Attensa

Enterprise RSS - The End or the Beginning?

2009-01-14T23:27:11Z

Marshall Kirkpatrick has stirred things up for RSS followers with his post R.I.P Enterprise RSS on Read Write Web. As I write this, there have been 70 comments covering a range of viewpoints. Marshall's post is one of several recent perspectives relating to what is commonly called "enterprise RSS". The crux of Marshall's observation is that RSS has not been widely adopted by large organizations despite expectations a couple of years ago that RSS would be come a key enterprise tool. Marshall’s article is not an attack on the value of RSS. In fact, Marshall explains "[w]e love RSS and this makes us really sad. If much of the rest of the world wants to ignore this technology, though, it's their loss. It's our bread and butter. Neglecting RSS at work seems to us like pure insanity. He continues "[a] market without enterprise use of business class RSS readers is like a flock of sitting ducks. Any company that steps up to make serious strategic use of such software should be at an immediate advantage in terms of early and efficient access to information.” Hard to argue with any of those observations. What is the take away? Maybe that it is still too early to stop the clock and call this one. Those of us that have lived life as early adopters and are old enough may remember colleagues making observations like "why do I need email if I can fax a letter?” In hindsight it seems obvious, but it was not to them at the time. Personal adoption led to business use and business use led to enterprise-class applications. There are many factors contributing to the pace of adoption of RSS within the enterprise. The first question is whether or not everyone using the term "enterprise RSS" means the same thing? Glancing at the comments and generous ranting around the web the answer seems to be no. I also agree with Mike Gotta's observation that "Enterprise RSS is not a great label. RSS is a technology/protocol." At Attensa we view the category broadly as enabling enterprise-wide publish-subscribe networks that aggregate information from people and systems through the enterprise and channel it intelligently to the users that need it. These information networks substantially improve how organizations and their employees manage information and share knowledge. RSS is just one underlying standard that makes this flow possible. There is collective wisdom in the comments that suggest the companies involved in the enterprise RSS space have focused on the technology and neglected or have done a poor job articulating the business applications and benefits of using feeds and channels to streamline communication and collaboration behind the firewall. In Attensa's case, I know we have been guilty. Those of us impressed with the potential of these new publish-subscribe paradigms are eager to talk about its capabilities from a technical perspective. We need to make sure we are emphasizing the business value that results from collaboration enabled business processes. Enterprise RSS doesn't mean much. When vendors and solution providers emphasize secure communications channels that intelligently and automatically route relevant information to the people who need/want it, light bulbs start lighting up. Efforts such as the Enterprise RSS Day of Action organized by James Dellow are positive steps in the process of change. I hope those and new efforts continue. Another factor impacting timing is that even forward thinking enterprise customers making decisions to implement these solutions face a fundamentally different and more complex decision. Many current RSS fans are free to try an application here, a service there, experiment and explore the possibilities. Be honest, how many twitter clients have you tried this year? Larger organizations obviously do not have that flexibility in their plans for thousands of users. In many ways, this thing we are calling enterprise RSS is one of the more complex solution components in the Web 2.0 family. As successes and best practices become more visible the pace of adoption will accelerate. Another tactical consideration is that RSS exposes many information management problems that have arisen from the fact that most Web 2.0 applications are great at publishing but not so great at delivery. This is both an inhibiting technical issue (Chris Saad has an interesting post on the data portability blog). as well as a solutions implementation challenge. We are excited to see the emergence of firms with experience and focused expertise to provide overarching solution architectures. They are a big part of the answer. While technical innovation will continue (and we have ours planned at Attensa) the immediate focus should be delivering coherent business solutions. With a healthy debate and increasing awareness driven by articles like Marshall's, solutions and common perspectives will emerge. The heavy lifting of this challenge lies with the vendors and solution integrators to create solutions that facilitate natural user adoption, address enterprise information management challenges and produce immediate value. We agree that ignoring these important tools in the workplace "seems to us like pure insanity." The expectations of early adopters and innovators (present company included) is not necessarily the best determinant of when to assess the health of the market. It has been disappointing to many of us because we understand the potential. However, there have been many new technology trends that died from the disappointment caused by their own hype. I do not think that is happening here. Enterprise use of these tools is not dead it is evolving purposefully. Thanks Marshall, I think I am going to need a few hours this weekend to read all the comments and links.

Enterprise RSS Changes the Equation

2008-09-17T00:59:02Z

Here's more on our friend Patrick Slesinger and the Wallem team. In an article published in the print version of Computerworld Hong Kong, Patrick reveals more on how Wallem is making the cultural transition from email centric communications to a managed published-subscribe environment.

To speed adoption, Wallem encourages employees to leverage their personal interest in Web 2.0 technologies and tools. In the case of RSS, Wallem employees are encouraged to add feeds tied to their personal interests, sports and news. "People use it in their leisure activities, and will be naturally interested in using the same thing at work."

But it's not all fun and games. Wallem's managed procurement publish-subscribe environment is designed to deliver dynamic content by role and relevance at each step in the process. Here's where the he role of managed RSS gets serious. In Patrick's view, "These aren't subscriptions. They are must-read information."

The attention analytics provided by the Attensa FeedServer give Wallem management insights into the information employees value and how much time they spend reading content in different channels. This helps prioritize feeds to provide the Wallem team with the information they need to get the job done.

Wallem is changing the information availability equation from: "Is the information available?" to: "Are people taking advantage of the information available?'

You can get the article here.

Technorati Tags: Attensa,enterprise rss,wallem,feed server,feedserver,attention,enterprise 2.0

Enterprise RSS Best Practices

2008-07-29T23:39:59Z

Ain't no use whining about Attensa and Wikigate. I'll chalk it up to live and learn and move on. Besides, our plates are full with customer projects.

I thought it would be useful to share how we work with customers to get their managed RSS programs up and running smoothly.

Step 1. Form a focused RSS initiative team

We recommend bringing the right people together to build an RSS Initiative Team consisting of stakeholders from IT and targeted business users. We become part of that team. The team's charter is to develop the program objectives, logistics, and schedule. We also create a collaborative workspace for sharing our insights, knowledge and experiences about collaboration and communication processes as the project progresses.

Step 2. Define Applications and Use Cases

With every company we work with there are numerous opportunities to benefit from managed RSS immediately by connecting people, information and communities. We help identify specific use cases that are representative of the broader framework and start creating secure, managed, publish-subscribe networks based on these target applications. These applications span both traditional and emerging Web 2.0 applications and facilitate the flow of relevant information, knowledge and collaboration.

These target initiatives provide the experience and insight that contributes to the success of the broader RSS initiative. These programs can be implemented in the short term while the long range planning and implementation for the enterprise 2.0 transformation continues moving forward.

Step 3. Implement and Document Use Cases

Working with key IT and business stakeholders we help implement target applications. Technical issues are identified, prioritized and obstacles removed. The applications and use cases are documented for training and functional testing criteria are collected based on real-world examples. The knowledge and documents built through these experiences become the foundation for a repeatable business deployment strategy and phased deployment plan.

Example Use Cases

Market Intelligence - Collection, Analysis and Distribution

Typically there are multiple opportunities to use RSS to improve business intelligence activities. These projects use the Attensa FeedServer to create highly relevant persistent search and filtered mash-up feeds focused on research, markets, brand and competitive intelligence. Feeds are identified and created by business analysts and channeled to the team responsible for identifying threats and opportunities. Highly relevant content is discovered, commented on and shared using flagging, tagging and publishing tools. Highly relevant filtered custom feeds are created and channeled to management and other stakeholders who can act on the information.

Successful market intelligence programs:

Reduce the time required to monitor news and information sources by using intelligent search and filters
Provide tools to discover, share and act upon relevant intelligence of strategic importance
Increase the scope and quality of information monitored by distilling information to a relevant subset
Enable the efficient distribution of business intelligence information via highly relevant feeds and collaborative publishing
Provide tools for measuring the use of the information

Streamlining Internal Communications - Making the Transition from Email Blasts to Publish - Subscribe

Opportunities to improve group communication and efficiency by migrating existing email newsletters to a more efficient publish-subscribe service exist in every organization we work with. The same content that is being assembled into monolithic email blocks can be broken down into articles in feeds that deliver the information in a contextual and accessible format through a group blog and RSS feed format.

Successful internal communications:

Reduce email traffic from one to many type communication activities
Audience opts-in to relevant subscription content
Follow internal workflows and approval processes before distribution
Distribute content instantly upon approval
Delivere content contextually organized based on subscribers preferences
Attention analytic reports enable publishers to measure the use of the information
Provide a more flexible publishing approach that can be replicated across other similar use cases

Step 4. Build on Success

These are still early days in the move to enterprise 2.0. Our experience has shown that the key elements in successful projects are focused on people, information and community:

Bringing together the right people
Defining a clear focus
Defining phases that are manageable
Crisp communication by the project team
Effectively evangelizing success internally

Technorati Tags: rss,enterprise rss,enterprise 2.0,attensa,feedserver,feed server,rss reader,successful it projects

Attensa and Wikigate

2008-07-25T01:48:36Z

Is this Wikigate?

We recently posted a company profile on Wikipedia that was removed yesterday after this article appeared in MarketingSherpa. How to use Wikipedia for Lead Gen - 6 Steps to 18% Higher Conversion Rates.

Prior to the appearance of the MarketingSherpa piece, our company profile was approved by Wikipedia editors because it was straightforward content including descriptions of our product line, technology and company. We adhered to the guidelines. No hyperbole. No false claims. No competitive superiority boasts.

The listing was no different from these company descriptions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Apart

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlassian

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook

You can decide for yourselves. Here's a screengrab of our posting.

On our associated product category pages we even included our competitors.

Wikipedia is theoretically about respect for expertise, openness and integrity.Who knows more about the company, its technology, associated products and applications than the people who live and breathe it every day. The irony is that Attensa has its listings removed through the actions of one individual because we were transparent and telling the truth about the process.

We simply told the truth in a discussion with MarketingSherpa about how we worked with the Anvil Media team to list Attensa on Wikipedia and what happened as a result.

The reality is that Wikipedia has countless company product and other commercial listings. There are even listings describing upcoming movie releases. These are posted on Wikipedia for a simple reason - Discoverability. Believe it our not, people looking for information find these commercial content listings useful, as evidenced by the results of our case study.

I'm not sure I understand how a self-appointed truthiness hit squad make up of one self-described "notorious Wikipedia troll" has the power to determine what gets listed on Wikipedia and what doesn't. There's not much transparency there.

Technorati Tags: attensa,wikipedia,marketingsherpa,sem,seo

Enterprise 2.0 Mashup Business Process Management meet Enterprise RSS

2008-06-27T22:46:32Z

How does a 105-year-old company integrate enterprise 2.0 technologies with business process management tools to increase the efficiency of its operations? It starts with taking a hard and practical look at the challenges behind:

Accelerating the pace of decision-making and getting better results
Getting more value from an organization’s intellectual assets
Keeping clients and staff informed through transparency and easier ways to share relevant information
Ensuring that the right information gets to the right people in a timely fashion

These would be daunting challenges for an IT organization managing static resources in a controlled operations center. When your organization is constantly moving at sea, you add another level of complexity.

Wallem Services Limited sets a new standard managing IT innovation and services on a global basis. Their offices are not only distributed around the world, most of their offices float. Headquartered in Hong Kong, the Wallem Group's 8,500 employees in 21 countries provide a complete suite of value-added management services for more than 300 vessels that are constantly on the move around the world.

Patrick Slesinger, director and CIO of Wallem, is working to transition Wallem from being a top-down, command and control directed business to one where transparency unlocks the value of information in Wallem’s systems and delivers the highest levels of customer value.

The Wallem procurement system integrates K2 Blackpearl workflow management engine with Microsoft SharePoint and the Attensa Managed RSS Platform to create an innovative enterprise 2.0 application that brings a collaborative and transparent approach to the vessel management procurement activities.

Attensa's CTO and co-founder, Eric Hayes and K2's Dave Marcus and Seb Garrioch are the technical team behind the project.

We work with customers in Web meetings, on the phone and in IM everyday. Getting to meet Patrick at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston was a joy. He is a true global citizen. He kicked off his presentation and demonstration of this mashup by saying, "Presenting a live demo at a conference can either be the stupidest or the boldest thing you can do to show a technology solution." The demonstration came off without a hitch, a rare occurrence given the flaky Internet connections at the conference hotel. Chalk one up for bold.

In his talk Patrick enlightened us about bunkers and lubes, gave his perspective on the acceptance of smoking around the world and shared how salty seafarer language can enhance or tank your presentation depending on the audience.

Here are some of the comments following Patrick's session

"It makes a lot of sense. You presented a business process.You presented a very clear use case and articulated it very well. It is one the best actual use cases of integrating Enterprise 2.0. into the business process."

"All these talks about democratizing the workforce, yours is the only example that reflects the real world."

And, from Mike Gotta, who hosted the presentation: "This is not the typical RSS application. That was great. I think it’s stunning how simple things can work so well."

In Patrick's words, “This is not an elegant solution. But guess what? It adds value. It’s simple. Everyone knows what’s going on. If my chief architect leaves, I can hire someone else who will understand it. Business isn’t at risk.”

Here are the slides and screenshots from the demonstration.

| View | Upload your own

Technorati Tags: attensa,enterprise 2.0,enterprise rss,k2,blackpearl,mashup,bpm,enterprise 2.0 conference

Social Portal or Social Network

2008-06-16T23:57:08Z

Catching up on reading recently I picked up and article titled Everywhere and nowhere that I had set aside regarding social networks appearing in the March 19, 2008 edition of the Economist. The question raised is whether there is a business behind the current crop of Social Networking sites. I don't have a dog in that fight. I was struck however by a comment by Charlene Li of Forrester Research. She observed future social networks “will be like air. They will be anywhere and everywhere we need and want them to be.” No more logging on to Facebook just to see the “news feed” of updates from your friends; instead it will come straight to your e-mail inbox, RSS reader or instant messenger. No need to upload photos to Facebook to show them to friends, since those with privacy permissions in your electronic address book can automatically get them.

I think this is a wonderful observation. As it relates to RSS I do have a dog in the fight. Right now I believe the opportunities for RSS/XML syndication to improve user experiences in our network world is grossly under appreciated. This has been highlighted recently as I have worked with business executives that are not familiar with RSS based tools. I will cover those discussions in a separate post. What I think is interesting for this discussion and about Charlene Li's observation is the difference between a "social portal" and a "social network". As the tools and services evolve I hope that these definitions will start to evolve to better reflect what is happening.

Networks are generally thought of as nodes with interconnectivity. When I visit Facebook as an example I am viewing a window into a social network. It is only one of my social networks that I see through that window. I have a similar view of my working social network at Attensa in our Clearspace community and other views of other areas of my social network elsewhere. I am beginning to think of these as Social Portals. When these portals are all connected they form my Social Network.

You can probably see this one coming..... how do I connect them in order to form my social network? RSS. I do not want to be misunderstood on this point. I am not saying that RSS is the center of my network I am simply saying that it is plumbing that allows me to observe and interact with my entire network.

This may not make sense if your view of RSS is based on a traditional RSS reader or aggregation portal. Most peoples is, even those using RSS to monitor the live web. Expanding this perspective has been the fun part of showing business people what can be done with the Attensa solution. Our recently completed version 3.0 shows the promise of RSS and the fulfillment the concept of "social networks" by providing a framework for both "subscribing" and "publishing" across the bounds of "social portals". Using this tool I can participate and interact across all the individual portal views. I often want to take information or interactions from one portal and share them with another by republishing it. I often also want to contribute thoughts directly to one or more communities without having to navigate through the different portals. I can also connect blogs and social portals etc. Now we are talking social network.

I have also found the best way to describe this is to show it. So I vow in the coming days to do some screen cast discussions. Many people that follow Attensa and this blog are very familiar with RSS so you may already be thinking about these topics but I hope that the discussions will help expand the view of RSS as a framework "publish-subscribe" networks. Within business organizations these are powerful concepts that connect not only workplace social applications but also core IT systems and people directly. The implications for innovation, efficiency and competitiveness are big.

On the issue of social portals and social networks, I hope that the market will begin to make some distinctions that are not being made today. That may be too much to ask of the same group that came up with "marketecture" terms such as "social graphs" but we can hope. In the end I guess you can call it anything you want as long as the result is connected, productive and profitable.

Attensa at Enterprise 2.0

2008-06-07T00:51:26Z

With the new attensa.com site launched today and a new version of the Attensa Managed RSS platform in the bag, we're heading to Boston for the Enterprise 2.0 conference.

We're one of pod people in the exhibit area. If you are heading to the conference stop by pod 404 by:

Tuesday, June 10: 11:00 am – 1:00 pm & 4:30 pm – 6:30 pm

Wednesday, June 11: 12:00 pm – 2:00 pm & 4:30 pm – 6:30 pm

On Tuesday at 1:00 I'll be joining a panel hosted by Mike Gotta:

Enterprise RSS: Connecting People, Information & Communities

Here's the panel overview:

"Delivering a communication channel that enables people to subscribe to the information they need, includes filtering and alerting mechanisms to notify people of important changes, and provides access points across multiple application contexts, is an incredibly powerful solution. Deployment of feed syndication platforms to manage proliferation of RSS feeds can improve worker productivity, drive business performance and aid in community-building efforts across people with common information interests. In this panel, senior strategists from leading enterprise RSS vendors and enterprise customers share their perspectives on market trends across different industries."

And we wrap it up on Wednesday afternoon with our friend and customer Patrick Slesinger, the innovative CIO of the Wallem Group, in a session: Integrating RSS and Business Process.

Patrick will be demonstrating how Wallem is integrating Attensa managed RSS with K2 BlackPearl business process management and workflow tools to automate and communicate procurement processes in a rather unique globally distributed enterprise. Wallem manages more than 300 ships, so most of their offices float and are on the move around the world.

Technorati Tags: attensa,enterprise rss,enterprise 2.0,wallem,K2,BlackPearl,BPM

Happy Enterprise RSS Day of Action

2008-04-24T20:26:46Z

A heartfelt thanks to James Dellow of ChiefTech for getting this party started. He's put together a great enterprise RSS wiki loaded with resources for organizations who want to get started with RSS for communication and collaboration delivery.

Today started with a bang at Attensa. We just completed a great briefing and demo with a project manager for the web development group of a big delicious candy company. We had a great talk about enterprise RSS and specialty chocolates. He's deep into creating a single point for team collaboration for his organization and wants content delivered automatically and intelligently to the team members.

ChiefTech has even given us a list of 10 things he wants from enterprise RSS...

| View | Upload your own

So we're giving him most of what he wants...with more on the way.

| View | Upload your own

If you want to jump start your collaboration and communication initiative let's connect.

Technorati Tags: enterprise RSS day of action,Attensa,enterprise 2.0,enterprise RSS,ChiefTech

If she could be a technology, Charlene Li would be RSS/XML

2008-04-23T16:40:48Z

"RSS/XML. Nobody would know who I am or what my initials mean, but I make everything work together. I’d be the foundation of mashups, social applications, and widgets. Without me, the social Web would grind to a halt."

And so would enterprise 2.0.

Technorati Tags: Attensa,Charlene Li,Forrester,Forrester Research,Enterprise 2.0,Enterprise RSS,RSS,XML syndication,mashups

Forrester on Enterprise RSS - Going Big.

2008-04-22T23:00:27Z

How big? The whole enterprise 2.0 enchilada is projected to be $4.6 billion by 2013...that's big.

Enterprise RSS growing to $563 million in the next five years...Giddy Up!

Forrester's Oliver Young has just published a Global Enterprise Web 2.0 Market Forecast: 2007 To 2013.

Here's the net/net from the executive summary:

"Enterprise spending on Web 2.0 technologies will grow strongly over the next five years, reaching $4.6 billion globally by 2013, with social networking, mashups, and RSS capturing the greatest share. In all, the market for enterprise Web 2.0 tools will be defined by commoditization, eroding prices, and subsumption into other enterprise collaboration software over the next five years; it will eventually disappear into the fabric of the enterprise, despite the major impacts the technology will have on how businesses market their products and optimize their workforces."

Here are some things that jumped out at me from the report and recent coverage of the Forrester findings...

From Dion Hinchcliffe: Enterprise 2.0 Industry Matures as Businesses Grapple with its Potential:

"The key hallmark of Web 2.0 is efficiency for end users, and the ultimate goal is to use technology like Ajax, rich Internet applications, blogs, wikis, and social networks to foster productive, advantageous behavior among employees, customers, partners, and other networks such as Social Computing, the Information Workplace, and collective intelligence."

From Larry Dignan at ZDNet: Social Networking Will be Biggest Enterprise 2.0 Priority by 2013

"In addition, I.T. departments currently work with a host of legacy applications. The new tools, in order to compete with these, will have to be able to integrate with existing technology, at least for the time being, in order to be fully effective."

"Across the board, Web 2.0 tools enter a crowded space full of legacy software and processes that are difficult to displace and with which Web 2.0 software must integrate to be fully effective. Integration with lightweight applications like email and Excel, as well as heavier applications like Web content management suites, campaign management software, portal software, and customer relationship management (CRM) systems, must all be addressed over time."

From Sarah Perex at Read Write Web Enterprise 2.0 to Become a $4.6 Billion Industry by 2013

"To make matters worse, I.T. tends to view Web 2.0 tools as being insecure at best, or, at worst, a security threat to the business. They also don't trust what they perceive to be "consumer-grade" technologies, which they don't believe have the power to scale to the size that an enterprise demands."

I'm in full agreement with Dion and Larry's observation. I take issue with Sarah's blanket statement. Our experience is very different. We are working with forward thinking IT professionals who are partnering with business teams to integrate Web 2.0 technologies to enhance existing systems and business processes. Rather than isolated projects, we are working on enterprise-wide deployments designed to deliver communication and collaboration to every member of the workforce. The team approach isn't just a good idea. It's essential to successful implementation. We work with IT to effectively handle scaling, security, LDAP synchronization, provisioning and integration with legacy apps. We're collaborating with the business team to create new communication and collaboration processes and training programs that take the cultural and change management challenges head on.

Technorati Tags: Attensa,enterprise RSS,enterprise 2.0,Forrester,Web 2.0,mashups

RSS is what RSS does

2008-04-15T18:55:02Z

Thanks to James Dellow for putting the Enterprise Day of Action stake in the ground. I am enjoying the active thinking about RSS in the Enterprise. It is fascinating to observe and participate in the discussion. There is room for a wide array of thought about RSS inside of organizations. I know this question has been asked before but I think it is worth continued evaluation - As early adopters (read geeks), are we so close to XML syndication thinking that we struggle for perspective. I think that is the challenge for vendors, consultants and early enterprises sponsors. Hugh MacLeod has a classic gapingvoid cartoon called stop worrying which says "stop worrying about technology and start worrying about who trust you." Seems relevant to us in the "RSS Community". Is RSS a "Web 2.0" technology? sure. Is publish-subscribe a better approach for many forms of communication in general? sure. Does subscribing to an update via RSS work better keep my mail less cluttered and more useful? yup. Is RSS/Atom a better way to consume important information sources? sure. Is it a good tool to leverage and broadcast your portal or community space to improve usability? sure. Is "subscribe" metaphor for the web on par with "browse" and "search"? I think so. Is RSS plumbing to loosely couple many of the social computing tools? sure. Can you use RSS based tools to efficiently observe and process information flow on the live web via search feeds/channels? sure. Is it a personal productivity tool? sure. A strategic business tool? sure. And on and on. Ironically it is also the tool I am using daily to participate in this community of thought.

Enterprise 2.0 Scare Tactics

2008-04-15T00:41:22Z

There's a scary headline in the New York Times today: Enterprise 2.0 A Computer Security Nightmare?

The article stems from a research report issued by Palo Alto Networks, a start-up developing next-generation firewalls. The report shows that traditional firewall technology is not keeping pace with proliferation of Web apps.

Rather than tightening the screws, maybe there's a better answer. Companies embracing and implementing Enterprise 2.0 applications behind the firewall take control, manage the process, keep their proprietary information secure, energize their workforce and reap the collaboration and communication benefits that come from creatively using social networking software to get work done.

Managed RSS platforms can be securely set up behind the firewall to automatically and intelligently deliver relevant content from internal and external news sources, blogs, wikis and forums. Analytics and reporting on the content being consumed can be used to identify the most efficient communication channels and sources of the highest value content. And, the organization keeps their data safely on their network and hardware.

Technorati Tags: Attensa,enterprise 2.0,enterprise RSS,Palo Alto Networks

Enterprise RSS or Communication Collaboration Delivery

2008-04-07T18:33:02Z

Two posts caught my attention last week. Stu Downes' Enterprise RSS Day: Why Don't you use Enterprise RSS? and Craig Roth's Cornering the Corner Office about Information Overload.

What is striking about these two posts is how they address the same issue from two completely different perspectives: the Technologist Perspective and the Business Perspective.

Stu wonders why "I haven’t seen people beating my door down to architect enterprise RSS capability over the last 12 months." Maybe they've been coming to our door. In fact, the interest in Attensa's managed RSS platform has accelerated exponentially over the last six months.

He also asks "Is RSS anywhere near the top of enterprise collaboration agendas?" As far as agenda setting goes, in our view RSS might not be near the top of a CIO agenda, but it is at the heart of streamlining communication and collaboration.

I doubt Stu is getting many customer inquiries regarding the purchase of wikimarkup language or metablog API's. It's more likely his customers are looking for collaboration platforms and tools that reduce the friction of information transactions and make it easier for people to discover, filter, share highly relevant information.

We've struggled with similar questions until we wrapped our minds around separating the business questions from the technology questions. When we launched Attensa in the summer of 2005 we brought on a team of college interns to help us research the applications for managed RSS. We called them the Dog Pound because we were barking up the wrong tree in our approach to customer conversations.

Like most new technology companies we had a vision of how RSS could be used behind the firewall and we wanted feedback to see if we were on target. In the early days we started these conversations by focusing on the technology. These conversations didn't get very far. The inside joke was that we were starting the conversations by asking, "How many pounds of RSS would you like to buy today?" You live and learn. Now we start the conversation talking about communication and collaboration challenges. The conversations last longer and are far more meaningful.

Take the conversation covered in Craig Roths blog about a Wall Street Journal interview with Chevron's CIO, Gary Masada. This interview echoes the conversations we are having on a daily basis with customers and prospective customers."What is the biggest challenge you face as a CIO?" Masada's answer, "Getting our arms around all the information we have."

When it comes to talking about getting your arms around the information you and Enterprise RSS, it all comes back to Andrew McAfee's SLATES:

"SLATES describes the combined use of effective enterprise search and discovery, using links to connect information together into a meaningful information ecosystem using the model of the Web, providing low-barrier social tools for public authorship of enterprise content, tags to let users created emergent organizational structure, extensions to spontaneously provide intelligent content suggestions similar to Amazon's recommendation system, and signals to let users know when enterprise information they care about has been published or updated, such as when a corporate RSS feed of interest changes."

Replacing the abbreviation RSS with words like signals, alerts, delivery is far more descriptive and useful to customers. One of our customers has named their RSS initiative project: Communication & Collaboration Delivery. That's got a much better ring to it than Enterprise RSS.

Technorati Tags: Attensa,enterprise RSS,collaboration,slates,enterprise 2.0

Attention and the Challenge of Social Scaling

2008-03-05T18:21:16Z

Chuck Hollis writes about EMC's experience with Jive Software's Clearspace collaboration platform. With 3000 active users who don't want to miss anything, EMC has a new source of information overload. This isn't the first time we've heard about this phenomenon. In fact, we've given it a name - the challenge of social scaling. The emerging challenge of Social Scaling is the problem created when growing numbers of users and systems publish to a common location. As the volume of information increases within the community, it becomes increasingly difficult for users to manage.

As Chuck points out, it's a good news - bad news story. The good news, people are hungry for tools that make sharing ideas, project updates, news and opinions easy. Clearspace is a great tool for doing just that. The bad news, a big noisy channel of unfiltered information develops and grows.

Putting Attention technology to work might just be answer. Using the intelligent prioritization capabilities of Attensa's feed readers, users can subscribe to multiple Clearspace community feeds, put them in a category folder and use the Article View to bring the most relevant articles to the top.

The attention filtering and prioritization is all done in the background based on your personal implicit and explicit reading behaviors and content cues from the posts that capture your attention. Users can rapidly scan through lots of information when the things they find most interesting bubble up to the top automatically.

For the community and the enterprise, attention analytics and reporting provided by the Attensa Feed Server can provide insight into identifying not only the most active communities, but the communities that provide the most meaningful and relevant content.

Throw in a seamless cycle of publish subscribe with the ability to publish into Clearspace with a click from your feed reader and you've got a collaboration ecosystem that can scale effectively.

Technorati Tags: Attensa,enterprise RSS,RSS server,attention,EMC,Jive software,Collaboration,Clearspace,RSS reader,enterprise 2.0,feed server,feed reader,information overload

Forrester: 2008 a Banner Year for Enterprise RSS

2008-01-28T19:36:13Z

Oliver Young at Forrester predicts 2008 will be a year of strong demand for Web 2.0 tools in the Enterprise. Momentum is being driven by the realization that deploying Web 2.0 technologies is a "high-impact, low-cost method to show leadership and innovation." While social networking behind the firewall will get all the attention, Oliver's report predicts that 2008 will be a big year for enterprise RSS because RSS is essential for efficiently channeling content from collaborative blogs, wikis and portals to users. Without RSS these sites are just an extension of existing portals. Forrester is predicting that enterprise RSS will grow from about 9 percent to nearly 20 percent by the end of the year. At Attensa we're definitely experiencing the momentum.

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