush. Sorry George! (BTW, I doubt you will ever see George Bush at Davos. Alliances and Internationalism are not really his thing.)

That's the problem when there is so much stuff going on. You need to sit down and digest a huge amount of information, impressions, emotions and sheer overwhelmingness. The year before, I wrote one blog and missed so much, so I thought I should really just experience this and then write it down. Now I won't be able to get on with writing my blog properly until I do. So forgive this somewhat rambling post.

Robert Scoble interviewing Vinod Khosla. Scoble doesn't have a problem keeping up his blog.

About a week after Davos, a friend of mine asked me who I met this year at Davos. Ironically, the only person I could think of was Emma Thompson and a bunch of CEOs. So, I start where I finished last time. On the plane back from Zurich to London, I saw Emma waiting for her luggage and I just had to say hello. I asked her how she like Davos. Her response was, "Wasn't that amazing! I must write it down!" At the time, I thought yeah, me too and I will get to it on Monday. Five months later...

Loic LeMeur interviews Emma Thompson

( If you can't see the video, try: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIHnqEhAAA0 )

In reality, I met a lot more people. I met Tony Blair and Bono, which I thought was pretty cool. I tried to get up early(ish) and at 8am in the morning one day I just saw Blair walking down a white, glistening snow covered street with only a couple of people in tow. I just reached out as I walked in the opposite direction and said "Hello Mr. Blair." With a politician's instinct, he grinned, said hello, shook my hand and moved on. Bono came tumbling out of some party the night before along with Queen Raina of Jordan and her entourage from London, and few other celebrities. I was in an WEF IT Governors meeting where guys like Bill Gates and Michael Dell were supposed to be, but were probably at the same party. Being at Davos is part of being in elevated circles, but even the elevated circles have their upper levels.

Passing Henry Kissinger in the hall

Compared to the previous year, the US political events were far less overwhelming given the current presidential elections, but the global politics portions was at least as interesting. Hanging around after Condoleeza Rice's speech, I saw Henry Kissinger and Rupert Murdoch also hanging around me along with Hamid Karzai, president of Afghanistan. I doubt they recognized me though. I was invited to a breakfast session with Purvez Musharraf, who was much more articulate and persuasive than I expected. I got some flack from some people of even attending, but I sat next to Jasmine Whitbread, CEO of Save the Children UK, who I figured if she was interested in different opinions of what was going, why could I be. Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, and the blogger Robert Scoble were there as well and you can read Scoble's account of what happened. I saw Gordon Brown in a couple of sessions, but at the time I was no where near as furious with him then as I am now.

Hamid Karzai in a rush. (So I just didn't have good camera with me. :-( )

Pervez Musharraf talking over a croissant at breakfast

Technology definitely took a back seat to Social Enterprise this year. Although there were still luminaries, some of which I got introduced to thanks to Brian Behlendorf (man that guy networks well), it was guys like Nobel prize winner Muhammad Yunus that took center stage. Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, scoffed at being called legendary after being introduced after Muhammad Yunus, the man who created Microfinance. Unlike last year where Web 2.0 was a major theme, people who are trying to change the lives of people using the forces of capitalism and entrepreneurialism rightly were given the spotlight. Most of them you would never heard of, but they seem to really be making a difference in the developing world. One you may have heard of is Nicholas Negroponte, who I sat next to at a lunch after he mistakenly tried to steal mine. We have since exchanged emails about how Alfresco and open source might be able to help the One Laptop Per Child initiative. If open source can help serve up content to all those OLPC systems, so much the better.

Nicholas Negroponte with blogger Jeff Jarvis taking notes. Sorry this is a scary picture, but I was sitting right next to the guy when he was speaking.

Most people at Davos are business people. Emma Thompson apparently described the crowd on BBC Radio 4 as a bunch of gray, middle aged businessmen in suits. (Well excuse me Emma!) There were in all the sessions and the vast majority of them are extremely nice and sociable. It was pretty cool hanging out with the Accel guys, Joe Schoendorf and Paul Jacobs, CEO of Qualcomm, drinking 50 year old Bordeaux wine. I shared a taxi with George Soros, who stole a place from my friend Magid Abraham, CEO of ComScore. Soros then had the misfortune of me plugging at him on the future of the dollar and pound. Eventually, he asked me what I did and I explained about Alfresco. George then said, "I *like* open source." So here's a scoop for you, George Soros is bearish on the US economy, the dollar, the pound and George Bush and bullish on China, India, and Open Source.

Nobel Prize Winner, Muhammad Yunus

I attended a panel on Strategy in a Networked World with Sam DiPiazza, CEO of PWC, Chris Conde of Sungard, Marc Benioff from Salesforce, Michael Porter, business professor at the Harvard Business School, and moderated by Tom Stewart, editor of the Harvard Business Review. I have met all of them and they are all nice, grey, middle aged and in suits, although Benioff stands out as being different. He is a bit younger, dresses more informally and is less likely to listen to what you are saying. I was in a collaboration session with him, business people from Cisco, HP, Sun and social entrepreneurs at the front line bringing in water, power and connectivity. Chris Gopalakrishan, COO of Infosys, actually knows a lot more about the 3rd world than most. Yet Mark was trying to tell him and others that the solution to poverty, disease and privation is a Web 2.0 center in villages running Salesforce.com.

Marc Benioff telling us how its gonna be

The dinners and parties continued to be the most impressive and fun part of Davos. The Accel party is definitely one of the highlights. One moment at this year's party that I really liked was being able to introduce Michael Porter to Tim O'Reilly. Tim definitely knew who Michael Porter was, but Michael had no idea that Tim was the one who started a lot of all this Web 2.0 stuff. If Tim O'Reilly came away impressed, this event must be something else. Also, I am hanging around talking to people waiting to chat with Larry Page and find I am talking to the CEO of Mattel. Good thing I didn't ask him about toys from China. One of the Accel guys introduced me to the video blogger Loic LeMeur and I said, "I know you! You're famous." Immediately afterwards is the Google party with absolutely everyone in there. I attended a great "Eat Local" dinner hosted by Chez Panisse owner, Alice Waters, and the theater director Peter Sellars. The food was absolutely fabulous and it was really nice to meet Alice since I have enjoyed her food since my days in Berkeley, although Sergey Brin got a lot more attention. The Nerd's Dinner was also fascinating with so many famous tech people, I couldn't possibly list them here. That I have to blog separately.

I tried to get a picture of Michael Porter when he wasn't moving his hands. I failed. He is very animated.

In the end though, it is the people who make you think that have the most lasting impression. As always, it is great pleasure to hang around Geoffrey Moore, from whom I always learn something. I was also very pleased to meet Don Tapscott, author of Wikinomics, and his wife. On the last night, I hung out with he and his wife and discovered he is a great jazz pianist. However, I learned about his next book about the Millennial generation joining the work force. The futurist Paul Saffo, the host of the Nerd's Dinner makes me feel like a real laggard. I am still in awe of Tim O'Reilly. Although I don't agree with some of what Tom Friedman writes, I still respect his perspective, which as influential when we started Alfresco, and I got to meet him this time and learn about his next book about Green Technology.

Don Tapscott, Author of Wikinomics

Finally, Bill Gates got me thinking a lot. His speech on what he is doing next was well worth attending. Bill's thesis is that if we can apply the principles of capitalism to solving the world's problems, we can eradicate hunger, poverty, disease, lack of power and climate change. Market and financial incentives alone are insufficient. We should all acting based upon self-interest and incentivized to work in that self-interest. Governments can help with tax incentives, but giving recognition to those companies and individuals are potentially more powerful. Companies should also be incentivized not to give money, but talent, which in turn provides recognition of the individual and organization making a difference. This recognition can be its own market-based reward since it will benefit the company in the competitive marketplace. This approach can be used to provide not just manpower, but solutions to accessibility of information, medicine and healthcare.

Bill Gates talking about what he is planning next.

Perhaps Google thought of this all along, but it seems like Bill has a point. As much as that pains me to say, clearly the programs and techniques that we have used in the past have not worked and we need to try something else. Maybe its time to try Bill's plan. I was challenged by one of the more liberal participants to not even think that. He said, "It's easy for him to say that. He's a billionaire. He made his money with blood money stealing from the poor children of the world." That's a bit extreme and I was just as culpable in this guy's eyes for even suggesting it, but I think it's worth exploring.

Mitch Kapoor

If you have gotten this far, well done. Now that I have this one out of the way, I can concentrate on blogging properly hopefully.

Sir Martin Sorrell, Chief of WPP, asking everyone to calm down.

Links for 2008-05-15 [Digg]

2008-05-16T00:00:00-05:00

Open source industry worth £30bn claims Alfresco CEO
How can something given away for free end up being the world's largest industry of its type? According to John Powell, CEO of open source content management vendor Alfresco the value of open source is not what it generates, but what it saves, and that's worth billions.

Off to Davos and the World Economic Form

2008-01-22T23:40:18+00:00

I am currently writing this on the train from Zurich Airport to Davos journeying through amazing Swiss scenery. The flight from Heathrow was completely full and Davos was probably the reason. I saw a few faces that were vaguely familiar, probably because they won the Nobel prize. In the seat behind me was Emma Thompson, which was a thrill for me and looking at all the faces of the guys behind me queuing to get out of the airplane, probably a thrill for them too. Our investor from Accel, Kevin Comolli, was in the front of the plane.

I am cheating and using o picture from last year's trip.

Lakes as large as seas, snow covered mountains, rushing rivers and cows grazing on pastoral land have been rushing by me for nearly an hour. It's hard to believe it has been a year since the last time I saw this gorgeous scenery, but what an amazing year it has been. The insights that I gained from Davos last year helped me understand what was going on in the world and how it affected Alfresco. Davos was where I finally understood Web 2.0 and it is core to where we are taking the company.

This year's theme for Davos is the Power of Collaborative Innovation, a topic near and dear to my heart. Although, there is less tech content than last year, I will be particularly interested in how innovation and collaboration can be applied to some of the world's most difficult problems. I am also keenly interested to see where the economy is heading. If this group of people don't know, we're in a heap of trouble. As always, I will look forward to the workshop sessions and the one on one interaction that is unique to Davos.

I am going to try to keep up my blogging while I am here and try a Twitter or three, as well as keeping my Facebook page up to date.

Ooooh. It's starting to snow now...

Links for 2008-01-10 [Digg]

2008-01-11T00:00:00-06:00

Alfresco Enterprise Download Trial
Cool concept for content management
Alfresco is Linux Mag Top 20 to Watch in 2008
Linux Magazine has named Alfresco as one of the Top 20 Companies to Watch in 2008. Don't know about being snapped up by major media company, but social computing is having more of an impact on the enterprise than IT organizations realize.

Links for 2007-11-15 [Digg]

2007-11-16T00:00:00-06:00

Alfresco's New Facebook App is no Popstar Babe
Brice Dunwoodie (publisher of CMSWire.com) reports from the CMF2007 conference in Denmark where Stanford professor BJ Fogg made some controversial comments regarding Web 2.0 and Facebook.

Links for 2007-10-12 [Digg]

2007-10-13T00:00:00-05:00

Oracle Bids for BEA Systems
Oracle is making a bid for BEA Systems valued at $6.7 billion, reports Reuters. According to CNNMoney.com the bid was contained in a letter to BEA’s board. Although Oracle released details of the offer Oracle said that this is not a hostile bid. BEA products support functions such as transaction...

Links for 2007-10-09 [Digg]

2007-10-10T00:00:00-05:00

Alfresco scores highest in Infoworld review of Open Source CMSes
I was pleasantly surprised to see the Infoworld article today that listed Alfresco as the only system with an "excellent" rating in a review of Open Source CMSes including Drupal, Plone, Joomla and dotNetNuke. There is a numeric rating of the other systems, but highlights Alfresco's move beyond just web content management.

Links for 2007-10-05 [Digg]

2007-10-06T00:00:00-05:00

Alfresco Community Conferences 2007
Our first get togethers are being planned for New York and Paris. We felt that these were the most central locations for our communities in North America and Europe. We also will have Brian Behlendorf from Apache joining us as well to talk about the affect of SharePoint on Open Source. Hope you can make it.

Links for 2007-04-30 [Digg]

2007-05-01T00:00:00-05:00

Does virtual advertising work?
In stark contrast to the Komjuniti survey that I posted last week, this article says that advertising in virtual worlds _could_ work. Pointing out that no one likes advertising, a GMI study looked at what virtual communities could accept in principle. They also point out that the demographics of these online communities are a desirable target.
LinuxWorld: The rise of Alfresco - ECM that people will really use
Jim Romeo writes: "A new enterprise content management system started with the bright idea of working like a shared drive for Windows clients. Add open source robustness, and Alfresco has some happy users on their hands." Well, I enjoyed it. :-)