CIOs Spurn Web 2.0 Startups - Enterprises Want Suites and Large, Incumbent Software Vendors

Forrester has come out with some valuable data that dispels the myth often cited by Enterprise 2.0 enthusiasts that IT organizations have their heads in the sand when it comes to social software. There are some unfortunate perceptions revealed however - a natural bias towards a suite approach and a defacto preference to go with software from larger vendors. These are traditional management viewpoints. The burden now falls on IT architects, emerging technology groups and project leaders to make sure that suites and solutions from entrenched vendors satisfy business requirements and are not technology hacks from larger vendors hoping that customers will view them as "good enough".

Sometimes good enough is simply not good enough. For instance, I don't believe the blog and wiki support in SharePoint is anywhere near the richness of what is available from specialized vendors - but it's part of the MOSS stack and it becomes easy for IT groups to pass along the promise from Microsoft that it will get better in a future release. (Note: that next release may be years away). In some instances, larger vendors are not even delivering a complete solution. Both IBM and Microsoft are absent in the XML Syndication market. Use of specialized vendors (e.g., Attensa, KnowNow, NewsGator) is the only credible option.

If the business requirements are critical enough, then specialized vendors should be considered and selected as appropriate (e.g., Traction, Atlassian, Jive Software). These vendors have proven to be quite innovative with their respective solutions. The wikipatterns effort by Atlassian deserves a look for instance. Jive is doing some interesting work with XMPP and Jingle. Traction has perhaps the strongest knowledge of hypertext than any other vendor I've talked to (reflected by a very well-designed platform that supports both blogs and wikis).

Hopefully, smaller vendors will make an effort to better integrate with larger vendor platforms to alleviate management concerns - plugging into existing security, identity and records management services is an obvious place to start. Socialtext is an example of a vendor integrating with Microsoft with its "SocialPoint" product.

A decision to go with one or more specialized vendors may be considered a tactical decision so everyone involved needs to understand the short-run benefits vs. additional infrastructure complexity. But in some situations, use of specialized solutions can be much more valuable than providing users with inadequate tools that really only benefit IT operations.

CIOs Spurn Web 2.0 Startups - Enterprises Want Suites and Large, Incumbent Software Vendors

Written by Richard MacManus / March 21, 2007 / 10 comments

Forrester Research has just released two reports concerning 'web 2.0' in the enterprise. Forrester recently surveyed 119 CIOs on the topic and their answers illustrate what IT honchos want – and don't want – from social software technologies such as blogs, wikis, podcasts, RSS, social networking, and content tagging.

According to the report entitled 'CIOs Want Suites For Web 2.0', the enterprise Web 2.0 market "is beginning to consolidate". Apparently CIOs have a strong desire to purchase web 2.0 products "as a suite, as well as an equally strong desire to purchase these technologies from large, incumbent software vendors." 61% of respondents indicated that they would prefer both a suite solution and a large, incumbent vendor. According to the report, "integration issues, longevity concerns, and the occasional lack of polish" are counting against small vendors.

Source: Forrester

Source: CIOs Spurn Web 2.0 Startups - Enterprises Want Suites and Large, Incumbent Software Vendors

Comments

[Stewart Mader]

Mike,
Thanks for mentioning Wikipatterns - our intent is to build as much collective knowledge about wiki adoption in organizations as possible, and get people together to advance their conceptual knowledge regardless of what tool they use. Something like this can go a long way to break down old beliefs about knowledge creation and management and show people how to work together on their own wikis to make them as successful and useful as possible.
Stewart Mader
Wiki Evangelist, Atlassian