ReadWriteEnterprise

Straw Man Argument About Enterprise 2.0 Doesn't Fly

Alex Williams — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:05:50 -0800

Dennis Howlett got the attention of the Enterprise 2.0 community today, with his continued skepticism about "social" technologies and their place in the business world. Here's a quote from his post entitled Enterprise 2.0 - the non-debate:

"Why am I not surprised? I've argued for years that the notion of anything that has 'social' attached to its moniker is about as welcome as breaking wind in a spacesuit."

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While Howlett makes a few good points in his post, we think that he's making a straw man argument - that the Enterprise 2.0 community is somehow involved in a big lie.

The reality is that Enterprise 2.0 applications augment our work and these technologies are having an effect on productivity and in some respects, business processes.

We spoke today with Mike Gotta, an industry analyst with the Burton Group. He puts it well. For data entry and claims processing, people use other tools. The Enterprise 2.0 offerings augment their work.

"Dennis has a point," Gotta said. "These systems are not workflow driven - we already have tools to do that. These tools augment work. They enhance it, they enrich it."

But even tools like ERP offerings are integrating lightweight layers to make them more usable, so that people can get their work done. We also recently wrote about Netvibes working with Sage Software to provide personal dashboards so business users can better use ERP applications.

A few other signs:

The Services sector is growing. We spoke to a large technology company this week that is questioning how they can grow under the weight of the email that stalls people in their work. They are working with a large services group which is helping them look at a number of ways for real-time data and notifications to take some of the load off of their engineering team. They've looked around and believe Enterprise 2.0 tools can perform a role that will help them grow and become a more profitable business.

More use cases are popping up. No matter how you feel about the Enterprise 2.0 conference, a lot of companies were there to say how they are using lightweight technologies to solve productivity and business problems.

Companies on the sell side are growing. Are they all charlatans? If so, are their clients really that stupid? We don't think so. To call people fakes is to say that these poor business people are just victims. That makes no sense. Moreover, we wonder how much more waste enterprises can take with heavyweight IT projects - those cost far more than a SaaS offering that you can test, try and pay on a per use basis.

We do see the gap between productivity and the business side of the organization with Enterprise 2.0 technologies. But the innovation is there. And lines of business are taking advantage of tools because they help get the work done.

We do agree that 'social' is a term too often overused. But to dismiss the Enterprise 2.0 community is going a bit too far - and does not reflect the reality of this new world.

Discuss

Microsoft To Offer Application Marketplace In Sharepoint 2010

Alex Williams — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 04:00:00 -0800

Microsoft will offer an application marketplace within Sharepoint 2010 that will integrate with third-party applications from its partner network. No date has been set for the marketplace lauch but it will evolve from "The Gallery" a feature that provides Sharepoint 2010 users access to templates.

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In an interview we did at Enterprise 2.0, Christian Finn said Microsoft will offer the marketplace for vendors who want to sell their products through the Sharepoint platform.

"We will have a route to market for vendors who want to have applications and add-ons available," Finn said.

Conceptually, Finn said, you think about a marketplace idea. Customers will navigate from the Sharepoint interface to see what web parts are available for a trial period.

Finn said that from their perspective, collaboration is mostly on-premise. Customers are starting to move to the cloud. "We are seeing early customers starting to move. When we see that bell curve adoption we will definitely be there."

But collaboration services are increasingly cloud-based. MindTouch, SocialCast, Socialtext and a host of other companies are offering best-of-breed-services.

The availability of a marketplace brings up a lot of questions about the role that partners will play with Sharepoint. But it also raises interesting competitive questions about the role of Sharepoint as a cloud-based service. It almost looks like it will be more of a Software-as-a-Servce (SaaS) than the on-premise platform it is today.

The Sharepoint application marketplace will evolve out of The Gallery, a resource within Sharepoint 2010 that serves as a central place for templates. Microsoft will initially offer their own web parts through Gallery. Eventually the service will take a different name and migrate to offering partner services.

We asked Finn what the model will look like. Will it be pay per use? How will the application marketplace be administered? Finn said most of the details are being worked out in Redmond.

The service will have IT safeguards. Finn said that IT managers will have a level of control over what applications users may integrate.

What Finn describes sounds similar to application platforms now commercially available. Salesfoce.com is the obvious example. TheirForce.com platform is a full development environment. AppExchange is the platform for building third party applications on Salesforce.com CRM.

Dazzle from Citrix also comes to mind. It is an iTunes like service that is all about making IT more consumer friendly. Employees may choose the applications that they want to purchase. The service is set up as a store front that can automatically stream the application on a virtual desktop to a Windows PC, a Mac or an iPhone.

Details are few about the application marketplace that will be offered through Sharepoint. But it does point to the increasing significance of third-party applications for the Sharepoint platform and how the service may evolve as cloud computing becomes more prevalent.

Discuss

IBM Launches Cloud Platform For Software Developers

Alex Williams — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:42:52 -0800

IBM announced today a set of cloud services that will allow developers to develop and test cloud applications. In addition, IBM is offering free compute and storage for developers using the IBM platform.

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IBM Smart Business Development and Test on IBM Cloud is designed to remove burdens from developers who spend a lot of time setting up their own test environments for applications. By using this kind of a cloud service, developers can test in a fraction of the time, compared to more traditional methods.

This has the potential to translate into a competitive advantage. By speeding up development, companies can move products faster to market.

The service supports third-party and open-source tools. IBM is targeting IT managers who often are managing hundred of projects on an annual basis.

IBM will also offer its service as a private cloud infrastructure. A private cloud infrastructure service is often designed for people who prefer governance and control over their own environment.

The IBM offering is in some respects a collaboration platform for engineers and IT managers. They can share projects and do development and testing. It further permits distributed teams to collaborate on development projects.

IBM is taking the right approach. They are focusing on education as a key component of the offering. They offer their own social network which serves as a resource for developers and IT managers. Cloud computing is still quite abstract for people and education helps customers feel more comfortable about making investments in cloud services. It helps mitigate the risk factor.

Discuss

Novell Pulse: Security and Backup to Google Wave

Dana Oshiro — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:37:26 -0800

Earlier today Novell demoed it's Google Wave-like product to the enterprise world. Pulse is the latest workplace collaboration platform to announce at this year's Enterprise 2.0 Conference and ReadWriteWeb was lucky enough to catch up with Novell's VP of Engineering Andy Fox for a demo of the new tool. The beta product is expected early next year.

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In late June we offered our first impressions of Google Wave. While Wave's claim to "reinventing email" has met with heavy criticism in the blogosphere, Pulse appears better-equipped to serve work-related users.

One of the great selling points for Pulse is the fact that instead of forcing users to add individual teammates for collaboration, the tool provisions groups and workmates from an enterprise identity system. This means that new employees are already set up to start. From here users can follow team and employee feeds, edit and send real-time messages and collaborate on documents in real-time.

While users can work on Novell templates within the system, they can also collaborate on 3rd party spreadsheets and documents with real-time syncing to desktop folders. This attention to backup is yet another of Pulse's advantages over Google Wave. When asked about the scenario of an employee going wild and vandalizing Pulse docs, says Fox, "We're not just offering point backup. We've got versioning on every single system keystroke."

Pulse also offers a higher degree of privacy for group settings and profiles where IT admin and general users set customized admin settings and privileges. According to Fox you can even customize the privacy on profile form fields to ensure that headhunters are not prospecting your staff from outside of the organization. Meanwhile the social aspect of a Yammer-like employee feed is enough reason to keep staff interested and engaged. And for those groups who are still committed to Wave, Pulse will also offer Wave integration via Google Wave's Federated protocol. For more info on Pulse check out the demo site.

Discuss

Second Life Goes Behind The Firewall

Alex Williams — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:18:17 -0800

Second Life is introducing a behind the firewall service for enterprise customers, another sign that the very definition of collaboration is changing as more companies seek ways to do their work in virtual environments.

In addition, Second Life will unveil a marketplace in the first quarter of 2010 where people may purchase templates and other 3D environments for their Second Life Enterprise world.

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We hear so much about how "people," are at the center of a world where social technologies have an increasingly important role. The reality is that the very definitions of time and place are changing in the enterprise and what it means to be present as a person is becoming increasingly abstract. We see this with the advent of augmented reality, which provides ways to layer our physical world with digital markers. In a 3D world, the applications for business allow for an "always on," world where people may have meetings, go sailing in a virtual sea and use 3D objects for training and other purposes.

The Second Life Enterprise environment provides users an added layer of security and the ability to scale an avatar community. Servers are installed in a company's data center, providing the 3D experience. The service can support up to 800 concurrent avatars. Second Life is made up of regions. Second Life Enterprise has the capacity for eight regions that also run concurrently.

The security component is a must for most large enterprises. Second Life Enterprise provides LDAP integration for creating and authenticating accounts.

According to Second Life, the marketplace will include collaboration tools and features that fit in a 3D world. This may include environments for meetings, events and training. Users may purchase business avatars and business oriented environments.

Second Life Enterprise will eventually provide the capability to integrate collaborative applications, meaning if a company wanted to integrate Sharepoint they could do so.

The Second Life platform compares to a service like Proton Media. Proton Media has a number of integrations already in place, including its fit with Sharepoint.

Discuss

Is Enterprise 2.0 A Crock?

Alex Williams — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:39:00 -0800

Is Enterprise 2.0 a crock? Where are the use cases? Seven enterprise managers spoke about five principles that are emerging around this topic at the Enterprise 2.0 conference today in San Francisco.

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Moderated by David Berlind, the group, all members of the 2.0 Adoption Council, looked at five issues to answer the question.

Topics addressed:

Workforce Transformation
Business Process Optimization
Intellectual Property/Privacy/Compliance
Religious Wars (technology/generational bias)
Bottom Line Business Benefits

Panelists:

Greg Lowe, social media architect and program manager at Alcatel-Lucent
Bruce Galinsky, director of IT, MetLife
Bryce Williams, social media consultant, Eli Lilly
Jamie Pappas, manager, social media, EMC
Mary Maida, information solutions manager, Medtronics, Inc.
Claire Flanagan, senior manager KM and Enterprise Social Collaboration, CSC

This conversation is not a new one but perhaps the difference now is that there are more examples of how Enterprise 2.0 is changing corporate practices

Workforce Transformation

The group's general consensus: The goal is to break down the data silos and the walled gardens that permeate the enterprise. Some of the highlights:

Murray, BoozAllen: Technologies are changing the business - period. "These technologies are helping us move smarter, faster. The inroads are coming.
Jami Pappas, EMC: "We have started a bottom up strategy. " The company has a few hundred champions who are champions for Enterprise 2.0 technologies
Galinsky, MetLife: "You need drivers." For example, the ability to collaborate quickly on products to market.

Business Process Optimization

More people do not come into the office for work. The virtual office is such a reality that collaboration tools become increasingly important. This is evident with the announcements such as the one from Second Life today about their enterprise offering and similar products from companies like Proton Media.

But still, for Murray of Booze Hamilton, said It comes down to baby steps. The reality, though, is it would never have seemed likely in 2006 that there would be applications plugging into Sharepoint.

Intellectual Property/Privacy

Data security always elicits fear. It's no different than how security is viewed in any context. Trust is always the big issue but it is also about keeping some form of control. At Eli Lilly, employees, a lot of them who are scientists, are chomping to use more collaborative tools.

Williams, Eli Lilly: The challenge is mitigating risk. "We have to find a way to herd the cats without putting data at risk."

Religious Wars (technology/generational bias)

With any movement, revolutionaries have the tendency to make those in power feel a bit uncomfortable. It is no different with enterprise technologies.

Galinsky of MetLife said that the issue is often about provincial differences. One group may prefer Microsoft while another group is into IBM, while a third may do whatever pleases them. The reality is it just takes time.

Bottom Line Business Benefits

The reality: Enterprise 2.0 technologies are early in the adoption phase but the soft cost savings are mounting. Microblogging is helping people find information faster and people are questioning the viability of email.

For example, Murray said they did a study of the costs to "reply all," to email. The end savings added up. "It is a toe in the door, an indicator. If I can save that much, what about the big stuff?"

What's striking about asking questions about all of this is the absence of discussions about the monumental waste in IT spending over the years. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been lost to IT projects that have gone hay wire. The new world of enterprise 2.0 technologies are lightweight in comparison and a fraction of the cost.

But the answer is readily apparent. The culture takes time to shift. That shift will occur but it's not going to happen overnight.

Discuss

CubeTree: Drilling Comments Down to the Cell in a Spreadsheet

Alex Williams — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 02:07:00 -0800

CubeTree is launching a new service today that makes documents into items that can support comments, adding a new dimension to how users can interact with spreadsheets, slides on a presentation and other content.

"Social documents," is what CubeTree calls the ability for users to comment on documents. The company, which is exhibiting at Enterprise 2.0, is one of the new players to the collaboration space.

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CubeTree considers itself one of the new breed of players in the Enterprise 2.0 space that is defined by conversation more than content.

Like a number of the new players, CubeTree leverages activity streams.

The company focuses on three main components:

Profiles: Users create a profile that drills down to where the person sits in the office, who is in the next cube and other detailed information that gives a picture of their work day. It reflects their activity stream; where they have commented; wiki pages they are editing and other information such as pictures of whiteboards from meetings.

Groups: Formed when a user wants control over who has access to information. Groups may be public, private or extended to partners, customers and other parties outside the organization.

Feeds: Collection of activities about the things that interests the user. This may be the people, the groups or topics the user follows. These all appear in an activity stream where users may comment on what appears.

Here's a demonstration of the "social document" features that CubeTree is launching today:

Discuss

Yammer Goes Deep: 50,000 Networks Up and Running

Alex Williams — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 23:45:56 -0800

Yammer came to the market with one of the first microblogging services. In the span of their existence, a number of companies launched their own versions of an activity stream. But Yammer looks like they have the customers to prove they have a hold on their sector of the market.

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At today's Enterprise 2.0 conference, Yammer announced that 50,000 networks have been established with its service. We asked Yammer's Steve Apfelberg what the size of these networks look like. He said they run from a few people to a few thousand, with an average of about 25 to 50 people per network. He declined to provide details about the number of paying clients but said they are showing revenues. But if you did the math, it could be extrapolated that Yammer has 1.25 to 2.5 million customers. How many of those are paying for the Yammer service?

You look around the Enterprise 2.0 conference and it becomes apparent that microblogging is the hot feature for companies on the exhibit floor.

A few of these companies started as wiki providers and added microblogging which helped diversify their products. It's a strategy that works when larger clients want an all-in-one application. But Yammer says they get feedback from clients who want the Yammer service to go deeper. They prefer Yammer's singular focus.

For Yammer, that means deeper active directory integration and fits into enterprise SaaS applications around sales and customer service use cases. That would make sense. Applications of all varieties are integrating into Salesforce.com. For Yammer, Sharepoint integration makes sense, too. By acting as a one point product, a company like Yammer can be flexible with where it integrates.

Here's an interview with Apfelberg and a demo of the Yammer service:

Discuss

Enterprise 2.0: Declaring War Does Not Work

Alex Williams — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:20:32 -0800

At the Enterprise 2.0 conference Andrew McAfee made a few points about the approach to enterprise technology and how it might be changed a bit.

McAffee, of the Center for Digital Business, MIT Sloan School of Management, is considered the father of Enterprise 2.0. His views reflect how Enterprise 2.0 is evolving but still with a fair degree of resistance for its adoption.

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Here they are...

Declaring War On The Enterprise

This definitely does not work. Do you think that you will get a project with such an approach?

Allow Walled Gardens to Flourish

Data silos prevent the ability to find and share information. You need to look across the organization. It's a reason why enterprise search and collaborative search will continue to grow in demand.

Accentuate the Negative

We tend to talk too much about the challenges with Enterprise 2.0. This causes some issues with company execs who are a bit wary in the first place. It's time for more customer stories to show the business benefits of this new breed of enterprise technology.

Try to Replace Email

Too often we try to replace email in the enterprise. But people do use it. It's time to accept that email is part of a work style familiar to most users.

Fall in Love With Features

We get too feature crazy. It's like that remote for your TV. How do you use this thing? With too many features, the user can get confused, turning them off to the technology.

Overuse of the Word Social

Executives get nervous when they hear this too often. They are not in the business of running a social club.

The data silos issue hits home the hardest for us. The corporate world is document-centric. How can data silos be fragmented into bits that people can easily consume and use? That's a major challenge facing Enterprise 2.0.

Discuss

Netvibes Goes From Web 2.0 To Enterprise 2.0 In Partnership With Sage Software

Alex Williams — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

In the Web 2.0 heyday, Netvibes had that star appeal that few companies ever experience. Their platform for creating personal dashboards rocketed in growth. Web innovators sang its praises. But you know the story. Netvibes struggled to find a business model.

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Now, we're on the cusp of the Enterprise 2.0 movement and Netvibes has suddenly come back as a contender for providing dashboard environments to better manage enterprise software.

Today, Netvibes is announcing a "sales, marketing and technology," partnership with Sage Software, an enterprise software company with 5.8 million customers worldwide and more than 14,500 people worldwide.

Sage will integrate the Netvibes dashboard technology into Sage software products and business processes. The idea is that enterprise software has become increasingly complex for users. Netvibes technology will help manage Sage software by providing customers with an environment that is more user friendly. Sage is hoping the partnership will bridge enterprise software with the Web 2.0 features of the Netvibes technology.

Sage reaches mid-market companies. These are larger enterprises that may do $60 million in revenues. They are adopting increasingly complex software. For instance, spftware for Enterprise Resource Planning software (ERP) and Business Process Management (BPM) are more popular in light of enterprise efforts to bring more efficiencies in these times of economic difficulty. But often, the tools require a degree of administration beyond the capabilities of the average business user.

Sage will integrate Netvibes into the launch of its ERP X3 software, coming in the first quarter of 2010.

For all the skeptics of social technologies, is this at all proof of the benefits that social software provides? Sage is adopting the Netvibes platform to make it simpler for customers to use its ERP software.

Netvibes grew from the roots of the social software movement. Its technology represents what social software can help people accomplish: give the user more options to be productive and creative in their work.

Discuss

PBWorks Goes For A Real-Time Future

Alex Williams — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:23:31 -0800

The real-time web is proving itself disruptive in the enterprise space. But it's not viable unless users may utilize technologies like live editing or voice collaboration on top of a real-time environment.

At the Enterprise 2.0 conference over the next few days we will be watching companies that give users the ability to integrate voice and other technologies with intuitive, real-time capabilities.

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In that regard, we look favorably on PBWorks' new collaboration offering.

PBWorks is formerly PBWiki. In its early years, the company focused on providing wiki technologies. But like a number of companies in the wiki space, PBWorks is now more of a real-time technology company more than a wiki provider. We find the wiki space challenging as many of the original providers got their start during a time when "portals" still dominated the enterprise. Wikis worked as a complement to portals. "Web pages," by their very definition, are far more related to "documents," than activity streams.

In this regard, we view the real-time web as a true disruptor in the enterprise market. But it can not act alone. A full product must have core collaborative elements such as voice collaboration. Web conferencing is a start but it still requires users to use an application separately from the other services they may use. Voice collaboration is a far better method as it is integrated directly into the application.

PBWorks cited Google Wave in their demo. They say PBWorks is a ready product, offering unified collaboration. Google Wave is still in beta mode.

Perhaps, but to be fair, PBWorks' users will have to wait until early 2010 for voice collaboration.

New features for PBWorks include:

IM Collaboration: The ability to keep abreast of what others are doing in real-time. Updates appear within an instant message environment. Users may send a link within the IM message to tell other users what they are editing.
Live Notification: Users can be alerted to new content or other events in real-time. Users may mark different wiki pages by "starring," or "following" particular pages. When those pages are edited, users receive a notification.
Live Editing: Users may watch documents get edited in real-time. Users may edit and use IM Collaboration to form ad hoc meetings.
Voice Collaboration: PBWorks' voice collaboration service will be available in early 2010. It will provide the ability to initiate conference calls within the application. Think Skype integrated not a collaboration service.

PBWorks' new offerings are a clear sign the Enterprise 2.0 space is growing up and will change significantly with the advent of the real-time web. Documents are not going away but the messaging layer is widening in the enterprise, filling it with lightweight technologies that can be used instantly, without the hurdles that come with asynchronous notifications.

Discuss

Microsoft Embraces Open Source (in the Online Ad Business)

Bernard Lunn — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:05:26 -0800

It's called a spoiler tactic. You take your competitor's biggest cash cow and offer a free alternative. Everybody from Linux to Google has used the tactic against Microsoft. So who can fault Microsoft when it uses it against Google's advertising cash cow? The guys who benefit from this tactic today are the good folks at OpenX, the open-source alternative to ad servers from Google such as DoubleClick (for big publishers) and AdManager (for small publishers). (Disclosure: ReadWriteWeb uses OpenX to host our advertising inventory.)

Of course, ad-serving itself is not really the cash cow, but it is a key part of it. The real prize is a viable alternative to AdSense. This is the background of today's news about OpenX and Microsoft announcing an advertising technology partnership.

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OpenX Named a Preferred Partner for Microsoft Ad Serving Products

Here is the news today from OpenX and Microsoft. In a nutshell:

Microsoft will refer publishers for enterprise ad-serving solutions to OpenX.
This makes OpenX a more viable alternative to expensive ad server solutions. (Hint to publishers looking to cut costs: why spend that money on Doubleclick when there is a free alternative?)
OpenX will promote Microsoft's Content Ads monetization/advertising product.
OpenX has 150,000 websites that serve more than 300 billion ads per month. Google Ad Manager, which is the free alternative to DoubleClick for smaller publishers, optimizes for AdSense. So Content Ads, an alternative to AdSense, is a natural ally for OpenX.

Click here for a comparison of OpenX and AdManager (the comparison is good, while also promoting Trafficspaces as an alternative to both).

Content Ads is Microsoft's entry to the contextual ad game. It "matches ads to relevant editorial content, allowing advertisers to increase campaign effectiveness and allowing publishers to achieve a higher yield on certain types of inventory."

Let's Get a Second Opinion on Content Ads

We spoke with Dr. Riza C. Berkan, CEO at Hakia, which makes a contextual advertising solution called Contexa that is not unlike Content Ads. (Disclosure: ReadWriteWeb uses Contexa, and Hakia is a sponsor.) Here is his view:

"Content detection is a specific challenge where Microsoft will be judged by its semantic capabilities. It could be a historic moment if it works. Otherwise, it will contribute to the ongoing "blinding" irrelevancy."

Riza is saying that relevancy and ranking are hard technical challenges. We know that relevancy is a bit weak on AdSense. Can Content Ads do better than AdSense? That is the bar.

AdSense's Weakness, the Hunt for Relevance and the Shift to "Direct"

We have written before about the possible weakness in AdSense, which is at the heart of the Google cash cow. Our theory is that we are moving to a place where publishers will sell more directly.

Draw a quadrant with "Large" to "Small" on one axis and "Publishers" to "Advertisers" on the other:

"Large" to "Large"
This is where we find the traditional internal sales force at big "Publishers" working with agencies at big "Advertisers." This world is not changing fast. Technology solutions and networks focus primarily on selling remnant.
"Large" to "Small"
There is always a role for ad networks to aggregate volume from large advertisers and bring that to small publishers. This is what Federated Media does for ReadWriteWeb. This works well, and we will likely see more niche ad networks serving this function in different markets (for example, FoodBuzz in the food market).
"Small" to "Small"
This is small advertisers reaching small publishers. This is the space in which AdSense and all of the automated ad networks operate. The genius of Google was to enable small advertisers to get results with small budgets: this has been the enabler for thousands of startups. But we're seeing a shift in this market. There is no reason why advertisers should not buy directly from publishers. Many of these advertisers will also be "the people formerly known as audience." As long as a simple self-service solution exists, there is no reason for an intermediary to take a big cut of the ad dollars at the toll booth.

OpenX and Content Ads are positioned to reduce the ad toll booth costs.

The winner will be decided by relevance. If the ads are relevant, then they will be useful to the audience and therefore have better ROI for advertisers.

These bruising battles between the big guys help the small guys. Google will bring down the cost of MS Office, and Microsoft will bring down the cost of online advertising.

Discuss

Proton Media: The Most Advanced Collaboration Technology in the Market?

Alex Williams — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:00:00 -0800

We see so many different collaboration tools that at times if feels like we are looking at the same environment over and over again.

Proton Media is entirely different. It is the most advanced collaboration environment we have seen in the market. We say this without hesitation.

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The team at Proton have created a virtual world that includes application sharing; collaboration with 2D and 3D environments; video; 3D avatars; chat; VOIP; simulated environments and a social network that leverages the knowledge of the different users.

Customers may pick from a variety of templates to pick their corporate worlds. They may get people together in a virtual conference room to do game shows for teaching purposes.

British Petroleum has used Proton's environment to replace an annual event they did in Chicago every year. Previously, 3,000 people would fly in to Chicago for leadership training. Now they use Proton Media's technology to do the training over a five to six week period.

Proton Media is a true social application that transcends the two-dimensional aspects of most social technologies. This is not to say that it necessarily replaces existing applications. But it has proven to be a replacement for web conferencing environments which have historically been defined as collaboration applications.

We see three tiers to the collaboration space. All have merit and fit with the enterprise in a host of different ways.

The first tier are the wiki-style players that evolved out of the time when portals ruled the corporate sphere. They may include an activity stream but are dominated by their roots in the wiki world.

In the second tier are the profile-based and activity stream based applications that come right out of the Facebook age.

Proton Media represents the third tier. It is an "always on," environment with virtual presence that integrates a whole array of social features and different forms of media. It has applications in such areas as e-learning, communications, knowledge transfer.

Is it too much for most companies? Perhaps but the familiarity with 3D environments does give people comfort.

In a demo today, CEO Ron Burns showed a place in the virtual world or "protosphere," where we could view the way a heart works to better illustrate the effects that diabetes has on people.

In another part of the tour, he showed how a customer support center works in a 3D world. The avatars sit at desks where they are answering customer service calls via VOIP. Each person sits in a zone that is marked by a circle. In the circle, a manager can listen to the customer support call. Outside the circle, people may converse but the conversation is not heard by the people doing customer.

We collaborated on a spreadsheet. If we were using Sharepoint, the document would would appear in the 3D world on what Proton calls "carousels." It would also be updated from within the Sharepoint folder.

If we wanted to talk outside the medium of an avatar, we could have turned on our webcams in a live, video format within a 3D environment.

Proton Media is an animated collaboration environment without all the fantasy trappings of an environment like Second Life. In Second Life, you meet dancing lions as often as beautiful women with long tiger tails. In the protosphere, it's perhaps not as colorful but it suits the corporate world.

Discuss

French Government Chooses Mozilla To Replace IBM and Microsoft For 130,000 Desktop PC's

Alex Williams — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:25:00 -0800

The French Government's public finance department will switch 130,000 desktop PC's to Mozilla's email and calendar applications. Mozilla's Thunderbird email service, Lightning Calendar and an open-source groupware will replace IBM Lotus Notes and Microsoft Office.

The move signals how more government agencies from around the world are dropping enterprise accounts with major vendors to cut down on costs and get better license agreements.They are turning to open-source providers and companies like Google that can offer email and services such as Google Docs.

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01net, a French IT news site, originally broke the news about the Mozilla win. The decision to go with Mozilla came after the Directorate General of Public Finance (DGPF) merged with the Directorate General of Taxes (DGI) and the Directorate General of Public Accountancy (DGCP). Each has their own email and licenses for Lotus Notes and Microsoft Outlook.

The merger provided the opportunity to save money and better manage the licenses.

OBM is the other player in this story. Linagora makes the open-source groupware that will be used by DGPF.The tax authority is one of several French agencies using OBM. More than 600,000 French employees use the application.

The French Government's decision to go open-source follows the city of Los Angeles decision this week to adopt Google Apps over Microsoft. Again, the win has almost everything to do with cost. The city will pay $7.25 million for the service.

About 30,000 city employees will use Gmail and have access to Google Docs.

Discuss

Jive SBS 4.0 Offers Office Integration and an iPhone App

Alex Williams — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:39:00 -0800

In its most significant update to date, Jive Software is following the evolution of the social web in the enterprise with features that allow users the flexibility to use the tools in multiple ways.

Social Business 4.0 (SBS), is Jive's latest version of its enterprise collaboration technology. In this new release, Jive includes deep integration with Microsoft Office, a mobile application for the iPhone and Blackberry plus the ability to bridge from internal to external communities.

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Companies in the Enterprise 2.0 space are quickly finding that the era of isolation is pretty much over. Social technologies are not space age concepts anymore. It no longer feels like you are speaking a different language when talking about the social web. The users are there. And they want more than single-use applications.They want flexibility and convenience.

In this regard, Jive is offering the ability to create or save documents in Microsoft Office with automatic upload to the Jive platform. Documents are rendered for the browser for users to view and make comments. Users may also collaborate on documents such as Power Point presentations. This co-authoring feature is similar to what you can do in Google Docs. We expect to see more companies offering this type of co-authoring capability. Socialtext, for instance, came out of beta with SocialCalc, its distributed spreadsheet application.

Mobile applications are starting to make headway into the enterprise. SocialCast unveiled its iPhone application earlier this month. We expect that enterprise applications will proliferate over the next year.

Jive took this into consideration when deciding to go with an iPhine application. Analysts they spoke with said that enterprises are accepting the influx of iPhones, mostly due to huge demand for the device.

The Jive application for the iPhone includes:

Collaboration features for users to engage with others through discussion threads, blogs, documents, comments and replies
Ability to follow people based on their activity stream
A rich profile environment, providing the ability to quickly find people

For the Blackberry:

Users may receive content they follow via email and reply as well to the content they follow. This includes content from blogs, discussions, documents and status updates.
The application leverages vCard technology that users may download and apply to a particular space or group.

SBS 4.0 is a comprehensive update. It has a number of additional features including the ability to bridge communities outside the firewall. Other new features include tools for community managers to quantify the activity of their communities.

Jive SBS 4.0 is available now.

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