E20portal.com - Everything Enterprise 2.0

Enterprise 2.0: Finding the right staff to innovate during the downturn

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:40:02 +0000

Scott Gavin, the collaboration and knowledge management specialist from Applied Trends, has kindly produced E20portal.com's first guest post. Scott has presented at international Enterprise 2.0 conference's and worked with other leaders in this area including Dion Hinchcliffe (previously featured on E20portal.com) and Whatever Company.

After discussing the implications for Enterprise 2.0 of the downturn Scott has produced the following article:

	Scott Gavin
	Collaboration and Knowledge Management Specialist
	Scott Gavin has extensive on the ground experience of implementing wikis, blogs, social bookmarking and other Web 2.0 tools for some of the world’s largest Enterprise's.

When times are bad and companies are looking for new ways to make money or do more with less, they need to know where the talent sits in the company. The economic climate is forcing 'expertise identification' into the agendas of business and IT managers in all industries. Having attended many conferences and business events since the credit crunch started to bite, I've been surprised by how many executives are talking about knowledge identification of one sort or another.

This is not a new need nor a groundbreaking observation, in fact it's pretty obvious. However what is new is how companies are seeing the potential for Enterprise 2.0 platforms to help them connect with the workforce and allow identification of people based on their real expertise, not just by job title.

Often referred to as SMEs (subject matter experts) there are a number of reasons to identify them inside a company, including:

find people to work on new markets/products
identify gaps in knowledge which should be core to your company
identify what impact losing an employee in a given area would have - are there others with similar knowledge?
find all people who have interacted with a certain product/project
for regulated industries - identify everyone who’s worked on a certain drug/product

But how should SMEs be identified? It should be a mix of self declaration, identification by others and by the real life information someone interacts with. As an example you might have Jason who identifies himself as and expert in ‘Java’, others tag him with ‘IT’, yet he consistently works with information/content related to ‘Social Media’. Jason should therefore be identified, by a greater or lessor extent, as an SME in all three fields. In other words you are not relying on just job titles and self declaration to find people.

Enterprise 2.0 has some immediate and interesting answers to the problem of identifying SMEs. Due to the nature of how social tools are used you're often able to tie people with content and examine the network they've built and who they interact with. This may or may be representative their job title which is a valuable insight.

In the past it would have been fair to assume that if you used a tool to find an SME in your organization you would at most have access to their contact details. New social tools will allow you to do more than just find an SME and see their phone number. I’ll pick on Knowledge Plaza (an Enterprise 2.0 tool) to demonstrate how SMEs are found and used:

SMEs are identified with every search result in the system (full text, tag browsing or combination of both)
Users can see the profile of an SME
Users can see the recent activities on an SME in addition to their user defined network
Users are able to interact with an SME, including adding them to their network
The SME can be used as a filter

Once you’ve found your SME(s) you should be able to use them as a means of finding more information. i.e. if I find Jason in the system I would want to search through his eyes based upon the content he’s interacted with and the network he maintains. This means I’m using the SME, using his or her knowledge and accessing their intellectual capital directly in the system. I can then get a feel for Jason, his content, his interests and most importantly his real life interactions with information and people. For knowledge retention this feature is so important. In the example above I didn’t say if Jason still works at the company or if he left 5 years ago. It shouldn’t matter! Even if he did leave, he still has a link to information, people, the company and his work still has value.

The ability to find and use a SMEs knowledge after they’ve left the company is coming up as a concern time and time again with the companies I have been speaking to. Enterprise 2.0 tools have some of the answers here and it’s now possible to do what some of the knowledge management systems of old promised but didn’t deliver.

Companies should be able to quickly find people inside their organization based on their content as well as their interests. Once found they should be able to do more than just see their contact details!

Scott Gavin is the director of Applied Trends and represents Knowledge Plaza in the UK.

E20portal.com December-January News Roundup

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 13:47:24 +0000

In the first 2009 E20portal.com Enterprise 2.0 news summary we continue from our last new post with a strong theme of industry analysts whitepapers, including reports Forrester and the Economist Intelligence Unit. We have also highlighted some of our favourite E.20 bloggers thoughts on the year ahead.

Industry Reports

Forrester Research: Time To Rethink Your Corporate Blogging Ideas

A recent free report from Forrester Research shows that corporate blogs are the least trusted of all information sources. ReadWriteWeb and my Nickpoint blog have comments on the findings.

The Economist Intelligence Unit: Economist Finds True Believers in Business Value of Social Software

In a report by The Economist Intelligence Unit they claim that Web 2.0 for business is now becoming mainstream. Their survey of 406 senior executives worldwide found that 79% of respondents see the collaborative web as a way to boost revenues and cut costs. The Fastforward blog has comments.

PEW: Adult Social Networking Data Report

This report shows that the number of U.S. adults socially networking online has quadrupled in the past four years. However there is little use of these social networking sites for professional purposes. ReadWriteWeb reports on these enlightening findings.

Forrester Research: The Forrester Wave™: Community Platforms, Q1 2009

Jive Software and Telligent Systems come out top in Forrester's nine 'community platforms' vendor review. The report comments 'that even in this down economy there is still demand for online community platforms - because they are a cost-effective way for companies to market their products and reduce support costs'. ReadWriteWeb comments on the report. Dion Hinchcliffe has also provided a useful review of community platforms.

McAfee Talk

The Godfather of Enterprise 2.0 McAfee, who coined the term Enterprise 2.0, talks to Charlie Rose about Enterprise 2.0 this year (link to Video)

Enterprise 2.0 2009 view

E20portal's good friend Bill Ives has provided us with some excellent insights and links for Enterprise 2.0 in 2009. In Mike Gotta’s 2009: Planning Considerations For Enterprise 2.0 excellent post he discusses Microsoft's Sharepoint weaknesses, Social Platforms, Enterprise 2.0 Long-term Issues and much more. Bill comments on the post.

Dion Hinchcliffe has also joined in with an annual soothsaying with his 8 Predictions for Enterprise Web 2.0 in 2009 which include 'Online community and 2.0 technologies become a priority for most organizations'.
Unfortunately ReadWriteWeb are saying Enterprise RSS is dead for 2009 but Mike Gotta's forecast holds out some hope.

Online Media Daily: Social Media Wins In Marketers' '09 Plans

The good news is that marketers will be using their 2009 budgets for social media initiatives, according to study form tool Online Media Daily. Bill Ives and Mashable comment on these findings.

Event report

At this time of year it's all quiet on the conference circuit. The events from December and January are:

LeWeb

The years LeWeb was eventful with Mike Arrington of Techcruch causing quite a stir with this comments. Dennis Howlett has provided a satirical report of the event. ReadWriteWeb have also commented.

2009 Events

E20portal.com's Events page is now up to date with an exciting 2009 line-up of 13 Enterprise 2.0 related conferences/seminars:

If you know of any we've missed, drop us a line on events@e20portal.com or write a comment and we'll post them up.

E20portal.com October-November News Roundup

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 13:05:52 +0000

In this bumper edition of E20portal.com's Enterprise 2.0 news summary we have various whitepapers from Forrester, Economist Intelligence Unit, Radicati Group, Rubicon's research, Accenture and Gartner. You will also find news reports on the latest events and a new vendor launch.

Industry Reports

Forrester Whitepaper: Vendor: Prepare For Falling Prices For Enterprise Web 2.0 Collaboration And Productivity Apps

Forrester forecasts a significant price fall in Enterprise 2.0 software coupled with growing demand. Due to increased competition, commoditization, and bundling, prices are expected to fall by as much as half. Several bloggers have comments on this report including the Fastfoward blog and Bill Ives.

The Economist Intelligence Unit Whitepaper: The Digital Company 2013: The Freedom to Collaborate

This free report identifies seven key changes to how we currently work. Noteworthy predictions include Social networks will become common in the workplace, digital tools will democratise access to information and IT will need to loosen the reins. The AppGap blog has commented on the report.

Radicati Group Whitepaper: Enterprise 2.0 Software Market, 2008 - 2012

Radicati has joined in with the other industry analysts to forecast the overall Enterprise 2.0 Software market growth. E20portal.com previously reported on How Big is the Enterprise 2.0 pie. Radicati expect this market to reach $842 million by 2012

Rubicon Consulting Whitepaper: Online Communities and Their Impact on Business

In this report Rubicon confirms that 80% to 90% of online communities user-generated content is generated by less 10% of users. Interestingly the report highlights that online reviews drive far more purchase decisions than newspaper articles, reviews by websites, or store advice. ReadWrietWeb has a detailed review of the report.

Gartner Whitepaper: Magic Quadrant for Social Software 2008

This year’s edition of Gartner's report demonstrates the highly competitive nature of this market. Interestingly Gartner still have no vendor’s in the category of “Leaders” but do have IBM / Microsoft as the only “Challengers”.

Accenture Whitepaper: Millennials Will Route Around IT Departments

Accenture's survey of North American millennial students and employees highlights a preference for New Social Computing Channels over Enterprise technology. The report shows that many employees are simply bypassing corporate IT departments to use unsupported and unsanctioned technology. Further reading from Social Computing Magazine and ReadWriteWeb.

Vendor News

Knowledge Plaza launch

The company 'Whatever' launched Knowledge Plaza, a comprehensive Enterprise 2.0 Web-based platform. The software offers enterprise search, social bookmarking, knowledge management, information brokerage and expert identification. Bill Ives covered the launch on AppGap.

Event Report

Defrag 2008

This year's Defrag went successfully with a recurring theme of flow app. A review of the event is available on the Defrag Blog. Hutch Carpenter has also provided notes for several of the sessions.

Featured Blog: Euan Semple

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 10:18:44 +0000

Euan Semple has selected several posts for our latest featured blog.

Euan has extensive real world experience of Enterprise 2.0 cultural adoption in the enterprise. He uses his experience as an independent social computing consultant. Euan has a personal and business blog, he also writes for the Fastforward blog. Euan is a regular international speaker on Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0.

	Euan Semple
	Independent advisor and consultant
	Euan Semple is an independent advisor on social computing for business. He is a well known writer, thinker and public speaker on the subject and in recognition of his many accomplishments he was voted Information Professional Of The Year (2005) by Information World Review.

Euan has selected five of his most interesting and thought-provoking blog posts from the past two years. In these featured entries Euan explores the easiest way to do Enterprise 2.0, individual responsiveness and openness to change, and how to actively encouraged the adoption of Enterprise 2.0. He also looks at the reasons why companies fail at Enterprise 2.0. The posts can be read in full by following the title links below . . .

The 100% guaranteed easiest way to do Enterprise 2.0?

9th March, 2007

"DO NOTHING, GET OUT OF THE WAY and KEEP THE ENERGY LEVELS UP"

In this post Euan summarises the the key approaches to introducing social computing with Enterprise 2.0 tools.

You can lead a horse to water ....

17th October, 2006

"There will for some time to come be an element of risk in working in the new ways that are now possible and even longer before organisations reach a tipping point and it becomes the norm. One of the main things I learned watching what happened when we did this at the BBC was that as individuals and collectively you have to be very, very patient."

Euan calls upon his experiences of individual and organisational change at a 23,000 staff enterprise. "Forums have been around for years and years, blogs have been around for six and it took us four years to get where we did".
Euan looks at the risks of working in a new way and the shift in expectations of the workplace.

This time it's personal

January 24, 2007

"The technologies we are talking about here, whether we call them social computing or Enterprise 2.0, are inherently social. They are about people and the associations they make both between bits of information and with each other"

Euan shares two key lessons learned and discusses how Enterprise 2.0 helps foster innovation and creativity within the workplace.

Love thine enemies

January 16, 2007

"Corporate IT guys been brought up to manage risk rather than creativity and the free wheeling, individualist nature of Enterprise 2.0 scares the wits out of a lot of them. Even the word social makes them jumpy"

In this post Euan reflects on his experiences with corporate IT departments, he also provides some suggestions on how to overcome the challenges.

Most companies who try to do Enterprise 2.0 will fail

June 10, 2008

"1. They think it is about technology"

Euan lists the top eight reasons why most companies' Enterprise 2.0 efforts will fail.

More Featured Blogs from E20portal.com

E20portal.com September News Roundup

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 16:46:33 +0000

E20portal.com's Enterprise 2.0 news summary and links of interest for September 2008. Features this month include product announcements from ScoialText, Connectbeam, MindTouch and JobBlogs, a new whitepaper from Awarness, Inc., and the latest event reports.

Industry Reports

Awareness Whitepaper: Trends and Best Practices in Adopting Web 2.0 in 2008

Awareness, Inc. have released a report exploring business adoption of Web 2.0 technologies and the future of social media initiatives. Their findings suggest that employers are increasingly allowing staff to use social media applications in working hours. ReadWriteWeb provide further analysis of the findings.

Vendor News

Socialtext 3.0 Released

Socialtext launched v3.0 of their Enterprise Wiki platform with many new additions. Richer social networking (called Socialtext People) is included in the latest release as well as Socialtext Dashboard which enables users to build custom homepages. Socialtext also announced "an integrated Twitter for the enterprise" which they have called Signals. Susan Scrupski, BusinessWeek and ZDNet covered the launch in detail.

Connectbeam Spotlight 3.0

Connectbeam have released Spotlight v3.0 which includes Microsoft SharePoint and Outlook integration. Spotlight is a collaborative information sharing platform that makes it easier for co-workers to find and share information and connect with each other around projects. Connectbeam CEO, Puneet Gupta, outlines the new features at Content Management Connection. ReadWriteWeb also include Spotlight in a summary of Enterprise 2.0 platforms with Microsoft SharePoint Connectors.

MindTouch Deki for CRM

MindTouch have partnered with Snaplogic to deliver Deki for CRM. The solution integrates with Salesforce.com and SugarCRM to deliver collaborative intelligence to CRM users so they can quickly get a rich and comprehensive view of all leads and customers. CMSWire and The AppGap provide further detail.

JobBlogs

JobBlogs launched a web-based service they describe as "CRM Meets Project Management" to move from a disjointed file/email exchange to an environment that's more connected, contextual and collaborative. The service provides workspaces that "pull everything and everyone together to get work done". Bill Ives covered the launch.

Event Reports

KMWorld and Intranets 2008

The 12th KMWorld and Intranets took place over three days in September 2008. This years event included a Enterprise2.0 track. Session material and slides are available at the KMWorld website. Further comments and reactions to the conference can be found at the KMWorld Blog. Kimberly Silk has also provided notes for several of the sessions including a SharePoint case study review.

WikiSym 2008

Portugal was the host to WikiSym 2008: "The International Symposium on Wikis". Accepted research papers and other materials are available at http://www.wikisym.org/ws2008/proceedings. Alex Schroeder has provided comprehensive coverage of the event.

E20Forum

Martin Koser (FrogPond) has written several posts providing extensive coverage of the Cologne E20Forum. The event covered several interesting Enterprise 2.0 case studies including Adidas and Deutsche Bank. Suw Charman-Anderson has also provided detailed notes on JP Rangaswami's talk at the event.

Office 2.0 Report - Enterprise Case Studies

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 17:04:39 +0000

Ismael Ghalimi's Office 2.0 2008 conference is over for another year. This year's theme was 'Enterprise Adoption' with case studies and panel discussions featuring speakers from EMC, Disney, Wachovia and more. The Office 2.0 community site includes details of all sessions, including video recordings as well as attendee blogs and comments. Susan Scrupski has written an excellent conference wrap-up, Ben Kepes also has provided comprehensive Day-1 and Day-2 reports at ReadWriteWeb.

Many of the sessions were focused around end-user case studies. We've highlighted some of most popular below and included links to additional reports and comments...

GE Case Study

Oliver Marks' article at ZDNet provided useful background for this session in which Dr. Sukh Grewal delivered an excellent presentation of GE's 400,000 user SupportCentral Collaboration & Workflow Environment. GE has developed a self-service workflow platform for digitizing business processes where people can "digitize a process faster than document it ... in minutes, not months". Dr. Sukh Grewal also covered the corporate GE community, shared details of GE's collateral savings that run to "millions" of dollars, and discussed the challenges involved in scaling application s for GE's 400,000 users. A video recording of the GE Case Study is available the Office 2.0 community site.

Wachovia Case Study

Pete Fields shared the challenges and successes of Wachovia's collaboration and networking platform implementation. Pete explained the drivers behind their 18-month business-case and how it lead to the largest Microsoft SharePoint (MOSS) deployment in the world. He also shared some of his 'lessons learned' as well as plans for future enhancements. A video recording of the Wachovia Case Study is available the Office 2.0 community site.

Sun Microsystems Case Study

Charles Beckham (CTO of Sun Learning Services) shared his experiences and observations around collaborative learning, cultural and generational differences, and the platforms that enable Sun's 'Networked Learning World'. A video recording of the Sun Case Study is available the Office 2.0 community site along with a .PDF version of the presentation.

Changing Face of the Enterprise - Adoption in the Real Business World

A panel discussion hosted by Jive's Sam Lawrence with representatives from EMC, Chordiant and Disney. The panel shared their experiences with enterprise social software and explored the challenges they faced in adoption. Topics included: generational challenges, customer engagement, legal issues and business value. A video recording is available the Office 2.0 community site.
Planning for next year's Office 2.0 conference is already underway. Next year's theme is "The Global Office" with a goal to include representatives from as many Global 500 firms, national governments, and top 100 universities as possible.

Related articles on E20portal.com:

A chat with Ismael Ghalimi about the Office 2.0 Conference

E20portal.com August News Roundup

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 11:18:28 +0000

E20portal.com's Enterprise 2.0 news summary and links of interest for August 2008. Features this month include product announcements from Atlassian, EMC, Jive and Six Apart, a new Gartner Hype Cycle release, and the latest event reports...

Industry Reports

Gartner 2008 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies

The Gartner 2008 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies identifies 27 emerging technologies and predicts that eight of these will have a transformational business impact. Predictions include Social Computing Platforms, Cloud Computing and MicroBlogging. CMSWire and Martin Koser (of Frogpond) comment on the findings.

University of Massachusetts: Social Media in the Inc. 500: The First Longitudinal Study

The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research recently conducted one of the first statistically significant, longitudinal studies on the usage of social media in corporations. The new study compares corporate adoption of social media between 2007 and 2008. ReadWriteWeb provide analysis of the findings, Attila Gárdos also provides comments

Vendor News

Jive Software announce Clearspace v2.5

Jive's Sam Lawrence provides details of Clearspace v2.5. New features include Salesforce.com integration, a more powerful people directory and the "Easiest Rich Text Editor on the Market". Oliver Marks provides a useful summary of the new version at ZDNet describing it as "a very solid release".

EMC Documentum v6.5 embraces Enterprise 2.0

EMC announced version 6.5 of their documentum ECM suite. which "introduces a number of innovations to support and secure Web 2.0 technology and collaborative work:" Bill Ives provides a comprehensive summary of the new release describing it as "a suite of products that embraces Web 2.0 concepts and applies them to the enterprise".

Atlassian announce Confluence v2.9 + Office and SharePoint Connectors

Atlassian announce version 2.9 of their Confluence enterprise wiki which includes connectors for Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Office Products - which enables wiki editing using Microsoft Word (also Excel and Powerpoint). Susan Scrupski and ReadWriteWeb both discuss the new features and include videos and screenshots.

Six Apart announce Movable Type v4.2

Six Apart announced version 4.2 of their Movable Type blogging platform, which now includes Movable Type Pro: an "integrated social publishing platform" with "blogging, content management and social networking". InfomationWeek and CNET both comment on Movable Type's shift towards a "social platform".

Event Reports

Enterprise 2.0 for Information Professionals, Sydney

James Dellow reported on this conference at his CheifTech blog and also posted his follow-up thoughts and conclusions. Trevor Cook also shares his note on 'Using social media to alleviate pressure on email' and other sessions at his Corporate Engagement blog.

8th Annual Strategic Intranets Summit, Wellington

Dorje McKinnon provides a useful sessions summary with links to further reports and comments. Michael Sampson shared his notes on the conference and has also posted his presentation: "The Future of Collaborative Work".

Coming in September . . .

Office 2.0 2008, San Francisco

Look out for E20portal.com coverage of this event coming soon, including comments, analysis and links to video recordings of all sessions.

Web 2.0 University Executive Bootcamp , London

Dion Hinchcliffe, the enterprise technology guru, has been running highly successful one day briefings on web 2.0 for business in the USA for some time. This Executive Bootcamp is now going global with briefings in the UK and Australia. Visit our Events Section to find out more

Defrag Conference 2008 , Denver

The Defrag Conference gathering place for the growing community of implementers, users, builders and thinkers that are working on the next wave of software innovation.
A $100 discount is available to E20portal.com readers. Visit our Events Section to find out more.

7 Essential Enterprise 2.0 Definitions

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 16:02:19 +0000

At E20portal.com we used several of the most popular Enterprise 2.0 definitions to shape our own description of Enterprise 2.0. In this article we list the definitions that helped us the most...

1. Enterprise 2.0, version 2.0

Andrew McAfee, Harvard University, 2006

Andrew's refines his definition of Enterprise 2.0 and adds examples.

"Enterprise 2.0 is the use of emergent social software platforms within companies, or between companies and their partners or customers. Social software enables people to rendezvous, connect or collaborate through computer-mediated communication and to form online communities."

2. ABC: An Introduction to Enterprise 2.0

Ron Miller, CIO.com, 2007

An extensive article covering concepts, tool, benefits, risks and vendors.

"Enterprise 2.0 takes the original concept of the Web, using websites to feed content to visitors, and turns it upside down. Enterprise 2.0 lets you implement a multiparty conversation to share information and manage knowledge inside and outside the organization using blogs and wikis, social networking and tagging, rating systems and the like. The link among these tools is the ability of the individuals involved to participate and to control the process while they work together, share information and create networks of people with similar interests."

3. What is Enterprise 2.0? (O. Marks)

Oliver Marks, ZDNet, 2008

Oliver's recent article defining Enterprise 2.0. Also includes both IT and Executive viewpoints.

"Fresh new employees have increasingly grown up with social networking and web 2.0 tools and are frequently astounded when shown the archaic interfaces of the legacy tools enterprises are anchored by."

4. What is Enterprise 2.0? (F. Cavazza)

Fred Cavazza, 2007

A comprehensive summary of what Enterprise 2.0 is all about. Includes definitions and links to further articles.

"To make a long story short, it means using inside an enterprise the successful tools of web 2.0....Enterprise 2.0 is above all about sharing and collaboration."

5. Enterprise 2.0 Blueprint

Fred R. Todd Stephens phd, 2008

Dr. Todd Stephens' excellent blueprint for Enterprise 2.0 architecture and adoption.

"I put this model together to pull together the various pieces of the Enterprise 2.0 puzzle."

6. The Birth of Enterprise 2.0

M.R. Rangaswami, Sand Hill Group, 2006

A brief history and description of Enterprise 2.0. Includes technologies, adoption and delivery methods.

"Enterprise 2.0 is more than just Web 2.0 for business. Enterprise computing is far more complex than personal computing. It includes legacy environments, innumerable vendors, mismatched data sources, stringent regulations and far flung users. While Web 2.0 can deliver genuine advantages for both business users and consumers, the real "Enterprise 2.0" will encompass a far broader and more complex vision."

7. Meet Charlie

Scott Gavin, 2007

Scott Gavin's popular slide-deck describing Enterprise 2.0 in simple terms to great effect.

"Well they say a picture paints a thousand words, so take a look at ‘Meet Charlie’ which is my take on what Enterprise 2.0 looks like in it’s simplest form."

In our ‘About Enterprise 2.0’ section we include our own definition of Enterprise 2.0, as well as information about the benefits of Enterprise 2.0, and a glossary of Enterprise 2.0 technologies.

Definitions of Enterprise 2.0 will evolve as Enterprise 2.0 moves into the mainstream. The meaning of ‘Enterprise 2.0’ may change, but the principles of effective sharing, collaboration and the benefits of social software will continue to bring increased productivity.

Which definition do you think best describes Enterprise 2.0? Have your say in our comments.

Related articles on E20portal.com:

Featured Blog: Dion Hinchcliffe

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:07:27 +0000

In the third of our series of Enterprise 2.0 Blogs we feature Dion Hinchliffe.

Dion Hinchcliffe is the founder and chief technology officer for the Enterprise Web 2.0 advisory and consulting firm Hinchcliffe & Company. He is a regular speaker on the topics of Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0, and authors blogs at Social Computing Magazine and ZDNet.

	Dion Hinchcliffe
	Founder and CTO, Hinchcliffe & Company
	A veteran of software development, Dion has been working for two decades with leading-edge methods to accelerate project schedules and raise the bar for software quality. He has extensive practical experience with enterprise technologies and he consults, speaks, and writes prolifically on IT and software architecture.

Dion's has helped us select five of his ZDNet posts from the past two years. In these entries Dion discusses the evolving Enterprise 2.0 landscape, key differences between the web and the enterprise, and provides a framework for successful Enterprise 2.0 adoption. The posts can be read in full by following the title links below . . .

Encouraging Enterprise 2.0: As simple as possible, but no simpler?

March 12th, 2007

"What's a likely sweet spot for applying Enterprise 2.0 inside the firewall? Keeping adoption of your preferred tools simple within the complex landscape of your organization so users won't prefer theirs"

Dion provides a comprehensive framework for successful Enterprise 2.0 adoption and highlights the key differences between the web and the enterprise. He describes how to maximise Enterprise 2.0 benefits behind the firewall and how to overcome some of the key challenges.

A checkpoint on Web 2.0 in the enterprise Part 1 & Part 2

July 26th, 2007

"The big question? What do you really need to know today about Web 2.0 in the enterprise?"

In this comprehensive two-part post Dion discusses the drivers, concepts and components of Enterprise 2.0. Covering aspects such as productivity power, peer-production and social impacts, as well as outlining strategic and tactical approaches, this is essential Enterprise 2.0 reading.

Mashups turn into an industry as offerings mature

May 15th, 2008

"One thing is now clear in this burgeoning new industry; that there is genuine interest in being a leading provider of enterprise mashup tools as organizations begin getting serious about applying them to make the development of Web-based business solutions faster, more commonplace, and less costly."

In this post Dion summarises the current state of the Enterprise Mashup market and associated tools and platforms. He also outlines some of the leading vendors and products in this space. This post was previously referred to in our Preparation for Enterprise Mashups article.

Enterprise 2.0: Lively conversations driving change

June 16th, 2008

"I gave a keynote and heard even more stories from those in the trenches that are grappling with Enterprise 2.0. These stories relate what people are actually facing as the forces of emergent collaboration begin to "rewire" their organizations and connection people and information together in a similar way to what we've seen in the Web 2.0 world, but with it's own twist."

Dion reflects on his recent experiences at Enterprise 2.0 conferences in Boston and London and assesses how the marketplace has expanded in the last year. He also includes 'Lessons from the field' based on his personal observations.

More Featured Blogs from E20portal.com

What the Enterprise wants from Enterprise 2.0

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:24:17 +0000

In this third article following on from 'Market Research suggests Enterprise 2.0 confusion' and 'How big is the Enterprise 2.0 pie?' we now examine what Enterprise's say they want from Enterprise 2.0.

With growing interest in Web 2.0 tools for the Enterprise, large firms are becoming increasingly familiar with the technologies and benefits available from Enterprise 2.0. The "Social Media in the Inc. 500: The First Longitudinal Study" by the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research found that firms are increasingly claiming to be "very familiar" with the tools. The highest increase in familiarity being social networking which is up from 42% in 2007 to 57% in 2008. The Enterprise Irregular blogger and ZDNet writer Dennis Howlett commented on this research.

As the Enterprise is becoming more familiar with Enterprise 2.0 the usage/adoption of the tools is starting to become strategic. AIIM Market Intelligence group's Market IQ study "Enterprise 2.0: Agile, Emergent and Integrated" surveying 441 individuals reported 44% of respondents indicated that Enterprise 2.0 is "imperative" or "significant to corporate goals and objectives".

This business objective is filtering into IT departments as supported by a recent Forrester report "IT Departments Play Key Role In The Acquisition And Deployment Of Web 2.0 Technologies". Forrester found that 63% of 260 I.T. professionals are expecting social technologies to impact the business world. The respondents also believe the impact will be positive with only 3% viewing Web 2.0 negatively. Sarah Perez of ReadWriteWeb reviewed Forrester's report saying that the report findings "now debunking the conventional wisdom that I.T. is as sceptical as once thought."

With increasing planned adoption of Enterprise 2.0 IT departments are having to choose the best technologies to fit in with their current legacy systems. In our article 'Three Enterprise 2.0 Alternatives' we explored Enterprise vendors, pure players and open source software alternatives. Forrester's "CIOs Want Suites For Web 2.0" research in 2007 by Oliver Young found that 61% of 119 CIO, respondents indicated that they would prefer both a suite solution and a large, incumbent vendor. Dan Farber of ZDNet commented that this is "no surprise".

Clearly as the Enterprise vendors introduce Enterprise 2.0 offerings they bring they bring a compelling option for IT, promising easier integration from existing suppliers. However the case studies presented at the 2008 Enterprise 2.0 Boston conference show that Enterprises are still adopting a mix of the Enterprise 2.0 vendor alternatives.

What mix of Enterprise 2.0 vendors do you have? Have your say in our comments.

Related articles on E20portal.com:

A chat with Ismael Ghalimi about the Office 2.0 Conference

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 22:00:29 +0000

With only a few weeks until The Office 2.0 conference E20portal.com arranged a chat with the organiser Ismael Ghalimi to find out more about this years event. Oliver Marks, the ZDNet writer attended the last two Office2.0's and describes the event as a "collective experiment" and a "fascinating cutting edge experience". The conference focuses on collaboration, mobility and productivity. CNET posted a list of the themes and vendors from last year’s event.

Dan Farber from ZDnet called the event "work 2.0" saying its about "changing the way people work, especially with collaboration technology as a foundation, beyond having a group of people in different locations and sharing documents."

Who is the Office 2.0 conference target audience?

The maximum of 600 attendees are spilt into a mix of industry people including vendors; speakers; old and new media. There are 250 places for end users from small to large enterprises at VP level.

How is the Office2.0 concept moving into the Enterprise?

It is slow in terms of large numbers, however those which do it, do it big and really see huge benefits. GE has implemented Office 2.0 on a large scale and are presenting their experiences at the conference.

How has the Office2.0 experiment changed over the last three years and what have you learnt?

The first Office 2.0 was an accident and the second was about end user adoption. This year’s event is about maturity and how Office2.0 works in enterprises. We have learnt there is confusion out there in the market. Our own experiences have shown a lack of integration between tools. We are using Salesforce.com for everything where possible because we need a single task list as part of the Getting Things Done approach.

You said on your website this years Office 2.0 will have "a bit more users, a bit less vendors, a bit more fireside chats, a bit less panels"

We have decided to be more selective with the speakers by reducing the speaking slots by half, even though we have over 200 submissions. This year we are also using the enterprise vendor’s internal experiences of Office 2.0 as user cases.

Which sessions are you most looking forward too?

The opening Getting Things Done chat with our keynote speaker David Allen. The project management panel because this is such a new developing area with more integrated task management. The GE user case session and the un-conference session with David Coleman.

What do you see as the conference of the future?

Branding at conferences will be much more than having big conference booths. There will be more involvement of panellist moderators. Social networking will be available before, during and after the event using tools such as Jive’s Clearspace. Attendees will use internet tablets. The back channel's will be projected for everyone to see and remote attendees will be given a good experience.

A ticket reduction is available here

E20portal.com monthly roundup

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 15:57:48 +0000

To make sure you are up to date with Enterprise 2.0 news E20portal.com has put together a roundup of the significant industry reports, events and vendor updates from the last few weeks:

New Industry reports and resources

McKinsey Web 2.0 Enterprise report - McKinsey, the US consultancy, released ‘Building the Web 2.0 Enterprise: McKinsey Global Survey Results’ based on a survey of 1988 executives. The report shows usage of E20 technologies is increasing, however experiences are varied and tool usage is changing. This report resulted in much blogsphere activity including: Hadley Reynolds of FastForward and Patti Anklam of AppGap. E20portal.com has been running a series of special reports on the 'Industry Researchers' to compare and summarize their findings. These reports include, Market Research suggests Enterprise 2.0 confusion and How big is the Enterprise 2.0 pie?.

Enterprise 2.0 Book - Niall Cook released his long anticipated new book 'Enterprise 2.0: How Social Software Will Change the Future of Work' in July. Niall is CEO of the business social bookmarking software company Cogenz and works for the communications consultancy Hill & Knowlton. Headshift, the E2.0 consultancy, has posted a short review of Niall’s book.

Events update

Office 2.0 Conference update - More details of this event are now available from the new Office 2.0 conference website. E20portal.com will be chatting with conference organiser Ismael Ghalimi to find out his thoughts on this years event. The interview will be posted soon on E20portal.com

E20portal.com events page additions - More Enterprise 2.0 worldwide events have now been included within the E20portal.com event page. These events include the Defrag 2008 Conference in Denver and the 6th Annual Enterprise Architecture Conference in Sydney.

Vendor news

Mindtouch new release - MindTouch, the open source wiki vendor, has released a new version of Deki: “Kilen Woods". This major new version extends the applications capabilities to include workflow and enterprise integration. The ZDNet writer Dennis Howlett and Barb Mosher of CMSWire both wrote praising reviews of MindTouch's new version.

Amazon S3 has outage – The Amazon S3 web storage service suffered a severe worldwide outage on July 20th. In a statement issued by Amazon they said ‘we know that any downtime is unacceptable and we won't be satisfied until performance is statistically indistinguishable from perfect.’ . The book author and blogger Nick Carr commented constructively on the outage.

How big is the Enterprise 2.0 pie?

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:01:05 +0000

In our follow up to ‘Market Research suggests Enterprise 2.0 confusion’ we explore analyst predictions for the future of the Enterprise 2.0 market.

Early this year Forrester released a report predicting that the ‘Enterprise Web 2.0’ market would be worth $4.6 billion by 2013. In October 2007 Radicati predicted that the global ‘Business Social Software’ market would reach $3.3 billion by 2011. In July 2007 Gartner had predicted a very different figure: $707 million revenue for ‘Enterprise Social Software’ by 2011.

Are these apples-for-apples comparisons? Who should we believe?

ReadWriteWeb covered Forrester’s report in detail, including the challenges ahead for the emerging Enterprise 2.0 market. InformationWeek also provided coverage along with additional quotes from the report’s author. CMSWire put together a useful summary of the key points.

Others were quick to point out the flaws in Forrester’s analysis. Niall Cooke exposed that based on the report’s own findings the actual figure for Enterprise 2.0 spending is closer to $1.8 billion - the $4.6 billion value from Forrester includes external web-facing implementations as well as internal Enterprise 2.0 deployments. Dennis Howlett of ZDNet raised further concerns based on Forrester’s definition and scope.

We have reported recently how the lack of a single reference term among analysts continues to create confusion, this may be a contributory factor to the differences in predicted figures from the leading analysts. Forrester’s report goes on to predict “subsumption into other enterprise collaboration software over the next five years” and that Enterprise 2.0 “will eventually disappear into the fabric of the enterprise”.

Will the current economic slowdown be a threat to Enterprise 2.0 market growth? Not according to McKinsey, in March 2007 they said that “More than three-fourths of executives who responded to a McKinsey survey say they plan to maintain or increase their investments in technology trends that encourage user collaboration, such as peer-to-peer networking, social networks, and Web services”. In more recent survey results McKinsey said this month that “all companies [who responded to the survey] plan to spend more on Web 2.0 tools”. Gartner also released a report this month forecasting that I.T. spending will remain strong in 2008, with an increase of 9.5 percent from 2007.

We often hear that Enterprise 2.0 will become a feature, not a product. This may evolve as existing enterprise vendors begin to include social networking, blogs and wikis within their flagship enterprise solutions. Dion Hinchliffe writes about IBM, Microsoft, SAP and Oracle activity in this space. We also reported last month how large enterprise vendors are beginning to enter the Enterprise 2.0 space.

Large enterprise vendors will continue to develop Enterprise 2.0 solutions to cross-sell to existing accounts and leading ‘pure-play’ Enterprise 2.0 vendors will continue to grow their customer base. Spending in existing markets such as Knowledge Management, Intranets and Collaboration will also begin to overlap with Enterprise 2.0. However the future of enterprise software is changing with open-source playing a significant role in many Enterprise 2.0 implementations. Another trend is emerging too, some companies are turning their backs on enterprise software altogether - Bill Ives reports how Serena Software moved their corporate intranet to Facebook for all 800 employees.

Does your company have an Enterprise 2.0 budget? Have your say in our comments.

Related articles on E20portal.com:

Market Research suggests Enterprise 2.0 confusion

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 18:32:55 +0000

In a new series of articles, E20portal.com will be assessing recent Enterprise 2.0 reports from leading industry analysts and research organisations. In our first article we explore the awareness and perception of Enterprise 2.0 and Web 2.0.

Our recent featured blog post from Bill Ives and Andrew McAfee’s 'Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration' both point out that Web 2.0 for consumers is not the same as Web 2.0 in the enterprise. KPMG's 2007 report - 'Enterprise 2.0: Future or Fad?' - defines key Enterprise 2.0 terms from a business perspective and describes how Enterprise 2.0 can bring real business value.

Forrester Research however regularly uses the term ‘Enterprise Web 2.0’. The lack of a single reference term among analysts continues to create confusion. This confusion may inhibit the uptake of new business oriented tools because many businesses are wary of giving users access to consumer Web 2.0 products.

The line between consumer technology and business technology is blurring. This is becoming a significant challenge for businesses to manage. The results of a Sophos survey suggest that 50% of workers are blocked from using Facebook at work due of concerns over productivity and security.

In Forrester’s survey of 265 IT decision makers - 'IT Departments Play Key Role In The Acquisition And Deployment Of Web 2.0 Technologies' - 48% remain concerned about the risks of unsanctioned tools and technology.

The report also claims that 63% are expecting social technologies to have an impact in the business world. This impact will be a positive according to most respondents, with only 3% of viewing Web 2.0 negatively.

As Enterprise 2.0 gains validly through mass adoption the differences between Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, and the business value they can bring, should become clear. However we still have a long way to go. AIIM recently surveyed 441 individuals in a major Enterprise 2.0 study - 'Enterprise 2.0: Agile, Emergent & Integrated'. AIIM found that 74% of respondents have only a vague familiarity, or no clear understanding, of what Enterprise 2.0 is. Although despite this lack of understanding 44% of respondents indicated that Enterprise 2.0 is “imperative” or “significant” to corporate goals and objectives. Oliver Marks of Zdnet and the blogger Niall Cook add further comment to AIIM’s findings. CMSWire also provide a useful summary in ‘Organizations still don’t get Enterprise2.0’.

Is the value of Enterprise 2.0 clear for your business? Have your say in our comments.

Featured Blog: Andrew McAfee

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 07:00:00 +0000

This is the second in a series of articles in which E20portal.com will be featuring some of the best blog's from the world of Enterprise 2.0.

Andrew McAfee is an Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He coined the term 'Enterprise 2.0' in the Spring 2006 MIT Sloan Management Review article: Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration. Andrew discusses the impact of information technology (IT) on businesses and their leaders at his influential Harvard Business School Blog.

	Andrew P. McAfee
	Associate Professor of Business Administration
	Andrew McAfee joined the faculty of the Technology and Operations Management Unit at Harvard Business School in 1998. His current research includes an exploration of how Web 2.0 technologies can be used within the enterprise, and what their impact is likely to be.

We have selected five of Andrew's most informative and thought-provoking blog posts from the past two years. In these featured entries Andrew explores alternatives to overloaded email and discusses the organisational challenges of technological and cultural change. The posts can be read in full by following the title links below . . .

Harbors in the Ocean of E-mail

June 16th, 2008

"E-mail is clearly 'in the flow' for most modern knowledge workers. For many of them, it seems, it in fact_ is _the flow. But so what? Why is a lot of e-mail bad? If consequential things happen frequently and a knowledge worker needs to be aware of them in order to do her job, isn't e-mail as good a vehicle as any to communicate these important developments?"

In this post Andrew discusses the problem with using e-mail for all communications, and how Enterprise 2.0 tools can be used to work collaboratively without emails and attachments. Expanding on a recent New York Times article and research from the Information Overload Research Group he explores the concept of 'in the flow' tools and techniques for team collaboration.

A Technology Flip Test: Introducing Channels in a World of Platforms

January 15th, 2007

"The writer and and cultural observer Stanley Crouch, when asking his audience to consider a given issue, sometimes proposes a 'flip test' in which important elements of the status quo are reversed. It's an effective way to unmask hidden assumptions and double standards. And it can work quite well for questions around technology."

Andrew challenges conventional thinking in this insightful post by reversing important elements of the Enterprise 2.0 debate. He asks us to "imagine that current corporate collaboration and communication technologies were exclusively E2.0 platforms - blogs, wikis, etc. - and all of a sudden a crop of new channel technologies - email, instant messaging, text messaging - became available.", he then discusses his observations and potential results.

From Freeform to What Form?

June 27th, 2006

"Some wiki enthusiasts I've talked to are adamant that the technology should remain a blank slate--- a completely freeform collaboration environment. The only 'rule' is complete equality: anyone who can see the content can edit the content, any edit can itself be edited by anyone, and any edit can also be undone (or re-done) by anyone. As I've discussed before, while this sounds like a recipe for anarchy it's actually often a path to emergence."

Andrew's definition of Enterprise 2.0 includes the term 'freeform'. In this post Andrew explores the upsides and downsides of a completely freeform environment and how it relates structure and the "desire for control".

People, Computers, and People People

December 15th, 2007

"HR executives see all the bad things people can do, so I was expecting them to have a similarly cautious reaction to E2.0 (which is a concept at the intersection of people and computers). Instead, I found the group to be truly excited about the possibilities offered by emergent social software platforms."

Andrew compares reactions from HR executives and IT executives in this post discussing how Enterprise 2.0 is "at the intersection of people and computers" and how "people people were more optimistic about E2.0 than the computer people". He covers typical Enterprise 2.0 concerns including security, trust, benefits and risks and how these are viewed within large organisations.

The 9X Email Problem

September 29th, 2006

"Email is virtually everyone's current endowment of collaboration software. Gourville's research suggests that the average person will underweight the prospective benefits of a replacement technology for it by about a factor of three, and overweight by the same factor everything they're being asked to give up by not using email."

In this post Andrew expands on research investigating why so many new consumer products fail to catch on with their intended audiences, despite the clear advantages they offer over what's currently on the market. Applying this concept to the Enterprise 2.0, he observes that E2.0 tools may need to be 9x better than email to convince us to use them for collaboration.

More Featured Blogs from E20portal.com

Featured Blog: Bill Ives

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 11:14:39 +0000

This is the first of a series of articles in which E20portal.com will be featuring some of the best blog's from the world of Enterprise 2.0. The authors will be helping us by personally selecting some of their favourite posts. Our first featured blog is from Bill Ives.

Bill is a prolific and well known industry blogger contributing to leading group blogs including Corante, The App Gap and the Fast Forward Blog. Bill also shares ideas and generates discussion on Enterprise 2.0, business blogs, Web 2.0 and knowledge management at his own Portals and KM blog.

	Bill Ives
	Independent consultant, writer, and speaker
	Bill has spent over 25 years as a consultant and writer working with Fortune 100 companies in knowledge management, portals, and learning, and most recently is helping firms with their market facing blogs. For several years he led the client Knowledge Management Practice within the Human Performance Service Line at Accenture.

Bill has selected some of his top blog posts to be featured on E20portal.com. His first selection examines the different approach needed to trust blogs compared with old media. His second post explores the fundamental differences between Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0, and the real business value this new social approach can bring. These posts can be read in full by following the title links below . . .

Can You Trust Your Blogger? What is the Role of Blogs in Business Communication?

May 2nd 2008

"Blogs are conversations and they do put more responsibility on the reader to judge the material than say, the New York Times, with its army of fact checkers. But even the NYT gets it wrong some times and everyone has some type of bias. Blogs are also a medium. You could ask, do you trust people on the telephone more than in person? Do you trust a magazine article more than television? In each case, the answer would be it depends on the person. A blogger has to build the trust of his or her audience by being consistent and transparent"

Using three market research studies Bill Ives discusses how the blog reader determines the trustworthiness of the information they receive through consistency and reputation. Bill explores how the blog reader has to become more responsible for judging the source and highlights the value of blogging.

Enterprise 2.0 is not Web 2.0 nor is it an Oxymoron

April 30th 2008

"Enterprise 2.0 is not an oxymoron. Not that I especially like the term but it seems to be sticking as did web 2.0 that no one liked at first, either. What is more important than the term is the existence of an emerging class of business software that does not simply take consumer web tools behind the firewall. These tools are developed for businesses to solve business problems."

In this post Bill develops a FastForward debate which challenges the validity of Enterprise 2.0. Bill says that there is a place for social activity at work because businesses are run and operated by people. Bill uses practical examples and aMcKinsey report, 'The Next Revolution in Interactions', to highlight the application and importance of Enterprise 2.0 tools to support, monitor, and make accessible these important business interactions.

Why All the Excitement About Blogs? Seven Part Series

April 30th 2008

Enterprise 2.0 Success Stories, The Best from 2007

April 30th 2008

More Featured Blogs from E20portal.com

Enterprise 2.0 Events and Vendor List Updated

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 17:07:41 +0000

We've updated our Enterprise 2.0 Events List to include all the relevant events we know of happening over the next 12-18 months (if we've missed any please let us know at events@e20portal.com). Included is the Office 2.0 Conference 2008 which is returning to San Francisco this September. It will be the third year for Office 2.0 with IT|Redux promising "a bit more users, a bit less vendors, a bit more fireside chats, a bit less panels, and the usual débauche of sleek high-tech gadgets that is our gathering's trademark." - look out for more details coming soon as the event is planned in "nine weeks with no staff".

Also updated is our Enterprise 2.0 Vendors Directory. We have started to populate it with Software Vendors, Consultants and System Integrators. If you'd like to add your company to our directory simply click the 'Add your listing here' link in the appropriate directory section.

Preparation for Enterprise Mashups

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:00:00 +0000

Gartner have predicted that Enterprise Mashups “will be the dominant model (80 percent) for the creation of new enterprise applications” listing them as one of the Top Ten Disruptive Technologies for 2008 to 2012. In May 2008 Forrester defined Enterprise Mashups as "custom applications that combine multiple, disparate data sources into something new and unique" and projected that the enterprise mashup market will reach nearly $700 million by 2013.

At the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston IBM provided a richer definition. In Enterprise Mashups - A Technical Deep Dive Nicole Carrier (Product Management Lead for Lotus Mashups) defined Enterprise Mashups as "a lightweight web application created by combining information or capabilities from more than one existing source to deliver new functions & insight." and described the characteristics that are common amongst Enterprise Mashups:

Rapid creation (days not months)
Reuses existing capabilities, but delivers new functions + insights
Requires limited to no technical skills
Often mixes internal and external sources

IBM's presented real-world examples including a 'Rapid Response Mashup' from Boeing (used in emergency situations to quickly identify the nearest airport that can safely handle an incoming aircraft based on aircraft's performance characteristics) and a 'Shipment Monitoring Dashboard' from Carrefour Group (used to locate and track shipments alongside piracy incidents and weather by combing internal and internet data). Both examples are featured in the presentation slides linked above.

Dion Hinchcliffe was one of the first to recognise the potential for Enterprise Mashups and has been tracking them for some time. In Enterprise mashups get ready for prime-time he discusses the key motivations for mashups within organizations, and how they differ from the mashups that emerged from the web. Building on this analysis Dion has continued to provide comprehensive coverage of the Enterprise Mashup market. Ahead of the Enterprise 2.0 Conference he outlined the latest Enterprise Mashup vendors, platforms and emerging standards in Mashups turn into an industry as offerings mature,

One of the biggest challenges for Enterprise Mashups is being able to unlock the data held in existing systems. IBM suggested that feeds provide the best mechanism for exposing this data. Atom feeds have many advantages over RSS feeds, and alongside the Atom Publishing Protocol they can be used to enable bi-directional Enterprise Mashups that can both read and write data. IBM have a technical summary of how this works in practice on their developerworks site: Create and edit Web resources with the Atom Publishing Protocol.

The Enterprise Mashup market is maturing, and although there is still work to be done around interoperabilty and common standards one message is clear - start building Atom Syndication and Publishing support into new applications now, and consider enabling Atom support for existing and legacy data sources, in order to maximise future Enterprise Mashup capability.

Are you using, or planning to use Enterprise Mashups? Share your thoughts in our comments section.

Culture Implications when introducing Enterprise 2.0

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 15:39:28 +0000

Managing organisational cultural change is a well known challenge and was a common theme from the Boston conference case studies. Without the support of the management and employees Enterprise 2.0 technology projects can fail disastrously. Euen Semple , an independent business advisor on social computing with grounded experience of cultural change, recently posted a list on why he thinks most companies will fail at Enterprise 2.0. The CIA (USA Central Intelligence Agency) case study at the conference strongly highlighted how they overcame these challenges.

Tony Byrne felt that the CIA "shared many good nuggets about overcoming institutional and cultural resistance" and describes in detail the CIA's historical culture of collaboration. Don Burke from the CIA said at the conference "implementing social software is more of a cultural challenge than a technical one" and recommended "to start small and simple" to "get people who are uncomfortable with the tools to quickly make and edit and publish". Starting small and simple was echoed by the Lockheed Martin case with Lockheed's Shawn Dahlen saying "Think big, start small, move fast." and their Enterprise 2.0 project tagline "Express, Discover, Connect". C.G Lynch from CIO magazine has a more detailed account of the CIA cultural challenges.

In contrast Tom Davenport 's Harvard University blog post critically examines the CIA's cultural challenge quoting that the "middle management isn't comfortable" with their Enterprise 2.0 wiki, Intellipedia. Heather Havenstein of Computerworld says that "For any company moving to embrace Enterprise 2.0, some resistance to the tools that first gained traction within the consumer space is often inevitable."

Another case study at conference from Simon Revell of Pfizer , a global pharma, said that "We had to challenge the culture". Pfizer took a strong and creative marketing approach to promoting the value of Enterprise 2.0 to help employees with their everyday work. Revell went onto say "We had to get them through the fear barrier." to overcome resistance of cultural change. This case is analysed by Paul McDougall from InformationWeek.

At the final case study discussion panel with the presenters from CIA, Pfizer, Sony and Wachovia, Andrew McAfee was "a bit surprised that none of them identified management as a real impediment. the panellists hadn't seen managers in their organizations actively trying to impede Enterprise 2.0." The initial responses from the panelists highlighted the users as the biggest barriers to faster and deeper adoption of Enterprise 2.0. However, in McAfee's blog post he he goes on to question the reasons for this response indicating that organisational management hierarchies can hinder adoption.

A new organisational management approach that encourages greater organisational collaboration has been termed Management 2.0. Jon Husband has produced a good blog post on business management innovation. The thought leader Gary Hamel of Harvard University has also produced a book on the future of Managment referring to the change in management that is needed. Enterprise 2.0 is bringing existing management methods and organisational culture into focus and the conference cases studies have illustrated how some of these changes can be overcome.

Real World Enterprise 2.0 Case Studies

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 08:25:59 +0000

Steve Wylie and his team at TechWeb must have put a great deal of time in convincing six global Enterprise firm's into presenting at the Boston Enterprise 2.0 conference in June 2008, however it proved to be worth the effort. Various news and blogger reports on five of these cases are summarised below: CIA (USA Central Intelligence Agency); Lockheed Martin (Defence Technology); Pfizer (Phamaciucals); Sony (Computer Entertainment) and Wachovia (Banking).

These real world and tangible cases of Enterprise's adopting Enterprise 2.0 presented by enthusiastic internal project evangelist caught the focus of many conference attendees. This interest and excitement continued post the event with the CIA and Lockheed receiving much of the attention.

Lockheed Martin

The Lockheed Martin presentation on the last day created a lot of excitement because of the extent Lockheed had developed and adopted a rich internal social network application with 4000 users and the potential to go to 150,000. Alex Howard of Whatis?com in his report said "this unlikely candidate for early adoption of enterprise 2.0 technologies was one of the unexpected hits of the conference" and blogger Jen Robinson said the "session was terrific" on his post. The presentation is well summaried by C.G. Lynch of CIO and blogger David Hobbie and includes implementation and justification advice from Lockheed.

CIA

The CIA case attracted a lot of interest as result of the reorganisation of the intelligence bureau after 9/11 and the curiosity of a secretive organising becoming more open to sharing information internally. The CIA case generated the most coverage with David W. Gardner, C.G.Lynch and Tom Davenport of Harvard University having good reviews of the presentation. These reports strongly focused in on the CIA's implementation advice for introducing and adopting a Wiki into a large organization. A short interview with the CIA presenters is available from conference organizers.

Wakchovia, Pfizer and Sony

Wachovia and the other case's presented were equally strong with Wachovia business reasons and justifcation to senior managment for adopting Enterprise 2.0 being well descibed by Bill Ives and C.G. Lynch. Reports on Pfizer internal marketing promotion and adoption tatics of Enterprise 2.0 can be found from Bill Ives and Paul McDoughall of InformationWeek, which includes numerous quotes from Pfizer. Sony's Enterprise 2.0 usage had limited coverage becasue of presentation technical issues, however Thomas Claburn of InformationWeek did an good preview with Sony in early June.

Andrew McAfee's wrap up

Bill Ives thought that 'The magnitude of the transformation was a common theme at many sessions at the conference'. Furthermore, Alex Howard felt 'that the crucial question this week, was addressed head-on by Lockheed with the value of social networking in the enterprise being 'able to watch what other people are doing, easily, and then being able to search it and ask questions'. The majority of the presenters were on a summary panel discussion with Andrew McAfee, the Harvard University Academic who has championed Enterprise 2.0. Bill Ives and David W. Gardner review this Enterprise 2.0 Reality Check and highlight the final recommendations from the panel for boosting Enterprise 2.0 Adoption.

There was some feelings such as Lee Bryant from Headshift, an Enterprise 2.0 consultancy, that too much focus was on the vendors and not enough on the problems or cases during the four day conference. However the cases presented were of relevant quality which demonstrated signs of real results and value of Enterprise 2.0 adoption in complex large global companies.

How do you think Enterprise 2.0 adoption in the real world evolve over the next 12 months before the next Boston conference? Leave your thoughts and experiences in our comments section to continue the conversation.

Three Enterprise 2.0 Alternatives

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 17:27:13 +0000

Large enterprise vendors, pure-play start ups, or open-source? This was the question driving a lot of debate in Boston last week at the Enterprise 2.0 conference. With capable offerings from all three camps how should a company decide which path to take?

The answer isn't easy and in some cases the right choice might be a combination, or even all three.

Enterprise Vendors go head-to-head

Day one started off with a head-to-head between IBM (Lotus Connections) and Microsoft (SharePoint). Suzanne Minassian stepped up first to present a comprehensive and polished demo of Lotus Connections. She covered a lot of ground, ticking all of the right Enterprise 2.0 boxes showing people profiles, wiki integration, tagging, bookmarking, search and more, all within a seamless and clean user interface. Meanwhile, Microsoft's Lawrence Liu struggled to win over the crowd with his PowerPoint slides and clunky SharePoint examples. Comments, analysis and opinion flooded in. Susan Scrupski found Microsoft's demo "uninspiring" but felt that IBM "clearly 'got it" she also noted IBM had "a terrific UI, more 2.0 features than I could even keep up".

An in depth analysis can be found at CIO.com where C.G. Lynch concludes that "SharePoint needs work with its social computing features" and conducts a follow-up interview with Rob Curry, Microsoft's director of SharePoint. David Hobbie has also reported on the session providing a detailed summary.

Microsoft didn't gain many new fans in Boston, missing the social focus that attendees were expecting. However, it is important to frame these products correctly: SharePoint is a platform that provides an underlying infrastructure to build upon. Two of the most popular end-user case studies presented (Wachovia and Lockheed Martin) both used SharePoint as the foundation for their Enterprise 2.0 deployments. Like most Microsoft platforms, it's the independent 3rd party vendors (ISVs) that bring it to life through add-on applications and/or custom development.

A vendor leading in the SharePoint space is Newsgator with their Social Sites solution. Look out for a significant SharePoint/Social-Sites case study coming from Microsoft soon.

Pure Players

As the Enterprise 2.0 market continues to evolve specialist vendors emerge to fill the gaps left by traditional enterprise software companies. Two of the most prominent 'pure-play' vendors at the conference, each of a similar size and age, were Atlassian and Jive. Both were highly visible with Jeffrey Walker and Sam Lawrence each presenting sessions or participating in panel discussions. As focussed specialists they have the advantage of agility over large enterprise vendors such as IBM and Microsoft, furthermore they are delivering what their customers want (and need) today. Solutions from these pure-play vendors promise an 'out-of-the-box' Enterprise 2.0 experience.

Michael Krigsman (ZDNet) discussed the importance of the 'Enterprise' part of Enterprise 2.0 in a follow-up interview with Jive's Sam Lawrence. Sam reinforced the need for smaller vendors to understand the complex environments that make up enterprise IT and that enterprises "need to see the business value, and it needs to fit into what they're building". Matt Asay profiled both Atlassian and Jive earlier this year in his CNET article debating 'The future of enterprise software'.

Other specialist vendors present in Boston were Socialtext (Enterprise Wiki), ThoughtFarmer (focussed around Intranets), Trampoline (bringing social networking to the enterprise), and Attensa (an enterprise RSS platform).

Open Source

Open-Source software is empowering - If you come across something you don't like, you can fix it yourself. This was a key factor for Sony's Ned Lerner who used open source extensively in his Enterprise 2.0 implementation, he said "Open-Source is like a safety-net, if it's not quite right we can fix it". For Sony, the Open-Source approach provided integration opportunities that closed-source commercial software never could. Another Open-Source example was from the CIA where MediaWiki (the engine behind Wikipedia) provided the foundation for their Intellipedia project. Bill Ives provides a summary and more links.

More and more commercial companies are forming to provide commercial services based around open-source software, examples are Alfresco, SugarCRM and Acquia. This model can provide the best of both worlds - an open, customisable code-base along with commercial support and services. A hybrid model is also beginning to emerge - Atlassian and Jive are just two examples of commercial software companies that include access to their source code when you buy their products, clearly seeing the advantage this brings to their customers.

Final Thoughts

Large enterprises have complex IT infrastructure. Systems have often evolved over a number of years and consist of many applications running on a diverse mix of vendor platforms. This brings significant challenges around integration, security and management.

As open standards around data-portability and integration become more common some of these challenges will become easier to overcome. Adherence to standards should be high on the assessment check-list for any new product or solution - not just Enterprise 2.0. Key questions to ask are "How do I integrate with my existing systems?", "How do I integrate with my existing data-sources?", and "How do I get my data out if it all goes wrong?".

Were you in Boston? Let us know your thoughts on this topic in our comments section.

Enterprise 2.0 Boston Roundup

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 17:07:35 +0000

The Techweb Enterprise 2.0 Conference 2008 is over and the dust has settled. E20Portal.com has put together a roundup of news, opinions and blog posts about event.

We will be posting four articles based on the conference, look out for them coming soon:

Three Enterprise 2.0 Alternatives
Real World Enterprise 2.0 Case Studies
Culture Implications when introducing Enterprise 2.0
Preparation for Enterprise Mash-ups

Visit the Enterprise 2.0 Conference website for more details on the event, including presentation materials and post-conference news.

ThoughtFarmer v3.0 Breaks the Organizational Language Barrier

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 01:55:24 +0000

Newly released version of ThoughtFarmer Intranet includes easy to use multilingual support

June 9, 2008 - Vancouver, B.C.

Today, at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston, ThoughtFarmer announced the third generation of its wiki-inspired intranet platform: ThoughtFarmer Intranet 3.0 Multilingual.

ThoughtFarmer is a simple, social way for employees to collaborate, share ideas and find information. Wiki-inspired, but without the chaos, ThoughtFarmer combines the collaborative and empowering benefits of social software with a secure and centralized intranet platform demanded by the modern enterprise.

Video demo, screenshots and more . . .

Previous versions of ThoughtFarmer addressed the need for organizations to be able to better leverage the intellectual capital that exists at all levels of the organization. ThoughtFarmer helped companies like Intrawest Placemaking break through regional and departmental barriers, bringing together geographically dispersed colleagues with similar job functions. Idea sharing on ThoughtFarmer produced real ROI.

In version 3.0, ThoughtFarmer sets its sights on breaking through the organizational language barrier.

"Our multinational customers want to collaborate regardless of language," said ThoughtFarmer President, Darren Gibbons. "ThoughtFarmer 3.0's features allow them to cross those language boundaries."

ThoughtFarmer Intranet 3.0 Multilingual includes several features to make it easy to work across multiple languages, including:

Automatic detection of the intranet user's browser language
Localizable interface that can be set for groups of users
Intelligent fallback to the user's secondary language preference if the desired content is not available in the preferred language
Easy language toggling between all available versions of the content
Multilingual search
Support for all UTF-8 compliant languages, including French, Chinese, Japanese, Korean
Existing ThoughtFarmer clients are eager to make the migration to version 3.0

In addition to multilingual features, ThoughtFarmer Intranet 3.0 adds new blogging, forums, and calendaring capabilities. For geographically dispersed companies, ThoughtFarmer 3.0 also supports data replication across distributed data centres.

"Obviously, the language support components are a huge step forward for us," said Chris McGrath, ThoughtFarmer co-creator. "But I'm especially pleased with the performance enhancements we've achieved to support high-capacity, load-balanced deployments. And our team has done an incredible job at integrating secure blogging, forums and calendaring features while keeping the interface very simple."

"We're proud of the success and growth ThoughtFarmer has achieved over the last year, and we look forward to the opportunities made possible by version 3.0. We think an easy-to-use interface, web 2.0 collaboration features and enterprise-grade scalability make for a powerful combination," added Gibbons.

ThoughtFarmer Intranet 3.0 Multilingual can be ordered now, with an expected ship date of July 7th.

Video demo of ThoughtFarmer Intranet 3.0 Multilingual:

About ThoughtFarmer

ThoughtFarmer is the ultimate intranet. Forget the impossibly complex, seldom-used corporate intranets of days gone by. ThoughtFarmer is a simple, social way for employees to collaborate, share ideas and find information. Customers include BMW ORACLE Racing, eHarmony, IDEO, Guardian News & Media, Lukoil, and Nexon Publishing. For more information, see www.thoughtfarmer.com.

About OpenRoad Communications Ltd
OpenRoad Communications is a Vancouver-based web application development firm. Since 1995, OpenRoad has provided web development, CMS, and user experience consulting services to large corporations and government clients. In 2005 OpenRoad developed ThoughtFarmer, an enterprise 2.0 intranet solution. ThoughtFarmer has been deployed internationally for a wide range of clients. For more information, see www.openroad.ca.

Socialtext v3.0 brings People and Dashboard

Mon, 05 May 2008 15:32:06 +0000

Socialtext today announced that it has built upon its wiki foundation to launch a broad set of Business Social Software solutions.

Two significant product innovations -- Socialtext Dashboard and Socialtext People -- extend the wiki platform for people to gain additional insight by managing their information, conversations and connections. Socialtext also launched four core Solution.

Video demo, screenshots and more . . .

The business social software launch heralds a new direction for the company, in the works since CEO Eugene Lee took the helm five months ago.

Socialtext’s four core Solution Areas have been gleaned from five years of close engagement with enterprise customers and implemented by a Professional Services organization lead by Michael Idinopulos, a former McKinsey VP of Knowledge Management. This solutions orientation is in high demand with an increasing number of organizations looking to transform their business through social software.

“Wikis are the foundation for business social software, and we are building the rest of the house,” said CEO Eugene Lee. “It starts with People to make it easier, if not fun, to discover expertise. The Dashboard lets individuals customize their view of information and conversations. When combined with our four core Solution Areas, businesses not only realize productivity gains, but insight from their employees, customers and business partners. What we launched today shows how we will grow and transform our customer’s business, now and in the future.”

Wikis have emerged as the foundation for Business Social Software because of their flexibility and simplicity as a collaborative platform. Socialtext customers continue to benefit from best practices, templates, features specific to solution areas, training and management consulting to implement these solutions successfully. Forrester Research predicts that enterprise spending on Web 2.0 technologies will reach $4.6 billion globally by 2013. According to a recent Forrester Research report: In 2008, firms will look to invest in the most well established Web 2.0 tools — namely, wikis, blogs, and RSS... We expect that as the year progresses, more firms will start looking at social networking than the number that expects to today. Not only do most implementations begin with a wiki, but as a foundation for social software it orients success in collaborative knowledge sharing.

Socialtext version 3.0 includes:

Socialtext Dashboard

Personalized and customizable dashboards of internal and external social software activity. The social news feed of your colleague’s activity in wikis and beyond aids attention management. Enterprise-class and standards-based widgets, that users can generate, customize and assemble with a simple drag-and-drop user experience for what the individual determines productive. Or, starting with Dashboard Templates for the Four Solution Areas, users, or central administrators, can create and deploy dashboards for groups. Socialtext Dashboard supports third party widgets, and the OpenSocial gadget standard. Socialtext 3.0 also provides significant enhancements to its open APIs for enterprise integration

Socialtext People

Social networking adapted for the enterprise. Throughout the Socialtext wiki, Profiles are made visible so at any time you can pivot to the people behind the content. Profiles and a user directory make it easy for colleagues to introduce themselves and discover implicit and explicit expertise. People can subscribe to the activity of colleagues. Groupings enable users to declare interest and expertise on their profile and other users profiles, making group forming as simple as adding a tag.

Video demo of Socialtext People & Dashboard features:

The two new enhancements to Socialtext are currently in Beta and will be commercially available within a quarter. “The founding insight of Socialtext was adapting innovations from the consumer web that have great social dynamics into enterprise solutions,” said Chairman, President and Co-founder Ross Mayfield. “We foresaw that wikis would be the foundation, which we are now extending across Business Social Software.”

Source:
BussinessWire

Images and video:
Socialtext Press Room

Clearspace 2.0 enables Enterprise Social Productivity

Fri, 02 May 2008 11:31:54 +0000

When Jive launched Clearspace 1.0 in February of 2007, it was a response to an overwhelming number of enterprise customers saying the same thing: "we're stuck between heavyweight collaboration apps (good for file-based workflows, but no one uses them to collaborate) and lightweight Web 2.0 apps like wikis (good for quick adoption, but incomplete, siloed and don't scale)". They said, "bring all of these formerly disparate technologies into one system, make it enterprise class, and make it so highly-intuitive that anyone could use it." Jive did that. And it was very successful.

So now, a little over a year later, and with hundreds of customers under thier belt, they are learning a lot. The result is Clearspace 2.0

Video demo, screenshots and more . . .

While Clearspace has been very successful as a lightweight way to collaborate and organize content that was historically never captured, there were some consistent issues as thier customers tried to get it deployed inside thier organization:

How do I drive adoption?
How do I know what to focus on?
How should we manage projects?
How does it work with my Sharepoint content?
How do I involve people outside the firewall?
How do we keep track of changes?

Enter Clearspace 2.0

The driving force behind the 2.0 release was to take some of these issues head on. A good way to frame the new features (and existing / future features for that matter) is into the big categories of people, focus and work. Here's what they are launching:

People: Expanded profiles and organizational relationships. Find the right people based on the right information, and see exactly where they sit in the organization (full org chart functionality). Plus you can highlight a name and get a mini-profile.

Focus: Personalizable homepage. It's like iGoogle for your work life -- a completely widgitized homepage. No more being overwhelmed by all the content -- now you can provide your own filter to what matters most (what my colleagues are doing, what's popular, my projects, etc.).

Work: Projects, sharing and Sharepoint integration.

Projects: With very few products out there (in between heavyweight project mgmt apps and a spreadsheet), our customers were hungry for the ability to manage projects and coordinate resources at a high level, with features like milestones and tasks.

Sharing: A new cloud-based document sharing service allows you to collaborate with people outside the firewall, even if your software is installed on premise. Your guest user just logs into the service and can start adding content to your local instance.

Sharepoint Integration: Integration with Sharepoint 2007 allows you to search, browse and link to Sharepoint content from within Clearspace.

There's also a lot of new features under the hood like recording an audit log of actions performed in the admin console, the switch to the Spring and Struts 2, and improvements to the rich text editor. You can learn more in the new Clearspace section of their site.

Video demo of Clearspace 2.0 features:

Dave Hersh of Jive said he'd been using the release for a while now, and I'm a huge fan (projects and the widgetized homepage have made the biggest difference in my life).

Source:
Jive Software

External Links:
Jive Clearspace 2.0: a clear improvement, by Dennis Howlett on Enterprise Alley/ZDNet
Jive Brings Consumer-Style Coolness to the Enterprise, by Marshall Kirkpatrick on ReadWrite Web
Jive Clearspace 2.0 is named "2.0" for a reason, by Rick Turoczy on Silicon Florist
Jive's Clearspace: Using Web 2.0 tools to avoid e-mail in business, by Martin LaMonica on CNET
Jive, Maker of Enterprise Wikis and Blogs, Announces Integration with Sharepoint, by Chris Lynch on CIO.com
Jive adds social network to collaboration software, by Heather Havenstein on Computerworld

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Socialtext version 3.0 includes:

Socialtext Dashboard

Socialtext People

Video demo of Socialtext People & Dashboard features:

Clearspace 2.0 enables Enterprise Social Productivity

Enter Clearspace 2.0

Video demo of Clearspace 2.0 features: