Collaborative Thinking

For Those Caught In The Wave...

There is a great deal of "irrational exuberance" about Google Wave in the news right now given its current state (pre-beta). While prognostications on how it will derail existing solutions make for good press coverage, such statements should be viewed as part of the natural enthusiasm when something creative and innovative comes along.  This is a ways off... 

My skepticism concerns Google’s ability to execute over time (e.g., building in security and management capabilities) if they are serious about Wave being an enterprise solution. However, it is clearly a disruptive approach to current market players and one that entrenched vendors with large revenue streams to protect would never have undertaken.

Google info:

Went Walkabout. Brought back Google Wave.

Introducing the Google Wave APIs: what can you build?

Google Wave Federation Protocol

Google Wave API

Google Wave Videos

Other related articles:

Google Wave Drips With Ambition. A New Communication Platform For A New Web.

Exclusive: Video Interview With The Google Wave Founders

Live With The Google Wave Creators

Google Wave: A Complete Guide

Sergey Brin: Google Wave Will Set A New Benchmark For Interactivity

Google Wave: Google Tries to Reinvent Email

Enterprise Twitter: Fad Or Tipping Point (Agenda)

If you are a Burton Group client, just a reminder of the TeleBriefing available to you this week. Below are the possible topics and discussion areas we'll cover:

Business Topics

• Why are these tools relevant? What capabilities are driving interest from enterprise strategists?
• Who is the “buyer” (business and/or the IT organization)
• Solutions: general conversation and community-building vs. specific applications
• Business case, ROI, and metrics
• Legal, compliance, and security issues

Technology Topics

• Platform architecture
• SaaS and/or on-premises (appliance)
• Alignment with unified communications (e.g., instant messaging, mobile)
• Integration with existing enterprise infrastructure (e.g., identity, security)
• Integration with enterprise content management (e.g., e-Discovery, compliance)

Organizational Topics

• User experience (and the influence of Twitter)
• Cultural issues / barriers
• Behavior change and social messaging adoption
• Community & social networking dynamics

Futures

• How do these tools evolve?

TeleBriefing Description

Social messaging, sometimes referred to as micro-blogging, has become incredibly popular on the Internet, exemplified by soaring use of consumer services such as Twitter. Twitter’s growing audience has raised questions as to whether such communication models are applicable within the enterprise. Strategists are considering social messaging as a means to improve not only information sharing and collaboration but also facilitate social networking and community building. There are concerns however. How does social messaging conflict with ongoing unified communications efforts (e.g., instant messaging)? What level of security and compliance requirements are there for these tools? Join Principal Analyst Mike Gotta of Burton Group, along with CEO Tim Young of Socialcast and CEO David Sacks of Yammer as they discuss all of these topics and address questions from audience participants.

Presented by: Mike Gotta, Tim Young CEO Socialcast, David Sacks CEO Yammer

Dates:

Tuesday, May 19, 2009
2:00 p.m. EDT/11:00 a.m. PDT/18:00 UTC GMT/20:00 CEST

Wednesday, May 20, 2009
9:00 a.m. EDT/6:00 a.m. PDT/13:00 UTC GMT/15:00 CEST

Untapped Potential: Facebook & XMPP

Excellent points - and disappointing that Facebook as not leveraged this opportunity more decisively. 

Happy birthday Facebook Jabber/XMPP chat vaporware

A year ago this day, Facebook announced ”Right now we’re building a Jabber/XMPP interface for Facebook Chat. In the near future, users will be able to use Jabber/XMPP-based chat applications to connect to Facebook Chat“. The news has been greeted positively in various places everywhere.

A year later, strictly nothing happened, and that silence has not gone unnoticed. Facebook has not even issued the slightest announcement, except a wishlist bug report comment by Charlie Cheever mentioning that “some people are working on this.  It will probably be done in a few months. Sorry the timeline isn’t more clear“.

» Happy birthday Facebook Jabber/XMPP chat vaporware

Enterprise Social Networking, Is Your Company Falling Behind?

If you're interested in the topic - be sure to catch this webinar next week:

Free Webinar – May 20, 2009 at 2 pm ET

Is social computing in the enterprise just a lot of hype or should you be concerned that your company is going to fall behind? Whether your primary work function is line-of-business or technology, it’s likely that you have heard about the benefits of enterprise social networking. The fact is that social networking provides real business value and many companies have moved past the “what is it” towards “how and where do we start.”

Mike Gotta, Principal Analyst with Burton Group, is focused on collaboration and content strategies and has a wealth of experience and knowledge around social networking. Mike and Brian Kellner, VP of Products at NewsGator, will review the business benefits and driving forces that continue to propel social computing solutions into the workplace.

Join Mike and NewsGator as they review:

• The progression of enterprise social networking
• Key elements of successful social networking solutions
• Customer success stories and why it’s important to start now
• Five elements that need to be considered to achieve success
• How to get off to a good start

Enterprise Social Networking, Is Your Company Falling Behind?

IBM Plugging Holes In Connections/SharePoint Integration

Well-worth your time checking out the demo (just follow the link below). If you are using SharePoint but are considering Lotus Connections for blogs, communities, social networking, etc., this type of integration could help people understand what the resulting user experience would be like.

Good Enough For “SharePoint Shops”?

Despite this plug-in, I still believe IBM has made a fundamental and perhaps unrecoverable competitive mistake by not being radically more aggressive regarding SharePoint integration. The window for IBM to have entrenched itself in "SharePoint shops" for social computing is just about closed in my opinion given that Microsoft will begin talking about the next version in greater detail later this year. With notable improvements anticipated regarding profiles, blogs, wikis, etc - organizations that are already committed to SharePoint are going to view Lotus Connections skeptically (exception: organizations that also have a strategic WebSphere commitment that is greater than their commitment to SharePoint and those making a strategic commitment to the Lotus stack in general). 

IBM was faced with taking one of two directions and decided to focus on improving the functional gaps and platform capabilities within Connections (e.g., usability, communities, wiki) rather than dramatically improving its integration with SharePoint (adopting a "surround and extend" tactic). Given Microsoft's weak position in terms of social computing at the time, I would have chosen "the road least traveled" and prioritized deep integration with SharePoint (e.g., Connections Web Parts, SSO and directory, replacement (as much as possible) of the SharePoint User Profile / MySite function, BDC integration, etc.). I would have made Connections the best third-party application people could buy (vs. Confluence, NewsGator, Telligent, etc) to augment SharePoint in an area where it was very deficient. 

I would have prioritized insanely great integration and gone forward with a less-complete IBM-centric platform to convince organizations, in an overwhelming fashion, that they should not view SharePoint as a social computing platform – and, that there was no need to because Connections was a complimentary extension to their investment in that Microsoft platform. Having insanely great integration with SharePoint would have made up for the functional gaps (in my opinion). A well executed “surround and extend" strategy would have relegated SharePoint to more basic content and workspace-centric collaboration scenarios. Having insanely great integration would have bought IBM time to backfill on the functional capabilities.

Can IBM "Crack The Code" For Getting Into SharePoint Shops?

If IBM can alleviate the cost concerns I consistently here from customers looking at the platform, then Connections can continue to thrive overall. But probably not in IT organizations that self-identify themselves as “SharePoint shops”. Something dramatic needs to be done - and soon. But I don't see that sense of urgency from the IBM camp. Of course, one can argue that the road to social computing solutions might be best pursued by not going through IT organizations but through the business side - but that's another discussion and blog post.

I find customers looking to leverage SharePoint investments are not so interested in learning about Connections as they are in learning more about vendors that have complimentary underpinnings (e.g., Telligent is .NET friendly) or specific integration (e.g., NewsGator, Atlassian). For shops that are willing to move farther away from SharePoint, then Jive comes up (influenced in part because they have a SaaS option that avoids the Java question in SharePoint-centric shops) more frequently than IBM (unless they have that WebSphere centricity). The expectation is that at some point, market forces will compell Jive to improve its SharePoint integration. I think that's a pretty credible assumption.

Don't get me wrong - Connections has improved (a lot) since its initial release. The next release will include several innovative features - but the chasm between Connections and SharePoint will be noticeably closed (in the eyes of SharePoint shops) with the eventual (perhaps still a year away) release of SharePoint 2010. Plug-ins alone are not going to cut it...

Socialize Me: Demo: Lotus Connections Plugin for Sharepoint

Earlier this week, the Lotus development team released the beta version of the new Lotus Connections plugin for Microsoft Sharepoint. You may remember that I mentioned this was coming when I did my recap of Lotusphere ealier this year. If you've been reading this blog for a while, you are probably familiar with the integration capabilities of Lotus Connections into Microsoft Sharepoint.

As soon as the plugin was available, and I got some free time, I installed it into a test system to give it a test drive. The installation was pretty straightforward. Basically, you run a wizard that asks you for two parameters: 1) the URL for the Connections Profiles service, and 2) the URL for your Sharepoint site (which was automatically detected for me). Clicking Next a couple more times and 2-3 minutes later the plugin was installed!

The new plugin provides 3 capabilities out of the box:

1. Adds the Lotus Connections person card EVERYWHERE a name appears
2. Adds a tag cloud web part to surface the global Lotus Connections tag cloud in Sharepoint
3. Adds Profiles search mechanism as an additional search engine in Sharepoint

To see these capabilities in action, check out this quick demo that I just recorded.

lbenitez . Luis Benitez . Socialize Me: Demo: Lotus Connections Plugin for Sharepoint

Saba Social Left Out Of IBM Deal

Interesting news item - on the one hand, it seems straightforward. IBM partners with a well-known human capital management vendor that has a strong offering in the LMS/e-Learning space. The Saba partnership provides IBM with a few things:

• It allows IBM to exist this business and provide existing Lotus Learning customers a migration path (to Saba)
• It allows IBM to sell Saba's learning solution directly (augmenting the value proposition of WebSphere Portal via a learning accelerator)
• It allows IBM's human capital management consulting practices to sell a learning solution that sits on top of IBM infrastructure

However, there are some nuances in the deal. The focus of the partnership is between Saba's platform and IBM's WebSphere platform, not the Lotus software stack. Specifically, there was no mention of what the deal means in terms of Lotus Connections and Saba Social. As learning strategies focus more on the informal, more social aspects of how people learn, display talent, gain/share expertise - the deal creates/reinforces a competitive touch point. It's unclear to me, how Saba can expect IBM to sell its social networking solution over Lotus Connections (as it stands today). By giving IBM the upper hand in selling the core Saba platform into IBM accounts - has Saba abandoned any real hope of selling Saba Social into those accounts? I think so. And that's not good news from a long-term perspective for Saba. Our field research project identified strategic talent and learning initiatives as key factors driving interest in enterprise social networking projects.

One of Saba's main challenges as it enters the social networking space is to overcome significant go-to-market hurdles (being well known by customers and prospects in the HCM space does not necessarily transfer over being well known to decision-makers on social networking strategies. One technical/tactical workaround would be for Saba to deliver modules that integrated within Lotus Connections (via a plug-in/widget of some sort, or through Connections' REST and other programmable interfaces). Overall, it still strikes me that this deal makes it harder for Saba to sell its own social networking approach into IBM shops. Given Saba's platform exploits IBM infrastructure, that tactical workaround might become strategic unless the company can shift gears and extend other collaboration platforms, such as Microsoft SharePoint, or focuses on vertical capabilities (such as social network analysis with learning and talent in mind). 

Saba Expands Relationship with IBM Around People Management

REDWOOD SHORES, CA and CAMBRIDGE, MA,  May 12, 2009 — Saba Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: SABA) and IBM today announced that they are working together to help businesses harness and develop talent.

The companies are combining expertise to offer organizations a threefold approach to people management. This includes human capital management services and consulting from IBM and advanced enterprise learning solutions from Saba. In addition, IBM will offer a new Learning Accelerator for WebSphere Portal that is based on Saba Learning.

The combination of IBM and Saba can help businesses save time and money by reusing the same IT infrastructure for learning that is used for their corporate intranet and extranet. In addition, enterprises can capitalize on the many opportunities for informal and formal learning created by the “always on,” collaborative and social networking-focused culture of today’s businesses. By combining learning opportunities with portal-based collaboration, employees, customers and partners can participate in broader informal learning channels, making them more effective and productive.

.....

As part of Saba’s unified people management platform, Saba Learning is a comprehensive management system for formal and informal learning that enables organizations to identify, manage, develop, and measure the capabilities and knowledge of people throughout an enterprise, as well as empower them to connect and contribute their expertise. Saba Learning provides organizations with leading capabilities for catalog and curriculum management; compliance, continuing education, and competency management; for-profit training; content development and management; virtual learning; informal learning; and collaboration.

IBM Global Business Services’ worldwide human capital management practice provides advisory and implementation services to enable enterprise performance through improved workforce effectiveness. The IBM Workforce & Talent Solutions (WTS) offering integrates services from Human Capital Management practice with a wide range of tools, technologies, and IBM Research projects, including Saba’s learning and people management applications. WTS is the first holistic offering in the talent management marketplace that addresses the science of people management throughout the entire employee lifecycle.

Since Saba and IBM support open standards, Saba's learning capabilities can be surfaced in context within WebSphere Portal. This combination can also be expanded to other IBM collaboration tools allowing people to easily locate experts, share information and participate in broader communities of interest.

When Saba’s learning capabilities are coupled with WebSphere Portal, businesses can empower employees to work smarter. The personalization capabilities of a portal can display customized views of the applications and information a person needs based on their job role. Surfacing formal learning opportunities within this context can help employees relate what they are learning to the task at hand. In addition, portals help make learning easier by putting content in a context where it is most meaningful to end users.

Saba - News & Events - 2008 -Saba Expands Global Reach with Hewlett-Packard Relationship

Additional Analysis:

The New IBM - Saba Relationship

IBM and Saba have worked together for years. Almost five years ago Saba integrated IBM's middleware into its product so the companies could work well together, and today Saba supports the entire range of IBM middleware in its product set. IBM actually uses Saba internally as its formal learning management system for all 300,000+ employees. (IBM's informal learning is done in a far different way, which we describe in detail in our in-depth case study on IBM's Learning on Demand solution.)

Last year IBM's Global Business Services organization announced that its worldwide Human Capital Management Practice was offering an end-to-end solution for enterprise talent management solutions built around Saba. This offering, which is still relatively new, has taken hold and has resulted in many major new Saba implementations.

IBM Adopts Saba as its Learning Technology Partner

Small Settings Update, Large Discovery Impact?

This falls into the "law of unintended consequences" realm perhaps. I like having options (not an overwhelming amount - but some), most people do. If the root problem is performance (or some other reason), then just "fess up" and tell the community that the settings were reduced to resolve some technical issue in the system. Twitter should also be more open on the feedback (was there ample notification that feedback was being sought?). Also, avoid coming across as "we know what's good for you" (there are some basic practices concerning community management Twitter might want to read up on...). Otherwise, let people select their own mechanisms related to discovery and add additional filtering options if they feel overwhelmed. 

Small Settings Update

We've updated the Notices section of Settings to better reflect how folks are using Twitter regarding replies. Based on usage patterns and feedback, we've learned most people want to see when someone they follow replies to another person they follow—it's a good way to stay in the loop. However, receiving one-sided fragments via replies sent to folks you don't follow in your timeline is undesirable. Today's update removes this undesirable and confusing option.

The Importance of Discovery
Spotting new folks in tweets is an interesting way to check out new profiles and find new people to follow. Despite this update, you'll still see mentions or references linking to people you don't follow. For example, you'll continue to see, "Ev meeting with @biz about work stuff" even if you don't follow @biz. We'll be introducing better ways to discover and follow interesting accounts as we release more features in this space.

Twitter Blog: Small Settings Update

Persistent Group Chat in Office Communications Server R2

In August, 2007 Microsoft announced its intent to acquire Parlano. Parlano's leading product, MindAllign, delivered "persistent group chat". After the acquisition was completed, Microsoft has kept quiet on exactly how it would adapt Parlano's technology and deliver it as part of Office Communications Server (OCS). With OCS R2 launched in February 2009 that mystery has been resolved:

• Persistent Group Chat - Downloadable Data Sheet
• Persistent Group Chat - Downloadable PowerPoint (Features Overview)
• Persistent Group Chat - Interview With Demo 
• Persistent Group Chat - Official OCS R2 Launch Video
  • Note: Select "Breakout Sessions" from the top menu, then select "Introducing Group Chat in OCS" 

I've been studying the intersection of real-time collaboration and unified communications with social computing (specifically: social networking, social messaging, and activity streams). As I reviewed some of the above materials recently, I jotted down a list of thoughts which I'm sharing below:

From The Downloadable Data Sheet:

1. Is the name “group chat” really the right label? If you are currently an OCS client and have deployed Office Communicator, do you already believe that you have "group chat"? If so, has Microsoft created a hurdle that it needs to overcome in terms of explaining what Persistent Group Chat (itself a mouthful), what applications are possible, and the business case for deploying this new capability? 
2. Why do I need a “specialized client” for group conversations? I can understand the need for a dedicated client for someone who "lives" in this type of application but it seems that organizations will want a "lite" version that extends from MOC for the casual user.
3. Is the “chat room” metaphor something to build on? Or does it create other problems? The concept of chat rooms is not new (you can go back to IRC, AOL, etc). But will management see this as a waste of time? Or as another communication tool that needs monitoring, audit/logging, etc. Would it be better to think of these tools as a real-time version of a async workspace (ala WSS). So, persistent group chat is to OCS as WSS is to SharePoint... 
4. Does the “auditorium” metaphor begin to touch on a similar capability as MOLM? Live Meeting has an auditorium metaphor (as do other web conferencing tools) yet there does not seem to be any alignment or integration between the two - should there be? Could these types of chat rooms compliment Live Meeting as a better back-channel?
5. Does the federation capability (internal/external) require additional edge server considerations? It just seemed to be a gap in the materials that fully explained this concept.
6. Sharing documents in chat rooms. Where are the docs coming from (local PC, from SharePoint)? Am I creating another document island where storage and content management are going to be a concern?
7. Features: It would be nice to have an RSS feed capability (maybe I missed it)? It would also be nice to have a Web Part for inclusion into SharePoint and other application contexts. It would also be nice to have people in chat rooms linked to their MySite profiles (which begins to take Persistent Group Chat into the community and social networking area). 
8. It was not clear in the materials how the archival process works - basically, how much of SharePoints ECM capabilities are leveraged (or not)? 
9. The real question overall - how does persistent group chat relate to "Enterprise Twitter” (social messaging, micro-blogging)?

Downloadable PowerPoint:

1. Some similar questions as above came to mind re: chat history – where does it intersect with Microsoft's ECM/records management efforts? Is this information searchable – how (via SharePoint, FAST, etc? 
2. Will there be a browser client? For Office Communicator, Microsoft also delivered Communicator Web Access. Is there (should there be) a CWA like front-end for persistent group chat?
3. Is the Group Chat server part of the enterprise pool itself? It just wasn't clear in the diagrams.
4. The deck talks about federation - but it isn't clear how much work I need to do for federation of persistent group chat and the normal federation work an organization would have to do for OCS in general (for IM and presence). Are they complimentary, different? What are the impacts to edge servers?
5. In some ways, when the OCS team talks about discussions in group chat - the parallelism between real-time and async collaboration comes to mind. I would hope that the two teams are working together from a user experience perspective - setting up forums (real-time or async) are different approaches to conversation and how people work together - they should have some similar contexts in terms of user experience and application behavior. But - two teams - two products - probably not as much cross-functional alignment as I would want to see... 
6. I would like to see some more details information on REST or JSON or Atom/AtomPub interfaces so that developers could build their own extensions and front ends. If you look at the level of innovation around Twitter and other web sites due to Adobe AIR...

Video Interviews:

1. I can't help but wonder as I watch the videos whether this technology has been eclipsed by social messaging / micro-blogging / activity streams. Maybe eclipsed is too harsh - but it seems like there are different architectural models now.... perhaps group chat rooms hang off of a social messaging stream. 
2. I also begin to wonder about how other applications post events into the "room". If I had a persistent group chat room dedicated for data center ops for instance, could a system management tool post into the chat stream? If so - then I begin to think about the touch point between activity streams and these type of tools...
3. I was hoping to see support for the type of nomenclature that Twitter supports (@, RT, d, hash tags, follow, etc) – the conversational dynamics are similar...
4. Rooms I belong to – that, and other information, should show up in my MySite Profile (linking community and social networking).
5. It would be nice to associate chat rooms with WSS spaces, wiki spaces, etc ... again, people ebb-and-flow from sync to async to sync, etc.
6. It would be nice to see a workflow escalation scenario. Can you auto-create a persistent group chat room and provision it with people on an event basis (e.g., business application event)?
7. Finally, analytics to mine, report, analyze these rooms would be nice to see.

That's it ... just a note-taking brain dump while reading/watching.

Burton Group Workshop: Enterprise Social Networking

If you are looking for another reason to attend Burton Group's Catalyst conference in San Diego, here's the brief write-up below on my social networking workshop. For additional information on Deals & Discounts for Catalyst Conference 2009 and registration.

Notes from the Field: Social Networking in Action

Tuesday 7/28 - 8:00 AM - 12:00 PM (half day)

Mike Gotta

Enterprises are asking themselves: do social networks offer real value or are they just an excuse for workers to waste time? To cut through the hype, Burton Group conducted an extensive study to discover how organizations are addressing social networking, listening to 21 organization tell their stories in over 30 interviews involving around 65 people from business and IT departments. The interviews covered topics such as making the business case, metrics, compliance, talent, generational shifts, community building, technology concerns, and cultural factors.

This workshop will discuss the study’s findings: what’s working, what isn’t, and how organizations are delivering real business value from social networking initiatives. Specific areas covered will be:

• How we did it: the study’s methodology
• Getting started: business case, funding, measuring value & ROI
• Making it stick: culture, governance and adoption
• Shifting generations: strategic opportunities for HR
• Technology: platform approaches winning out

Oracle Beehive 1.5: Still A Work-In-Progress

Last week Oracle announced enhancements to its nascent collaboration platform, Beehive. Team workspaces, web / video conferencing, and integration with desktop productivity tools (including Windows Explorer) were the among the list of improvements cited in the press release. These enhanced capabilities build on announcements Oracle made earlier this year when it announced Beehive On-Demand (A SaaS play) and submitted the Beehive Object Model for standardization (OASIS ICOM TC). Oracle also acquired Tacit in November of 2008. David Gilmore, founder of Tacit, is now Senior Vice President, Collaboration Technologies, Oracle (focused on Beehive).

Reference links:

• Press Release
• Beehive 1.5 "Cheat Sheet"
• Beehive Collaboration Software
• David Gilmour • SVP Collaboration, Oracle Beehive
• Oracle Beehive On Demand
• Beehive Object Model

Beehive 1.5 release notes:

• Oracle Beehive Extensions for Explorer
• Oracle Beehive Workspaces Client
• Oracle Beehive Extensions for Outlook Enhancements
• Oracle Beehive Zimbra Enhancements
• Enhancements for Mobile Device Support
• Oracle Beehive Conferencing Enhancements
• Other Features and Enhancements

Background:

Beehive (announced at Oracle Open World 2008) is the successor to the failed Oracle Collaboration Suite. Beehive is (at least) Oracle's third attempt to introduce a credible collaboration solution into the market. Past attempts have failed for a variety of internal (e.g., lack of sales support, immature technology) and external reasons (e.g., inability to compete with IBM and Microsoft, no widespread adoption). While Oracle's WebCenter solution itself has collaborative capabilities (e.g., blogs, wikis, tags/bookmarks), the company has positioned Beehive as the foundation for its collaboration strategy.

At a high level, Beehive has four major components

1. Enterprise Messaging (e-mail, calendar, tasks, contacts)
2. Team Collaboration (document library, wiki, team calendar, micro-blogging, search, RSS, workflow, etc)
3. Synchronous Collaboration (web/video conferencing, instant messaging, presence, voice chat)
4. Beehive Platform (platform services including security, policy management, integration, object model, admin functions, and interfaces to related Oracle technology)

Analysis:

Oracle makes the case the collaboration has been fragmented across three major domains (Enterprise Messaging, Team Collaboration, and Synchronous Collaboration). This has resulted in tools being deployed that are more costly for organizations to deploy and maintain from an infrastructure and operations perspective. The fragmented nature of collaboration tools also negatively impacts end users (fragmented tools result in a poor user experience). The lack of "collaboration in-context" Oracle views as a key long-term value proposition with Beehive. As applications integrate with Beehive services, the unified object model within Beehive will provide contextual consistency. From a management perspective, the unified platform enables consistency in policies being applied (security, audit, compliance) resulting from a single storage architecture that delivers a consistent information management framework. In the video segment, David Gilmore discusses process-centric collaboration and how Beehive might enable more seamless transitions between process-centric applications and collaborative tools. Today, users switch back-and-forth. Oracle believes that it will lead this concept in the industry.

At least that's the argument. There are some key points to consider however:

1. Oracle must have missed the "contextual collaboration" discussion that emerged in the industry during the late nineties (defined and led by Meta Group at the time). The idea of combining process-centric and collaboration activities "in context" is not new. Both Microsoft and IBM have targeted that scenario for several years. Oracle is correct in pointing out that the current state of contextual collaboration remains fragile (sometimes done in a brute-force fashion), but Oracle is misinformed that it has discovered the concept or will lead the charge towards this end-state given its poor track record in the collaboration market so far.
2. Oracle makes another assumption that a single platform (e.g., storage architecture, object model) is the most effective way to solve the problem. While that approach sounds attractive (one giant database), it raises a credible concern (and counter-argument) that its approach is monolithic, not modular, too tightly coupled to other Oracle technologies, and will not be able to sustain the type of rapid platform change needed as requirements evolve over time.  
3. Oracle asserts that current solutions have a cost-of-ownership challenge but offers no numbers to show how Beehive is more cost effective from a TCO viewpoint.
4. Oracle has not articulated an effective migration / co-existence strategy. So far, there is not a lot of information available on how other application and infrastructure systems participate in a Beehive ecosystem. What does it mean to "Beehive-enabled" other systems?
5. Oracle has not clarified the relationship between WebCenter and Beehive. It is undeniable that WebCenter has a collaboration capability (blogs, wikis, tags/bookmarks). The lack of clear and concise information on how WebCenter participates in a Beehive solution is mystifying and should be a customer concern. This includes alignment between WebCenter and Beehive in terms of content management and records management services. I believe both systems leverage the same records management services but differ on other content management functions.
6. Oracle's submission of the Beehive object model to Oasis is "interesting" but without market uptake by third-party vendors, it remains an intellectual exercise.
7. Concerning the enterprise messaging component: I don't believe the argument of switching from one on-premise solution to another on-premise solution is where the market is at right now. I think the argument is to switch to a SaaS model (Beehive On-Demand), or find the right balance of SaaS and on-premise messaging (a hybrid model). Also, the focus is on Exchange exclusively yet there remains a large amount of Lotus Notes customers that also might be reconsidering their enterprise messaging direction. Overall, I think the best play for this component is the On-Demand aspect but unfortunately, the On-Demand solution has not been positioned effectively in the market. Oracle seems to be playing "last year's" battle for e-mail, etc.
8. Concerning Synchronous Collaboration: Right now, I'm surprised if anyone would take this component seriously. Virtually all organizations I am talking to are looking at unified communications as a platform direction with SIP as a core technology anchor point. Oracle Beehive has no SIP story here. The instant messaging and presence is based on XMPP which is virtually a non-starter in many organizations. There's no stated direction on PBX integration into telephony systems (e.g., Avaya, Cisco). There's no information on how this component co-exists with IBM and Microsoft (e.g., client integration, shared presence). There's no information on federation of instant messaging and presence with external systems. The web conferencing feature might be attractive - but without the integration with telephony and video systems from third-party vendors, I just don't see the Synchronous Collaboration component being a serious play in the market.
9. Concerning Team Collaboration: This component has the strongest potential in the market but faces stiff competition. IBM (Notes, Quickr) and Microsoft (SharePoint), as well as historical players such as EMC (eRoom), are dominant providers of collaborative workspaces. Smaller vendors have also gained some momentum in the market by focusing on enterprise social networking (e.g., Jive, Telligent). What would differentiate Oracle from other competitors would be pursuit of deep integration within its application systems (e.g., CRM, ERP, HRMS). Such a strategy has not been defined and it should leave customers wondering about the cross-group support Beehive has with other internal groups within Oracle. The lack of cooperation from other teams was a key factor in the demise of Oracle Collaboration Suite. Another example of this disconnect from other groups is the lack of Beehive being represented as part of the Enterprise 2.0 solution from Oracle. The Team Collaboration solution could do well from a SaaS perspective but again, the On-Demand theme has not been pushed hard enough by Oracle. Beehive in the cloud would also let WebCenter take on more of an obvious collaboration role with Beehive "powering" WebCenter.  

Futures: 

1. When the Tacit acquisition was announced, Oracle quoted this in its press release: "The addition of Tacit Software’s technology to Oracle Beehive underscores our commitment to a strong, differentiated presence in the collaboration software industry,' said Terry Olkin, Chief Architect and Vice President, Oracle Collaboration Technologies. 'This capability enables coordination and collaboration to occur between the right people at the right time based on the information present in the documents, conversations and messages within the enterprise." One can assume then that Tacit's mining and correlation capabilities will show up in Beehive - perhaps making Beehive a key engine for Oracle's eventual social networking efforts.

Recommendation:

1. I would skip the on-premises Enterprise Messaging component. Push Oracle on the evolution of its On-Demand direction for Enterprise Messaging.
2. I would also skip the Synchronous Collaboration component. Right now, I don't see these capabilities as being credible in the market.
3. If you are an Oracle client (business applications, WebCenter, etc), consider piloting the Team Collaboration component. By pilot, I mean off-on-the-side to explore integration with the business applications, experiment with the potential benefits from a unified object model). As critical as I have been with some of the points above, I would not dismiss what Oracle is putting together outright when it comes to this component but - adoption of a long-view is required given Beehive maturity and the need to better align internal resources (including go-to-market resources). Oracle needs to focus on building the ecosystem around Beehive and not rely solely on an all-Oracle model.

The points above are a high-level assessment. If you are a Burton Group client, feel free to schedule a conference call to discuss how Oracle's collaboration initiatives apply to your enterprise.