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

Circling Around To Enterprise 2.0 Again

Thomas Vanderwal posted an article on Microsoft SharePoint 2007 that has caught traction on other blogs (Sharepoint as a Gateway Drug to Greater Efficiency...) and on Twitter. I commented extensively on Twitter last evening and thought I'd share the "tweets" below:

- SharePoint clearly has issues but it's a bit over-the-top to say not viable as a blanket statement ...

- I have lots of criticisms of SP re: blogs (poor), wikis (worse), profiles (mediocre)

- but the decision needs to be made in the context of a broader criteria and ways to extend e.g., old post http://bit.ly/utg

- Products are neither Enterprise 2.0 compliant or not - products don't define E2.0 - it's how used, not what is

- If we define E2.0 by products - then forget about it ... it's a lost cause

- I don't disagree that there are "stories" - and I don't disagree that there are short-comings

- but a blanket "not viable under any circumstance" is incorrect

- It devolves E2.0 into a product feature/function discussion - at that point, who cares - wait for the next release

- Locking your data up in some wiki that has no data architecture, no services interface, no meta model and meta data model

- sounds like a problem too - wikis that cannot manage attachments - wikis that rely on proprietary markup ...

- Some of the problems with SP are organizational, some cultural, some in regards to governance, and some with its core technology

- I've had clients come back with huge price tags for Connections - does that make Connections defacto non-E2.0?

- There is no industry standard criteria to determine what products are / are not E2.0 because that's the wrong focus in isolation

- If E2.0 were a product check-list, life would be so easy, unfortunately it's not...

- "emergent use of social software" - gets to how social software is used, not so much what it is

- I can use blogs in a very directed, workflow, formal way - that use case is not E2.0 I would argue (nothing at all emergent about it)

- But if I open that blog up to comments, feeds etc - then I setup the emergent use - the derivative network effect can be E2.0-like

- So if you look at tools and how they are used - directed interaction vs. volunteered interaction - then E2.0 focus is on that volunteered

SharePoint is a product mashup of sorts. If you go back to its early-days, SharePoint Team Services and SharePoint Portal Server are the root products. They were designed by different teams that did not necessarily take a "long view" of their individual projects. There was little serious in my opinion about how the products might someday come together. In 2003, the first iteration of a "platform mashup" occurred with SharePoint 2003 that joined Windows SharePoint Services (the evolution of STS) with portal. The 2007 release was arguably the first concerted effort to deliver an integrated platform, adding additional components along the way. Some of those additional components were blogs and wikis. The MySite capability for user profiles existed in earlier releases but was designed as a personal site for file sharing - it was never designed to be a social networking component. That's a thumbnail summary of SharePoint.

From a deployment perspective - Microsoft adopted an explicit bottoms-up effort to sell SharePoint 2003 within large enterprises. WSS was positioned for workgroup-level collaboration while the rest of SharePoint was positioned as a departmental portal. This lead to very broad rollouts of SharePoint but in a very localized manner. Few organizations back in 2003 adopted a formal enterprise-wide, top-down approach. The localized manner in which organizations rolled out SharePoint is the primary causal factor to the micro-silo and information locker issues identified in the posting below. MOSS 2007 exacerbated the existing problem. Many organizations that already had WSS 2003, or had more broadly committed to SP 2003 had already lost control in most instances. SharePoint rollouts were largely planned, designed, built, deployed, and operated in a disjointed manner. MOSS 2007 forced organizations to regain control and was the "wake-up call" to the governance problem that organizations had created for themselves. Governance is the number one issue for SharePoint shops.

There have been, and are, exceptions to the simple illustration above. Some organizations that had solid technology management frameworks treated SharePoint in a more comprehensive manner. There were few rogue WSS situations and departmental portals were aligned within enterprise portal frameworks. These organizations were much better off when MOSS 2007 came along because they already had an shared service/infrastructure view of SharePoint as a platform to begin with. Governance was likely already in place.

Are there issues with SharePoint? Yes, absolutely. The user experience is not great. The functionality I expect in discussion forum is lacking, or requires customization. The blogging capability is perhaps the poorest of any enterprise product out there. The wiki is really not a wiki. The implementation of RSS rather than Atom was a stunning mistake. There's no tag/bookmark capability and the social networking capability is mediocre. SharePoint requires customization - few organizations succeed at an enterprise-level with SharePoint without significant investments to customize the platform.

But question lingers - does that mean that SharePoint "is not" Enterprise 2.0 ... that it is not a viable platform for E2.0?

That's the wrong question in my mind. If you go back to my tweets - Enterprise 2.0 is not about products per se. It's not a "what is" but "how used". It's about understanding how social software is used in emergent ways. Even if we wanted to get into the feature/function discussion on products, there is no accepted criteria to determine what constitutes an "Enterprise 2.0" tool.

One argument is that SharePoint is used extensively as a file share. Is that a unique problem? No. If you look at all workspace products: Novell Groupwise/Sitescape, EMC/Documentum's eRoom, Lotus QuickPlace/Quickr, and others presenting themselves as virtual team rooms for sharing files (i.e., Huddle) - they all have essentially the same issue. Across the board over the last decade, when I talk to clients they complain about workspace products becoming file dumping grounds over time - it's not just a SharePoint problem. When people use these environments for short-lived activities there may not be a problem. But the space may be left hanging around "forever" or if the project is long-running or involves a lot of different teams, then these products can become much more complicated and frustrate people.

I might suggest that the overall problem is the file-based workspace model itself (rather than a particulat product). Files themselves create difficulties (vs. hypertext and the web) for organizing and sharing information. File-based workspace models regardless of product have an inherent problem as they scale (content, people). They become cluttered and fragmented, especially when teams and communities are involved. The workspace model itself creates transparency issues. Users may have concerns about sharing content with people outside their team so they set access controls that prevent or limit people from knowing about the information. Workspaces can be effective and they are not going away - but until recently, they were the only game in town. Now we have wikis, blogs and other ways to share information and collaborate and become less dependent on file-based models.

The problem with workspaces in many ways becomes a "how used" issue, not a "what is" problem where we lay all blame on a product. There are organizational factors that contribute to the situation. We could create a better hierarchy of related workspaces for multi-team projects. We could leave workspace access controls more open to have greater public access by employees. We could organize the content within a workspace better. It is true that some products make this easier or harder than others - vendors have a role here and share some of the blame.

The other item to consider when critcizing vendors and workspace models is "time". SharePoint has been around for several years (as have other workspace vendor products from IBM, Novell, etc). As people begin to work natively with web-based content (blogs and wikis) they also still want (or need) to add word processing, spread sheets and presentation files into Jive, Socialtext and others - it will be interesting to see how these vendors also deal with the "how used" problem within their environments as they also begin to be used as "file dumping grounds". I'm already getting comments from clients on how these "next generation" products can still be used in ways that re-create old problems.

So my advice - let's get off the "what is" debate about products and features and focus on "how used" when it comes to E2.0.

SharePoint can be used in ways that create an anti-pattern of sorts when thinking about E2.0 - but it can also be used in ways that are well-aligned with E2.0 goals. Yes, often those success stories rely on partners that extend the capabilities of SharePoint as a platform. But the platform is leveraged and some capabilities (e.g., search/social distance, MySite) are credible. I have clients on both sides of the debate with successful and unsuccessful stories to tell.

The inconvenient truth is that the product does not eliminate the overwhelming influence that cultural dynamics has on how well an organization can leverage E2.0 concepts. I have clients piloting SharePoint alternatives. Some of the project champions I've talked to however hold little hope that they will achieve E2.0 goals given some of the overriding management control issues, compliance constraints, and unspoken social etiquette issues they face - even when they are not using SharePoint. Shocking... not.

Enterprise 2.0 is more about "how used", that it is about "what is"... 

SharePoint is not Enterprise 2.0

What is clear out of all of this is SharePoint has value, but it is not a viable platform to be considered for when thinking of enterprise 2.0. SharePoint only is viable as a cog of a much larger implementation with higher costs.

It is also very clear Microsoft’s marketing is to be commended for seeding the enterprise world of the value of social software platform in the enterprise and the real value it can bring. Ironically, or maybe true to form, Microsoft’s product does not live up to their marketing, but it has helped to greatly enhance the marketplace for products that actually do live up to the hype and deliver even more value.

SharePoint 2007: Gateway Drug to Enterprise Social Tools :: Personal InfoCloud

Social Messaging & Socialtext Signals: Before We Get Too Excited...

Update: Actually, the folks at Yammer, Socialcast, ESME, and other "Twitter-like" enterprise vendors or open source efforts should all address these issues...add comments and I'll aggregate them into a summary post.

I think it would be very helpful if the Socialtext folks could explicitly answer how Signals supports enterprise requirements for security, access controls, archive/logging (for audit, compliance, and records management), directory integration, and policy management overall (individuals, groups/roles). It would also be helpful if integration with IM/presence could be clarified in regards to a roadmap. This information should be made very visible as it is either a source of competitive differential, or an unfortunate gap.

Without this type of information (despite the well-deserved media coverage), I'm afraid the product will be virtually dead-on-arrival for most organizations that have these requirements for other messaging/communication systems - they apply to these tools, regardless of what we call them (i.e., micro-blogging).

Background from my earlier posts:

Twitter Compared to IM, Email and Forums

Enterprise Twitter: Clarity Amid The Hype

Enterprise Versions Of Twitter (updated)

Socialtext Releases Signals Micro-blogging Application for the Enterprise

Twitter-style Application Expands Socialtext's Enterprise Collaboration Platform with Secure Social Messaging Application -- Socialtext Desktop Public Beta, Powered By Adobe AIR

Palo Alto, CA - March 3, 2009 - Socialtext, the leading provider of Enterprise 2.0 Solutions, today announced general availability of Socialtext Signals™, the Twitter-style social messaging interface for the Socialtext platform. Socialtext Signals provides customers simple and efficient information sharing capabilities, and further expands the company's enterprise social networking and collaboration platform. Socialtext also announced the public beta availability of the Socialtext Desktop, a rich desktop application powered by Adobe® AIR®, for monitoring and participating in social networking, collaboration and social messaging.

SocialText

Related Stories:

Socialtext Signals and Socialtext Desktop Buzz

Launched Socialtext Signals and Socialtext Desktop

SocialText introduces Signals and gets my green light

Socialtext Adds Twitter-like “Signals” And a Desktop AIR App

Socialtext Brings Status Updates to the Enterprise

Workplace Anxiety - Good Or Bad Omen For Social Tools

Interesting article from NYTimes.com (excerpts below). Such organizational dynamics will influence how people participate and contribute with social tools (e.g., "Enterprise 2.0"). Some workers may withdraw under the assumption that hoarding their expertise might help keep them onboard. Others aggressively observe but not contribute under the assumption that they can harvest information to build-up their own personal knowledgebase. There may even be situations where workers actually interact more intensely under the assumption that open participation and contributions might help their visibility and reputation in the organization and therefore increase the likelihood that they are retained. The narrative leadership teams establish within the workplace can have a subtle influence on how people react.

Fear Factor in the Workplace - Room for Debate Blog - NYTimes.com

The economy lost 524,000 jobs in December, raising the unemployment rate to 7.2 percent. More than 10 million Americans are now unemployed. Many more millions of Americans worry about their own job security. These anxieties are transforming the workplace. Employees may be working harder, experts say, but they may also be less productive. What is the toll on individual workers and on the economy as a whole? Our Room for Debate panelists try to answer the question.

Risk-Averse Workers, Jittery and Compliant

Mitchell Lee Marks, who teaches at the College of Business at San Francisco State University, is the author of “Charging Back Up the Hill: Workplace Recovery after Mergers, Acquisitions, and Downsizings.”

What really disturbs surviving employees about downsizings is that they cannot control or rationalize the events. If I have a co-worker who frequently arrives late and does low quality work, I can rationalize her layoff by saying to myself, “She didn’t carry her weight and deserved to be let go.” If, instead, my co-worker seems to work as hard and as well as I do and then, through no fault of her own, happens to be the victim of a “reduction in force,” I cannot rationalize that. More important, I fear that I cannot control my situation: in the first scenario, I have a sense of control over my fate by continuing to do high-quality work. In the second scenario, working hard or working well doesn’t seem to help me retain my job.

So Much for Personal Growth

Ed Park, who was laid off at The Village Voice in 2006, is the author of “Personal Days,” a novel.

What is a layoff narrative? It’s a story about your work life that you construct before you get the ax, as one of the characters in my novel explains.

“The idea,” Pru says, “is that you look back on your period of employment, highlight all the abuses suffered, tally the lessons gained, and use these negatives and positives to mentally withstand what you anticipate will be a series of events culminating in expulsion. You look to termination as rebirth, liberation, an expansion of horizons…. Once you start constructing the layoff narrative, it’s only a matter of time.” In other words, to think it’s going to happen means it’s going to happen.

Layoff Lessons From ‘Good’ Times

Thomas Geoghegan, a labor lawyer in Chicago, is the author, most recently, of “See You in Court.” He has just announced that he’s running for Congress.

So far as I can tell, in my labor law practice, every year is a recession for working people, even in a boom. In 2007, over 15 million were out of work at some point in the year — typically for three to four months. Over two years, 20 million to 25 million could face such a catastrophe. Over three years, millions more. And that’s when things are good. Economists used to take a cheerful view of this: “It’s just rolling unemployment.” But it’s more like a rolling heart attack. Three months without a paycheck is a near-death experience.

How Will the Overpraised Generation Fare?

Jean Twenge, an associate professor of psychology at San Diego State University, is the author of “Generation Me.”

Not long ago, many employers were trying to recruit younger workers and — even more challenging — keep them happy enough to stay more than six months. Employees in their 20s and early 30s had high expectations: they were part of an overpraised generation raised when every child got a trophy for showing up. Other researchers and I concluded they were going to find the reality of adulthood a cold, hard shock. As a manager told me a few years ago about young workers’ sense of entitlement, “We’ll put up with it,” he said ominously, “until unemployment goes up.” Now it has.

Falling Down, Literally

 Myra S. White, a clinical instructor in the psychiatry department at Harvard Medical School, is the author of “Follow the Yellow Brick Road.”

Anxiety typically arises when people feel they are about to become victims of situations over which they have no control or are faced with a task that they aren’t sure they can do well. Workplaces are particularly fertile grounds for generating such situations, even in good times. Now, as companies pare their staffs and overload employees with more work, a contagion of anxiety spreads through work sites, from factory floors to office cubicles.

I’m Happy to Work Harder, Boss

Rebecca Johnson is the chief author of “World of Work — 2008,” published by Randstad, the world’s second human resources company.

You would think that employees would be unhappy with their employers right now. But in our annual survey, which was released in November, job satisfaction among the nearly 2,200 workers we interviewed is on the rise, and has risen dramatically since 2006. Perhaps, employees are appreciating their current jobs more. Certainly the expectations and demands they have of their employers are declining.

Fear Factor in the Workplace - Room for Debate Blog - NYTimes.com

Enterprise Twitter: Not Dismissive, Just Realistic

Dennis raised a credible perspective in a comment to my entry on "Enterprise Twitter". I thought I would respond in a separate post since I do not have a feed specific to comments and since his comment misinterprets my position:

1. I do track these products/services and I am aware that ESME is now a part of the Apache Incubator scheme.

2. I already subscribe to the ESME blog and have for some time.

3. These points also reflect comments I hear often from enterprise IT groups (architects, infrastructure planners, etc) concerning introduction of new messaging/communication tools. Since I tend to talk to a lot of these folks, I would consider my comments constructive actually for vendors in this space to consider.

4. I am not dismissing the enterprise Twitter space in a blanket fashion. That opening comment misrepresents my position. If you examine the recent post on Enterprise 2.0 Planning Considerations I specifically call out "Enterprise Twitter" as a space to watch in 2009. I am however not wearing rose-colored glasses when pointing out the hurdles these solutions will face as they emerge within enterprise environments. I do expect that vendors putting together unified communications and collaboration platforms will be forced to address the type of social messaging represented by tools such as ESME. I would point you to some thoughts I posted earlier regarding social presence as well. In turn, ESME and like tools will need to integrate (in some instances), and interoperate (in almost all cases), with UC platforms. I suggest you look at the recent IETF proposal sponsored by Cisco and IBM regarding intranet federation for IM and presence systems - that might be food for thought on integration and interoperability/federation even though these tools are not centric to SIP/SIMPLE.

5. It's easy to throw stones at IBM and Microsoft - and yes, there are aspects of those platforms that are proprietary - but they are deployed within large enterprise environments in a dominate fashion (in addition to Cisco). Microsoft does have an asset here with its Parlano acquisition and IBM does have options to open up Sametime to handle some behaviors demonstrated by "Enterprise Twitter" tools - so game on. Twitter-like tools will not have a free-ride without competition from existing messaging/communication vendors. 

6. It is nice to hear that ESME has multiple pilots - however, pilots come and go (especially given current economic conditions). Production deployments are a better yardstick. I'll be tracking this space in 2009 and look forward to analyzing and advising organizations on how this market evolves.

@Mike I respectfully disagree with your blanket dismissal of the enterprise Twitter space in the way you have. (Declared interest in ESME as you may already know.)

You might wish to know that ESME is now a part of the Apache Incubator scheme. That gives access to a lot of thought leadership in providing tools that are not wedded to proprietary platforms and access to enterprise class development skills.

Speaking personally (my colleagues might disagree) but I see little value in aligning to IBM for instance when they have their own solution in the works and tend to exhibit an 'only made here' attitude to solution selling.

We provided solid process integrations to SAP NetWeaver as part of the early alpha and despite your reservations, have pilots ongoing in a number of places, one of which we can mention is Siemens.

I'd be happy to get our business process and technology leads to provide you with a technical briefing if that works.

In the meantime, I'd refer you to the blog: http://blog.esme.us where you can keep tabs on what's happening.

Thanks for your attention.

2009: Planning Considerations For Enterprise 2.0

Rather than list off a "top ten" list of predictions for 2009, I thought I would briefly layout some topics and areas that business and IT decision-makers should pay attention to when formulating Enterprise 2.0 plans:

Enterprise 2.0: Critical Decisions For 2009

• "SharePoint Next": Call, Raise Or Fold
  • Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007 (MOSS) is a disappointing platform for social computing in my opinion. The blog is barely acceptable, the wiki is not, the decision to implement RSS rather than Atom was short-sighted and the "Corporate Facebook" capability is not that impressive. Still, many organizations are deploying SharePoint for many valid reasons unrelated to E2.0 and are "ok" with undertaking extensive customization or adding specific partners (e.g., NewsGator) to augment what SharePoint has in terms of E2.0 capabilities.
  • My position for some time has been that the next release will be a tipping point for Microsoft's social computing efforts. Either Microsoft "gets it right" and delivers a forward-looking release with significant improvements that transforms SharePoint into a market-leading social computing platform, or it delivers a release that has only incremental improvements to existing functionality that reflect a backward-looking competitive landscape (circa 2008 as things get locked-down).
  • If customers fail to see a forward-looking release and realize that they will again have to wait "another three years' before Microsoft delivers credible capabilities, then I expect to see a sizeable backlash within the SharePoint install-base. Organizations will leverage SharePoint for traditional productivity and content management needs but will look for an alternative social platform to sit alongside SharePoint while a minority of shops that have not over-committed to SharePoint (e.g., WSS only) will de-prioritize the platform.
• Communities & Social Networks: Think "Adoption", Not "Deployment"
  • The need to focus on non-technology factors rather than the underlying tooling was a consistent theme during client visits and telephone inquiries as well as the field research study I conducted on enterprise social networks. Most IT organizations are not charged with time, money and resources to really focus on adoption issues. IT organizations might not even have the right skills (some clients I talked to have sociologists on staff). Business leaders also need to realize the importance of cultural dynamics and the challenges that go along with changing work models and persuading people to change their behaviors. Consideration of new roles (e.g., community organizers) and new ways of assessing people's participation and contribution (e.g., redefining performance appraisal processes) are not far-fetched ideas. 
• Social Platforms: Managing The Gap
  • Another common point that arose during client visits and telephone briefings was the issue "managing the gaps". Organizations that selected point tools to fill gaps in existing collaboration and content platforms are now faced with products that have grown into mini-suites. A tactical decision to rely on a blog vendor becomes more complicated when that vendor then expands their tool to include a wiki. Ditto for making a tactical decision to select a wiki provider only to find out that the next release does blogs, tagging and social networking. Small vendors need to survive so it's no surprise that they will expand their offerings but that creates additional overlap with enterprise infrastructure and may cause the decision to be re-evaluated.
  • The trend now is to downplay reliance on point solutions (e.g., blog vendor, wiki vendor) and think more along the lines of a "social platform" (e.g., a consistent platform that offers blog, wiki, and a social network site). This makes the decision more complicated in some ways but the investment becomes less volatile and the investment has the potential to have more staying power in the market. IT groups generally want to avoid numerous small vendors whose products begin to look more similar over time.
• "Enterprise RSS": It's A Middleware Decision
  • It was a surprise to me that this space has not taken off. It might be due to a combination of factors. Right now, if you have sources producing feeds and clients that include feed readers then people are generally happy. Workers might have a few feeds they read in a single client (e-mail or browser). There might not be a "killer app" that illustrates the role feed syndication platforms play in the solution. Until there's a critical mass, the need for network bandwidth management, policy management, centralized feed security, etc doesn't make for a clear-cut business case.  
  • So, I'll repeat myself in 2009 - IT organizations need to look at this space as a middleware decision. And, although we use the term "RSS", please focus on Atom. RSS is a dead-end and architecturally deficient. As I mentioned earlier, it's unfortunate Microsoft implemented RSS within SharePoint - many organizations will be stuck with RSS until this mistake is corrected.
• Social Analytics: Redefining Business Intelligence
  • While this area would include social network analysis (SNA), it would also include all types of social analytics (rankings, ratings, tags/bookmarks, etc). Perhaps we should think of this area as Organizational Intelligence or Organizational Analytics instead of Social Analytics - or just extend our notion of Business Intelligence given the term is well-known. In any case, metrics are important. Without social analytics, it's difficult to know how to measure what's going on within social systems and how to value those interactions and activities. I hope 2009 will be the kick-off of this topic becoming more of a priority.

Enterprise 2.0: Long-term Issues

• Culture: It's not about the technology (per se). I've talked to organizations that have both succeeded, are struggling, or have failed with various E2.0 "tools". Organizations that have effectively leveraged E2.0-related tools most often are those that realized that cultural issues and E2.0 initiatives go hand-in-hand. Governance, change management, community-building and other "people strategies" help organizations leverage cultural dynamics in a positive fashion. 
• Generational shifts: GenY and aging workforce trends create opportunities for HR groups to take on a much more strategic role. Employee, retiree and alumni social networks for instance have the potential to help organizations become more resilient and agile by allowing it to capitalize on its internal and extended relationships - often in ways not constrained by formal institutional structures.  
• Information & media literacy: This might be a sleeper issue. There are a lot of "v" words here: the volume of information is growing exponentially, the velocity of business is increasing, the virtualization of the workplace continues as organizations are more global or have work models that are more mobile, and the variability of roles an employee may be expected to take on will become more diverse as decision-making is pushed to the line-worker. Workers need to become much more literate in how to leverage information and media sources and associated tools.  
• Social networks and identity: As part of the field research study I conducted (social networking within the enterprise), I was surprised to find a disconnect between social networking initiatives and identity management efforts. If employee profiles and the social tools they use to express themselves and establish relationships with others become the "fuzzy front-end of identity", then how those profiles become aligned with identity management becomes a critical issue for business and IT strategists. The interoperability aspect with external environments as digital life and digital work converge clearly comes to the forefront as well. 
• Standards: Pretty normal - standards are needed for integration, interoperability, etc.  
• Microformats: Hopefully, we will see much more focus on microformats (e.g., hCard, XFN) during 2009. Microformats, Atom/APP and XMPP I believe have compelling synergies when combined with social networking technologies.
• Records management: Also expected - we live in a world where there are numerous industry, regulatory and compliance-related requirements that need to be met.

Enterprise 2.0: Vendors To Watch (alpha order)

• Cisco: The market will only give Cisco so much time to "talk the talk". There needs to be a definitive collaboration solution that gains some noticeable traction in the market.
• IBM: Lotus Connections is holding its own but gaps remain (e.g., native wiki) and I would like to see deep integration with SharePoint.  
• Jive: Perhaps the most successful "mini suite" in the market right now and a good option for organizations that don't want to commit to SharePoint and have reservations about IBM.
• Oracle: "Once again into the breach" as the saying goes - Oracle will make another run in to collaboration/E2.0 market. While it has a much improved portfolio of collaboration and content tools this time - can it execute and will the market believe them?  
• Telligent: Telligent could be the "Jive of 2009" given its latest release (which rounds out the features), its integration with SharePoint, and alignment with a Microsoft environment overall.

Enterprise 2.0: Open Source Efforts To Watch

• Alfresco: Gaining more media attention with its SharePoint integration. 
• Drupal: Continues to come up in client interactions. 
• Liferay: Came out with "Social Office" as its E2.0 play. 
• Mindtouch: A vendor I hope more organizations consider - sound underling architecture that perhaps is over-branded as a wiki solution but is more of a mash-up server (kinda) based on a hypertext and service-oriented platform. 
• Sun Project SocialSite: Another project that I find interesting. I'm not convinced Sun can make it successful in the market but as an architectural model for organizations that want to socially-enabled existing web properties and applications and are interested in OpenSocial - it's well-worth a look.

Honorable Mention

• Apache Abdera: "The goal of the Apache Abdera project is to build a functionally-complete, high-performance implementation of the IETF Atom Syndication Format (RFC 4287) and Atom Publishing Protocol (RFC 5023) specifications." I hope to see an implementation of this spec in the market.

Enterprise 2.0: Watch This Space

• "Enterprise Twitter": I posted by thoughts here: Enterprise Versions Of Twitter (updated)

Enterprise Versions Of Twitter (updated)

There are several emerging (e.g., ESME, Laconica (open source), OraTweet (Oracle), SocialCast, Present.ly, and Yammer, etc.) but so far, none address to my satisfaction the issues posed below (which I happened to post on the Present.ly support forum).

Directory, Archive/Audit, Security/Compliance / Enterprise / Discussion Area - Present.ly Support

Most IT organizations will treat "Twitter-like" tools as they do Enterprise IM products which will raise questions such as:

1. Directory integration
2. Policy management (including policies assigned to people in certain roles or groups)
3. Archive (for audit, compliane, records management, etc)
4. Security (access controls, etc)
5. Integration with anti-virus and content filtering tools
6. Integration with Microsoft Communicator and IBM Sametime
7. Application development (plug-ins, integration with productivity tools)

I know there's a lot here but these tools are going to be asked such questions by many IT groups, hosted or on-premise.

Directory, Archive/Audit, Security/Compliance / Enterprise / Discussion Area - Present.ly Support

I would add one more: 8. enterprise-class administration tools to support some of the above requirements.

The biggest adoption barrier for these types of tools will be similar to what organizations have to do with any communication method re: security, records management (e.g., e-discovery), compliance and other burdens placed on enterprise IM.

(Added after posting): One thing I forgot to mention - there will be a race of sorts between IM vendors/products and these social messaging tools. For instance, can Microsoft exploit its acquisition of Parlano and deliver it as a Twitter-like service within OCS and can IBM expand Sametime to emulate the application behaviors of Twitter-like tools. The rationalization will be along the lines of "workers already spend time in their IM client so why give them another communication tool and cause them to switch back-and-forth" or "let leverage the the infrastruction deployed which already handles the archival needs", etc etc...

BTW - no response yet from the vendor.

Reality Check 2.0

I love the title "Reality Check 2.0" but all credit should go to Susan (citation link below).

This recession/depression is poised to eclipse any downturn we’ve seen in our lifetimes. As I canvas the Enterprise 2.0 landscape, I find myself wondering: what is our killer economic crisis app/movement? Twitter? Facebook? Will we save the U.S auto industry by social networking?

Really?

I can assure you, there will be no Federal bail outs for 2.0 startups. Some startups will stretch their life expectancy with VC funds, but at the end of the day, it’s show time. How will you help your customers and future customers grow or at least sustain their business through this economic downturn?

The Enterprise 2.0 Advisory Board is convening in an online forum to discuss themes for this year’s conference. The conversation quickly migrated beyond the soft benefits of social collaboration to the hard, measurable benefits businesses need when navigating through tough times.

ITSinsider » Blog Archive » Reality Check 2.0

Susan generously quotes me in here blog post (copied below). The economic crisis will bring a level of sanity to the irrational exuberance associated with various catch-phrases (e.g., Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0,  social media, social networking, etc). The next 12-18 months will be time for "pragmatic due diligence" when it comes to social software. This emphasis on a realistic approach towards solutions driven by social software should not be an excuse for IT organizations to protect vendors they are comfortable with - this crisis could easily become a situation where IT groups leverage "cost reduction", "infrastructure overlap", and "integration complexity" as excuses to get rid of smaller vendors and retreat into comfort zones with platforms they identify with to a greater degree than the business areas they support.

I can already imagine lines like "we're reducing costs by getting rid of (insert E2.0 vendor here) because we've already paid for SharePoint and Microsoft promises that they will have a better (insert E2.0 component here re: blog, wiki, social networking) capability in the next release". Never mind that in the two years that this might be the case (and I stress the word "might"), you have to ask yourself - what business value will not have been realized by using bad tools instead of good tools? And by forcing bad tools on users - will we "poison the well" and make people less receptive to working differently based on a bad experience? Changing behaviors and getting people to alter their mindset concerning what tools to use has always been a huge barrier in the collaboration space.

In a recent post (Reader's Corner), I identified a misplaced focus on platforms, suites and point solutions when it comes to social software re: "those are valid discussions at some point - but you need to think about the change you're trying to bring about (business-wise and in terms of organizational dynamics)." A rational and architectural approach towards reducing vendors is a credible tactic - defacto tossing them under the bus is not so credible.

Pragmatic due diligence means that in addition to a return-to-basics (see the quote below), we also need to have a more thorough understanding of how user experience and adoption scenarios influence success. Right now we tend to think in terms of "deployment" when it comes to social software. Assessing adoption is more critical and represents a type of ROI that is hard to determine - IT organizations usually follow a Plan-Build-Run framework that often means Plan-Build-Runaway after the system is deployed. But since many social applications are not transactional or process-specific in a traditional sense (they can augment such systems, or be used in their own unique way) - it means we need to establish methods around adoption practices to gauge how people really get work done and how work models change as a result of social applications (which relates back to "due diligence - establishing a standard of care").

I don't believe that the pendulum will swing so far to the other extreme that all projects involving blogs, wikis, social networks, etc. will be suspended or canceled outright. Those involved in such projects however need to pragmatically focus on some of the items listed below, become more specific in terms of what change the project will bring about, and be prepared for some realignment (e.g., of funding, resources, etc). 

“Some of the phrases I keep hearing: 1. Efficiency (cost containment/avoidance, streamlining, etc.) 2. Execution (all-things-lean, process refinement) 3. Effectiveness (process and people performance, measurable productivity) 4. Rationalization (of budgets, of projects, of platforms) 5. Governance and metrics to support the above. Operations (run the business) and investment to protect top/bottom line engines (grow the business) are still ok – transformation unless it maps into some of the above areas is more discretionary – a good strategist will not cut to the bone… but overall – it’s a run/grow the business more than transformation. Business transformation (at least in my head) is more than just changing a process. Anything “soft” is getting a hard look – sure – some savvy execs will keep a portfolio perspective and still invest in some long-term areas and not slash things to the point that when the economy rights itself they are strategically behind but they (1) may not have any choice and (2) may not get broad agreement from their peers.”

They also need to think not in terms of plan - build - run but perhaps more along the lines of observe - design - adopt when it comes to social software. 

Reader's Corner: While I Was Away...

There have been several comments left on different blog posts that I have not been able to respond to of late. I thought I would summarize a few of them here:

Enterprise 2.0 & The Economic Downturn

Jordan provides commentary on several other blog posts and analysts reports. A couple of things come to mind: (1) The issue is not about "Enterprise 2.0". The issue is really about how organizations approach aspects related to business-case formation, sponsorship, funding, ROI/metrics, and the decision-making related to rationalizing and prioritizing IT initiatives. Vendors (and analysts) caught up in a debate on whether suites and point tools will survive better or whether suites versus entrenched platforms will survive better should be looking higher up in the decision-making chain rather than in the technology nuances. IT organizations able to deliver solutions that focus on operational efficiencies (e.g., cost reduction/avoidance), revenue enhancement (e.g., retaining business, growing account value), and organizational effectiveness (e.g., process execution) are likely to be more well-received than backing solutions that are viewed as a discretionary spend or as something "nice to have" when times are good. (2) That said - savvy leadership teams realize that slash-and-burn approaches are going to leave them behind when markets do right themselves - yes, it's about survival but you need to survive-and-thrive afterwards. Organizations that continue to invest in specific initiatives that might be considered transformational in nature could very-well find themselves in a more competitive position over the long run my looking at the economic downturn as a signal to shift how it invests in IT (as a portfolio) but not to abandon all investments in certain areas related to collaboration (including social tools). But it still is not about suites vs. point tools or about suites vs. platforms. Those are valid discussions at some point - but you need to think about the change you're trying to bring about (business-wise and in terms of organizational dynamics).

Jordan Frank, Traction Software On Post SharePoint vs. Connections: The Battle Continues

The Battle Continues: SharePoint and Connections vs. Enterprise 2.0 suites.

In a tough economic climate which coincides with broad acceptance of emerging "2.0" technology, it's becoming clear that this is the time when companies will choose to do more, with Enterprise 2.0 suites, for less.

http://traction.tractionsoftware.com/traction/permalink/Blog904

Social Software Short List

Gartner recently came out with its assessment of the social software market (view here). First, the short list I provided was based on a specific blog post reflective of my own research and interactions with clients so the list of endors listed should not be positioned as a market assessment. What makes a market assessment on social software so difficult is that (1) the space is incredibly large, (2) the space is comprised of many different sub-spaces so there is a great deal of technology diversity, (3) some sub-spaces are externally focused while others are more internally focused (e.g., intranet) so there is a great deal of solution diversity and (4) there are a large number of vendors (platforms, suites, point tools, open source, etc). I use the term "space" because you have to first define social software and agree that social software is a market. I do not have access to the report so I will leave that issue to those that have read it - but I think the effort would have been better served by breaking the topic down a bit. I just don't find it useful (and I don't mean to be negative from a competitive perspective) - when I look at it and try to let it speak for itself - I'm not sure what it's trying to say. Some of these vendors focus on social media (external solution) and have pulled themselves out of RFPs for intranet solutions. It seems like community vendors are represented but perhaps better served with a specific graphic - it's hard to figure out how to compare/contrast community vendors with point tools. Some vendors are platform vendors so yes, they have strong impact as a collaboration/content solution but their blog and wiki tools are pretty bad (e.g., Microsoft) or have components completely missing (e.g., IBM Lotus Connections does not have a native wiki). I can't see on the graphic where NewsGator is (or is not) so does that mean that feeds are not social software (which gets back to definition and market structure issues). I think it is just very difficult, if next-to-impossible, to plot social software vendors on a two dimensional graph, even if you can get by the debate as to whether social software is a market per se rather than a category of software within which multiple markets reside. My own take-away is that social software is a composite market (if it is a market) and best assessed by multiple graphics rather than a "mashup" approach. It's just really really hard to do this type of market segmentation and have it be useful for people when it includes so many different sub-categories - you end up with potpourri (a decorative mix) rather than something that might be practical for decision-makers.

Bagaba, On Post Social Networking (?) With Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

I'd love to know how you came up with your short list. I see SO many vendors on the recent Gartner Magic Quadrant lumped closely together and I shudder to think what that list will look like in 2 years

Social Presence & Social Awareness

I would recommend reading "More Thoughts On Social Presence" which has links to some other posts on this topic. I do believe that a feed syndication platform forms the core of this approach and that a combination of Atom/AtomPub, XMPP, and microformats will also have a critical role.

Maurice, On Post Analytics: The Unsung Hero Of Social Systems

When you said "we want to consolidate all into one flow -- a single time-stamped thread -- that all apps can dip into" did you have any specific process in mind about how this would work, i.e. service, platform or system?

Quick Summary Of Client Meetings At Catalyst

Just a quick summary of my client meetings during our Catalyst event. Due to my speaking schedule and my role as a track moderator, I was available on one of the three days for onsite discussions. But, what a day ... 14 meetings, 30 minutes each - so 7 hours. Here's the quick overview of my impressions:

• Every meeting involved a Microsoft product
• 2 of the sessions involved OCS
• 12 of the sessions involved SharePoint (re: social computing)
• Of those 12
  • 2 were “happy” (happy as defined by either (a) the capabilities matched the awareness of such tools by their end-users and/or (b) a belief that the social software tools would improve in the next release and that the platform approach was best in the long run
  • 10 were not-so-happy (with the social computing aspects of SharePoint, not with SharePoint overall)
• 10 had seemingly reached a point where they felt they should look beyond what SharePoint offers out-of-the-box, via Codeplex and  through customization - and explore where partner solutions can augment current capabilities, fill in gaps, or replace weak capabilities (e.g., SharePoints wiki which one person agreed with the metaphor “it’s not really a wiki, it’s more like a rich page editor”).
• Many of those 10 were most open to NewsGator, Telligent, and Atlassian. 
• Jive was viewed as the most credible “mini suite vendor” with a viable alternative for shops that wanted a cleaner and more explicit separation from SharePoint. The reasoning was based on a pro/con of managing and coordinating multiple vendors that extended SharePoint and the longevity of the integration model as the next version of SharePoint matures to some extent. Jive, although more architecturally opposed to SharePoint (e.g., Java, etc) seems attractive because of an all-in-one platform, compelling user experience and perception that it is more modern re: Web 2.0 / Enterprise 2.0. (Note: That said, Jive still is missing certain functional areas such as feed syndication so vendors like Attensa and NewsGator are still needed.)
• IBM Lotus Connections came up in a few of the conversations but unless the client already had WebSphere Portal or Notes/Domino, there seems to be some hesitancy to rekindle past wars over e-mail and collaboration – not really a Connections critique at all, but more of an IBM/Lotus vs. Microsoft debate. 
• Most of those 10 also seemed to be in various stages of disappointment with (1) the functionality of its social software (2) the long lapses between releases and (3) uncertainty that things will get dramatically better in the next version (Note: Those familiar with Microsoft’s internal effort called “TownSquare” were more optimistic and would like that solution now – although it is unclear whether that solution will be in the next release).
• Only one session did a client actually seem intrigued with Codeplex and that was only after I explained the best way to look at it (e.g., not as a Microsoft product but as something that is better than building it internally since virtually all shops customize SharePoint anyways). If you set expectations correctly, it can be a decent option. (Note: Microsoft should really support these extensions – or they need to go back to feature/function upgrades via service packs - people are getting very grumpy over the three year release cycle that, when it does come out, delivers functionality that is behind where the bar has now been set). 
• The two OCS meetings were much more positive – one client seemed to be at a 12K deployment level (the largest I have found “in the wild”) although there are concerns often regarding interoperability with PBX vendors (especially when it comes to rich presence) and the overall maturity of the platform.

That's it ... back to writing my reference architecture template on social network sites.