Facebook: Is there enough room for your business contacts and friends?

Do you already have a personal Facebook page before it was opened up to everyone? Continuing with the Facebook and LinkedIn debate, how do you keep your personal profile separate from the business profile on Facebook? Some professionals would rather use Facebook than LinkedIn. Jim Rapoza of EWeek wrote about this problem in his recent blog. With the one-size fits all mentality of these websites, Facebook occasionally does not work in both the business setting versus a personal one. How do you deal with your Facebook profile?

Combining Virtual Worlds and Social Networking

I came across an interesting article on eWeek today highlighting IBM’s newest plan to mash their Second Life virtual reality world with Lotus Connections, which is their social networking platform. Exactly what features from there social networking platform is IBM looking to fuse with virtual worlds? IBM’s programmers are currently working on creating avatars on Second Life that are able to display content from their respective Lotus Connections profile. In other words, you’ll be able to view their skills, projects they’ve worked on in the past, experience, and possibly their blogs exposed somewhere in the virtual city.

Even though Second Life provides a great visual and is far more immersive than Facebook, is it appropriate for the Enterprise workplace? After all, the main purpose of this fusion is to improve on collaboration therefore executing tasks at a much quicker pace. Gartner analyst Adam Sarner makes an interesting comparison:

"If I want to buy a car or somebody I know comes down with a medical condition, I'm not going to go into a virtual world and ask other people their experiences. Text is a perfect tool to go in and get other opinions."

There’s no doubt that within the next couple of years organizations will invest heavily on building virtual reality platforms. Does this merge fit in with your enterprise needs?

Taking the Customer Seriously

Organizations are slowly shifting their train of thought to truly understand the customers’ needs. An example of this is the new Alfresco Facebook Platform mentioned in the previous post which allows for customers and employees to interact and share content. HP is currently brainstorming ways to allow end users to merge with the organization using a variety of Web 2.0 applications.

This latest blog highlights some of HP’s ideas on incorporating customer input to improve enterprise innovation. Phil McKinney, CTO of the Personal Systems Group of HP mentions:

”’We were missing the DNA of an organization that had its finger on customer desires”

Other enterprise organizations like Dell, Xerox, and Sun have already jumped on the bandwagon, finally taking customers seriously. It will be interesting to see how these prominent organizations will tweak Enterprise 2.0 applications to allow for customer interaction within the next couple of months. After all, a happy customer is a repeat customer…

Alfresco makes ECM easy

In yesterday’s post on Collaborative Thinking, the themes throughout the blog were collaboration and using free social networking software to rise to Enterprise 2.0 online. The goal was to propel corporation to begin the journey on Enterprise 2.0. Alfresco's making it easier.

Alfresco has teamed up with Facebook and created a platform that can satisfy a company’s need for enterprise content management. Below is their application architecture. It serves with all the regular functions of Facebook, and allows all employees to see the enterprise content. The benefits of this new collaboration on Facebook:

• Application registration
• Facebook authorization and single sign-on
• FBML support
• Facebook model support including:
  • Friends
  • Application Friends
  • Users
  • Mini Feed
  • News Feed

The majority of your employees know how to use Facebook. Could this be the right solution for your EMC online?

Tag, You're it!

Researching today, I came across this report. It focuses on the importance of tagging keywords in blogs and web pages. Even though it was released in January, I learned a few things as I was reading through it.

--On a typical day online, 7% of internet users say they tag or categorize online content.
--Taggers look like classic early adopters of technology. They are more likely to be under age 40, and have higher levels of education and income.

Since this report was written, there has been this new trend that has gained speed. Since I felt that this report may have been a little out of date, I dug deeper into the Internet and found the revolution that is following it. This bulletin from ASIS&T published in October delves into the new concept of folksonomies. Folksonomies is the practice of collaborative tagging.

Thomas Vander Wal was the pioneer of this word, and he defines it as, “folksonomies are created when people tag items online for their own later information retrieval purposes.” The two main benefits according to Vander Wall are:

--Online personal information management since the tags are coined in the user’s own words, not in the words imposed by the system
--The social aspect, including the ability of other users to use those tags for search and retrieval of previously undiscovered items and the community created by and centered on users’ tags.

Collaborative tagging is also an important part of this concept. Since it comes from the user’s vocabulary, so many different tag words can be used to describe just one object. This can cover all bases and every one can find the different tags according to the way they think. All the different words can come together in the tag cloud, and at once new communities can be born.

As companies come into the modern 2.0 era and focus on being sought out on the Internet by their consumers, tagging will become more important. Even here at the PCC blog, we rely heavily on our tags to bring new readers into our posts. Folksonomies can be found everywhere on the internet, from Flickr to different work blogs. How can these two concepts benefit us in Enterprise 2.0? With the wide variety of information available, not everyone will use the same words as descriptors. I believe that this concept will expand and grow, and everyone from the regular Flickr user to the enterprise with thousands of employees can benefit from collaborative tagging. We can especially all benefit from community taggings, as new perspectives are frequently discovered when collaborating on subjects together. How can folksonomies bring new perspectives into your business world?

IBM Walking the Walk, Talking the Talk

Came across this video post at Redmonk, its a video clip discussion with Anant Jhingran of IBM about their own use of Web 2.0 in the enterprise. Hope you find it interesting.

Building a Better Wiki

I just received one of several emails from eWeek with a link to a new slideshow entitled, 25 Tips for Better Wiki Deployment. While some slides would fall under the category of obvious, there really are some tidbits of useful information, highlighting critical issues that any organization can face when launching their own internal wiki. I’m going to take a look at some specific slides but highly recommend you take a look at the full deck to really grasp the valuable perspectives they’ve brought together. Couple of points stand out, and I feel will help you to consider many of these slides as they relate to them:

Who’s in Charge? How Will It Work? What Will They Get Out of It?

Slides 1, 2, 6, 8, 20, 24, 25

As I mentioned, many of these slides can come across as obvious or just simple logic applied to any new information management tool an organization might implement. But the point here is particularly important when launching an Enterprise 2.0 toolkit: finding the right level of administrative control, defining the parameter of participation and level of expectations. Now purists will quickly shout out that any administrative control is the death knell of a good wiki; that the community is there to police itself and define what it hopes to derive from it. Unfortunately, as many of us know, an internal enterprise community is a beast of a different color than the WWW.

Anonymity, lack there-of, internal politics, interpersonal issues, etc, all play a very real role as people begin to use such tools. Authority in the workplace has always been important to lay critical decisions at the feet of the right individual On a wiki, anyone can be an authority, but without the right administrative controls, you can find that perspective and focus can quickly breakdown, therefore, the goal has to be very specific and clear to ensure that users do not waste too much time coming to some conclusion while contributing appropriately.

So like any new productivity tool, you have a responsibility to communicate what you expect users to get out of it – even if those expectations are incredibly general. Also, lay down a set of rules to ensure that participation does not become a free-for-all. You’re goal is clearly mass collaboration, but it must be focused and tied to general guidelines that are clearly defined and managed.

Who’s the Leader of the Pack, and Give out Gold Stars

Slides 3, 4, 7, 13, 15, 17, 19,

In some of our prior posts regarding wikis you can see a definite common theme, a black and white perspective of the value or lack of value in utilizing wikis in the workplace. Often IT and business leaders approach tools like wikis as a magic wand that can be waved and valuable interactions will magically appear. Well maybe not that simply, but too often the viral nature of wikis and other Enterprise 2.0 tools overshadow the reality that a great deal of focus on the right people to push and pull folks along is necessary.

Well, for me, having been a corporate denizen for more than a decade, I expect that for people who are usually working 9+ hours a day, producing work in tools that management already expects them to use, results in very little incentive to recreate such work on a wiki – the current reality for many companies: multiple locations of knowledge dissemination until one particular toolset clearly rises above the rest.

People need incentives, especially in the workplace. First, having particular wiki leaders from within the organization - not necessarily at the highest level – can really open up the concept that the wiki is meant for everyone. Then, creating incentives for promoting valuable insight and content can propel others to join in.

Just like the “Employee of the Month” or “Top Sales Person” posting in the company common room or intranet, people want to be recognized for doing valuable work; ideally financially, but at least publicly. Not to mention bringing out the competitive nature in many of us. The expectation that people will simply get onto a wiki and start using it with no particular recognition will inevitably lead people to post less and less over time. It doesn’t take much to recognize someone, but can certainly go along way to making them feel valuable in building your wiki.

Let Your Wiki Grow…Like a Weed

Slides 4, 9, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 18, 23

Yep, a weed, as in virally. All companies face the issue of being able to share information quickly, easily, and deeply. Often information becomes pooled in pockets of an organization, either because of controls in place, or the tools that do a poor job of automatically reaching individuals who may need that information. Wikis are not necessarily a panacea but they can certainly help an organization to distribute information more evenly by allowing individuals to establish what kinds of information they want and when they want to receive it.

Now you’re creating bridges across those information gaps, where different teams can communicate directly on projects even when they are not directly impacted, or to discuss product/service information when a particular need arises. What in the past might take several calls and emails across an organization to find the right individual who has the answer; it becomes more readily available to a broader employee base. Naturally, it’s important that the correct information is there in the first place, but even in the act of asking for such information creates awareness that someone does need it; that it should be shared with the community at large.

In the end, wikis may not be the ideal solution for your particular organization on a whole, but a particular group or set of teams may benefit immensely. With the relative low cost, and minimal learning curve, the pros can certainly outweigh the cons. But only real experience can say if it will ultimately work. I think spending time considering the points of these slides and what your own organization is trying to achieve can at least create an opportunity for your organization to consider, is there a need for such a tool – if not this one?

Like to highlight the sources mentioned at the end of the slideshow:
Gerald Kane, assistant professor of IS, Carroll School of Management, Boston College; MindTouch; eTtouch; Cyrus Christianson, Citrix Webmaster; and “Corporate Wiki Users: Results of a Survey,” by Ann Majchrzak, Christian Wagner and David Yates.

Online Networking: A Successful Example

Yesterday, I posted about the Economist and how their internal efforts to create the next big thing for their website failed. The relevant part of yesterday’s blog was that they turned inwards, focused on people already in their company to produce a new an innovative project that would propel them into Web 2.0.

Today, I read a blog about a company that did the opposite. Proctor and Gamble turned to Web 2.0 and networked all across the globe, and the result was high productivity in a short amount of time. The CEO decided to network using Web 2.0 tools to generate new ideas to increase productivity. The result was 1/3 of the new ideas coming from outside of Procter and Gamble, as well as 80% of the project launches being successful. This goes to show that Web 2.0 can benefit the entire business world and also that many productive things come out of collaborating with other businesses.

This is just another example of how Web 2.0 is alive and ready to take off in the business world. Do you have any examples of this in your company?

Technology Priorities for 2008

What are your technological priorities for 2008? The CEO of EMC listed his in a recent blog post at EWeek. They are:

1. Virtualization
2. Storage
3. Security
4. VOIP
5. Enterprise 2.0
6. Software in the cloud
7. Green computing

The two most interesting ones for me are Enterprise 2.0 and Software in the Clouds.

Even though EMC is a large enterprise that specializes in helping other business run and create technology to manage data, Enterprise 2.0 is still a priority. The social networking aspect is something that is new to business, and but it will be around for years to come. Many companies are trying to use these applications to improve their business, even their clients and networking skills. It’s nice to see a company acknowledging that they will make it a priority for their advancement in 2008.

The other is software in the cloud. Many times in this blog, we have written about Google and how they’re striving to keep their new applications up to date such as Google docs. This is just one example of how the future of software and applications is on the Internet. What’s next? Does your company currently use software that is in the clouds?

What are your company’s priorities for 2008? Are they similar to EMC’s?

Project Red Strip

In a recent post on the TechnoFile Europe blog, they discuss The Economist and their latest venture to create the next big thing on the Internet for their company.

The Economist recently gave a group of internal employees six months to work on nothing but the future of their potential online service and what content they were going to use. It turns out at the end of six months the internal employees produced little valuable information and the project was a complete failure. The inside employees were in the drivers seat, yet they were unable to produce a concise long term plan that could impact the future of their website. All efforts are chronicled in this blog, Project Red Stripe. This company was bold enough to display their efforts from start to finish.

Have there been any attempts like this at your company? How did they turn out?

Sharing is Caring

As we transition ourselves to new ways of acquiring information on the web through Enterprise 2.0 applications, we realize that the trend of finding information on the net has shifted from browsing to searching and then to sharing within a network of relationships. David Sacks’s blog explains how portal giants like MSN and AOL are experiencing declining pageviews because of their ancient browsing philosophies.

Web users are no longer interested in browsing the web; they want to be able to search what they are looking for and be able to subscribe to the ever-changing content via RSS feeds and news alerts. We are living in a user-generated era where web-savvy users want easy and fast access to information. Unlike Yahoo and AOL, Google’s platform makes it possible for this type of aggregation. Even though the iGoogle platform is fast-growing, it does have a potential flaw. David Sacks mentions:

“But iGoogle has a serious limitation: it doesn’t involve sharing; each user has to make an individual investment in set-up and can’t benefit from the work of others. It’s not really a Web 2.0 product.”



Lying on the other side of the spectrum is Facebook with its information sharing platform. Facebook’s developer platform makes it relatively effortless to access information on their network of friends and business contacts. While browsing and searching requires work, a web user can do nothing and receive a constantly streaming array of information tuned to their exact specifications. Where will this sharing application take Enterprise in the future when users want to learn about news instead of updates on their friends and contacts? Facebook and other portals clearly have their work cut out for them as the trend is constantly evolving.

Yahoo seems to be making the right move with its sight on Facebook, but will it take advantage of its sharing capabilities? Will Google finally launch its long awaited networking platform to keep up with Facebook? Even though its popularity has declined, browsing and searching will never go away. The portal that can utilize all three methods will most definitely remain on top…

Is Your IT Dept Inhibiting Enterprise Innovation?

When talking about the transition from Enterprise 1.0 to Enterprise 2.0, it seems as if the bulk of innovation is coming from different individual and group levels within the business, not the IT dept. The IT dept of today is primarily focused on governing business resources, but they must leave room for creating innovation especially with the ongoing growing trend of Enterprise 2.0 and Web 2.0 applications. While researching the topic, I came across a pertinent blog written by Oscar berg highlighting this phenomenon. He brings up an interesting point:

“Business people that (rightly or not) were collectively perceived as computer illiterates by the IT people now sometimes are one or even two steps ahead of the IT department when it comes to seeing and acting on how modern information technologies can help to support and innovate the business. Business innovation with IT comes more often from trial and error and ad hoc adoption of new technologies and new ways of working by individuals on the business side.”

Business individuals must effectively collaborate with the IT dept in order to close the gap that currently exists between IT systems and how the businesses needs to be designed and operated. The IT dept must be able to react quicker to business changes, and only then will it be able to stay only one step behind the business, not two steps or more. It’s only a matter of time before IT engineers start to play catch with the industry giants.

Part Two: Reactions to the future success of Facebook and LinkedIn

Facebook and LinkedIn are two very important mediums to social connection in the business world. I think many of these bloggers fail to remember that Facebook has been around since 2004.

Business Week in March of 2006 wrote an article on the importance of Facebook to college students and how it is targeted towards:

The leading social networking sites are an increasingly popular form of communication among college students because of the tools offered by each site including photo posting, messaging, blogs and friend lists which gel perfectly with the digital lifestyle habits of today’s college students. Facebook adds an additional element of exclusivity for college students since a user needs to have an “.edu” email address to register.

It was created as a social network for college students. Therefore, many of the aspects on the site were developed to target the interests of the 18 to 23 year olds who joined to network and keep friends up to date on what’s happening in their personal lives with their profiles. According to TechCrunch in March 2005, 85% of college students then had a profile on Facebook.

As stated by Forbes, only within the past year has Facebook been opened up to anyone without a “.edu” address. The basic layout of Facebook has not changed since then, but there are many little changes that have taken place. I feel that Facebook sees the problems that are discussed in many of the blogs, and the opportunities that a business population can provide and are working to fix this. They also see that their current audience is moving into the professional world. They see the opportunity that is available to be the social networking site for professionals, and are aiming to keep their current audience and expand into the future. On the contrary, LinkedIn was specifically created for the purpose of networking for businesses. They have the competitive edge in captivating the business audience, but I have a feeling that Facebook knows that they have an untapped market and will aim to capture this audience.

So who will be around in ten years? I believe it will be the site that truly captures the interest of the generation who is entering the workforce now. Today’s entry level college graduates are already comfortable with Facebook; will this give Facebook the edge. Will this prove to be the edge? LinkedIn is built to support business networking, will this foster their edge? What system do you prefer? Whose future do you think is leading the networking into the future?

Part One: Facebook vs. LinkedIn…..What does the future have in store for the success of the sites?

The value of Facebook is increasing by the moment. Microsoft believes it, they now own a part of it. As the business world adapts to Facebook, Facebook will make the necessary changes to adapt to it. In Matt Asay’s latest blog, he discusses the impact Facebook has recently had in the workings of his business life. From fixing problems to learning more about the personality of your customers, Facebook can provide vast amount of business information that has been previously unavailable. A lot of employees are already communicating via Facebook, companies should find a way to incorporate this platform into their business systems.

However, Facebook is facing a major competitor in the business world, LinkedIn. In Bernand Lund’s latest post, he wrote about how he has found that LinkedIn can provide him connections that would otherwise never be found. He can specifically contact mass amounts of people, all interested in the same topic, as opposed to Facebook, where mass messages are sent to your entire contact list. Also, more of his business contacts have a profile on linked in.

Among the major problems with LinkedIn, there may be an alterior motive by the sales force that has joined LinkedIn to sell. If LinkedIn becomes a new way of selling, many will turn away and focus on another site where they can network with out receiving tons of sales pitches. However, this can come with benefits. If you business is out there, someone will find you and your business will be the perfect fit. You will make money and potentially find a loyal customer that you would have never otherwise found.

RSS and Your Enterprise

Today, we live in a market where knowledge, content, and information are key driving factors in a cut-throat business world. When RSS was first introduced by Netscape in 1999, we all doubted whether it had any real business value. Now RSS has clearly become an enterprise necessity enabling people to easily share ideas, improve different work processes, and solve problems that were previously unattainable without this form of collaboration. Even with all these benefits, can someone please explain to me why organizations are still doubtful in creating a managed RSS ecosystem?

Scott Niesen from Attensa attempts to project the real “business value” of RSS in his latest blog. It’s an easy to understand explanation of the benefits RSS systems can bring to your enterprise; sometimes you just have to put it in layman’s terms in order for colleagues to accept these changes.

Inbox 2.0: Available at Xobni

Earlier in the week, I posted about current discussions for many of the popular email providers and their push to get into the next era of Enterprise 2.0. The team at Xobni noticed that Inbox 2.0 was the next big Enterprise 2.0 topic, as well. They responded with a blog post. Xobni’s inbox is already at Inbox 2.0. Their goal was to be able make email more efficient.

They put special importance on identifying significant data according to the history of your inbox. Then they take it one step farther and collect information from the web to complete your contacts profiles. Unlike in Google’s contact list, you don’t have to individually type everyone’s email address, mailing address, phone numbers or add their picture. Instead, Xobni saves this information from their email, and if it’s not there they turn to the web and find it so that you can have complete profiles.

This is the product they have now. They’re still innovating and working to make their inbox more effective. Have they pulled ahead of the pack?

Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0…….Inbox 2.0?

In the New York Times, Saul Hansell’s latest blog gave insight as to where Google and Yahoo are trying to improve their email systems. It is quite the hot topic, because TechCruch is discussing the topic as well. The goal of the two companies is to turn your inbox into your main dashboard for the internet. As with all the other rising trends, the goal of every company is to develop the next new thing in social networking software.

The main question that pops into my head after reading this article is why is Microsoft not jumping at the chance to improve Outlook? There’s no denying how pervasive it is in the workplace. There are so many critical business tools already encompassed within it, rather than focus on a separate Enterprise 2.0 platform, why not update the key elements that are becoming so important in the business world and expand further with Web 2.0 technologies? The program currently hosts email, schedules, tasks, notes, etc. It pushes communications and instantly connects a message you send to a topic and recipient (s). And all of this can happen in thirty seconds whether the recipient is in London or in the next cubicle.

Email today is one of the main backbones of business, perhaps supplanting of faxes and phone calls as they dwindle. Email has been critical to the growth of connectivity from the earliest days of the Internet. It’s remarkable that it’s not a cornerstone at the beginning of the Enterprise 2.0 revolution. Even with the rise of Instant Messaging within the workface, many companies still do not take advantage of this tool.

So now the ball is in Microsoft’s court. Outlook is in the perfect position to evolve into Inbox 2.0 at the forefront of Enterprise 2.0. The question is, will they choose to take Outlook to the next level? With Google clearly interested in the enterprise marketing could the day come that another platform could come to take Microsoft’s share of the business email world.

Oracle and Enterprise 2.0

An interesting article written by Renee Ferguson from eWeek came across my inbox this morning, it discussed Oracle’s plan to add Enterprise 2.0 features to its middleware platform Fusion. In the ever-going rivalry between giants like Microsoft, IBM, SAP, and BEA, there is a chance Oracle could be leading the race to enable Web 2.0 applications via their middleware platforms. This is what Thomas Kurian, Oracle senior vice president, had to say on Tuesday’s Oracle OpenWorld conference:

"Oracle's Enterprise 2.0 vision is to bring capabilities users are familiar with—wikis, blogs, RSS, discussion forums, social networks—to enterprise applications using a standards-based programming model that allows you to mix and match services with information systems."

The basis of this technology lies within the Oracle Universal Content Manager. Documents of different kinds can be stored, managed, and even filtered here. A new functionality which I found particularly interesting is the ability to build a full text search on documents so that search engines can search and find documents. Some might ask the question how is Oracle able to lead the way in enabling Enterprise 2.0 applications in their middleware platforms… Well, within the past 45 months Oracle has acquired 41 different companies, and so they have accumulated quite a number of innovative software technology and applications.

Even though we are still not there yet in terms of taking full advantage of Enterprise 2.0 applications, it seems as if Oracle is making some progress. As organizations realize the importance of collaboration through wikis, blogs, RSS feeds, and other Web 2.0 technologies, the competition will only get more intense. Read the full article to get the full scoop. Who do you think will come out on top?

New Wiki Research

In Bill Ives’ latest blog, he comments on the new research he found on the implementation and use of Wikis in a business enviornmnet. He believes that wikis will be most useful when the management is monitoring them. He also wonders if wikis will go on to change organizational behavior of the employees. What do you think?

Beefing up Security

What happens when employees use company time to browse through personal profiles on Facebook or for the latest YouTube clips. This issue is a new dilemma IT managers are faced with on a daily basis since Web 2.0 applications are springing everywhere in the enterprise. There are however, steps IT facilitators can take to ensure the business use of Web 2.0 applications while ensuring security at the same time. Charles Ross’s new post on the Security Insights Blog breaks down a couple of these steps in layman’s terms:

1) Web 2.0 applications such as wikis, RSS feeds, and blogs can often be nightmares for IT managers. These applications are essential in driving efficiencies within organizations, and can it be protected by requiring data protection controls.

2) Every company generally has an “Internet Use Policy”. Update all policies to include acceptable business usage of social networking sites, and have employees provide a signature of acceptance.

3) Lastly, block all unapproved sites using Web content filters. Provide employees a mechanism to require access to sites they feel have a legitimate business purpose, since you will encounter some resistance.

IT managers will have to stay on top of security measures since Enterprise 2.0 and Web 2.0 applications are bringing real business value to corporations. It will be interesting to see how IT pros will adapt to fit these applications into their organizations, while blocking unwarranted applications at the same time.

The Importance of Data in Enterprise 2.0

The Industry Observer blog I just finished reading was really interesting. It pointed out that most companies are more worried about how to control the technologies on the web to fit the business purposes and alternately how we can adapt the tools we are using now, an example being Microsoft Office, to fit what we need to be identified as Enterprise 2.0.

This blog is insisting that it’s the data used that makes Enterprise 2.0 so valuable. What exact data is important? I think Enterprise 2.0 systems should be different according to the industry. Are airplane manufacturers going to need the same tools and data requirements as a major retail chain? Narij brings up an interesting point. Should the innovators of these tools be focusing on the data the different companies bring to the Enterprise 2.0 table or how we can transform our tools now to fit the needs of all industries?

The Work Place and Enterprise 2.0

In a few of the previous posts, the topic of businesses not adapting to Enterprise 2.0 has been a constant topic. It seems that businesses are more afraid of people using these tools wrong at work than seeing the benefits that these applications can bring. In Dion Henchcliffe’s blog, he discusses how some companies may start seeing the benefits. In an informal poll he has taken recently, employees now have differing access to these tools. As of late, employees have more access to blogs and wikis. Another trend he saw was that most young employees, probably because they are in college or at their first entry level job, have the least amount of access to these tools.

While blogs and wikis continue to show the potential to greatly improve collaboration, create higher levels of knowledge retention, and generate more reusable business information over time, it’s also probable that in attempts to access the benefits of Enterprise 2.0 platforms, these new platforms will incur some issues that IT departments and the business will have to deal with, particularly if these platforms are exposed outside the organization.

There are many downfalls to allowing employees access to systems like this such as public access to company information, some of the tools are not enterprise ready and the use of the tools for non-business purposes creates inefficiencies. However, there are benefits which Henchcliffe points out:
o Social media tends to capture more institutional knowledge that’s reusable.
o Tagging and other emergent organization methods allow business information to be organized
and cross-referenced from every point of view.
o Increased efficiency in conversations: social media scales up to mostly resource and time
friendly conversations among thousands of asynchronous participants, yet excludes those
uninterested in them, unlike e-mail distribution lists and conference calls.

Is your company willing to work out the kinks of a new system to reap the benefits?

Breaking it Down: Enterprise 2.0

When thinking about wikis, social networking software, blogosphere, and prediction markets, it can be quite difficult to understand what Enterprise 2.0 technologies are best used for different ties within the organization. For example, which social software platform of Enterprise 2.0 would be most efficient to utilize for a group of close collaborators, or in order words, people whom you have a close professional tie to? Andrew McAfee, Associate Professor at Harvard Business School, wrote about the “Bulleyes” approach and how the closeness of ties can affect what social software platform is most applicable to use in his latest blog. Guys it doesn’t get much easier than this… Enjoy!

Watcha Gonna Do, Watcha Gonna Do When Google Comes For You?

First thing this morning, I received my daily update from eWeek, and it had a great interview with Matt Glotzbach, Product Management Director for Google’s Enterprise Division. The interview covers quite a bit, from Google’s recent IMAP for Gmail announcement, its perspective on application delivery (SaaS), its product development efforts separate from the consumer side, its foray in mobile applications, and interoperability. Yeah pretty much everything and the kitchen sink.

I want to focus on one question during the interview, at one point Matt is asked directly, there's some perception that the technologies you're using in Google Enterprise are hand-me-downs from the consumer side. So, there is innovation going on in Google's enterprise business? Matt proceeds to discuss their recent acquisition:

On the acquisition front, we recently acquired Postini, and that was purely an enterprise piece. Postini's security services are not necessarily that germane to the average consumer. What we quickly did was looked across the board and said, What are the really unique and interesting things that Postini has to offer [so] that, when we put the Google technology and the Postini technology together, you really get a one-plus-one equals three capability?
Postini's capabilities include legal compliance, archiving and data retention. The integration of the Postini capabilities on top of Gmail and Google Apps for businesses was one of the primary motivations of that acquisition. The idea was being able to provide all of those facilities to a customer still in a software-as-a-service model, where you didn't have to maintain your own servers for the purpose of legal discovery and backup. There are very real policy issues that we believe we have good answers to.

Clearly Google is serious about enterprise, though when it launched its Google Apps, this wasn’t a surprise. But what has always stuck out in my head is the development process for them. On the consumer side we’ve all read story after story about how they look internally for those new and unique apps that can be incorporated or spun-off as a new business line. They’re also acquisition hungry, eagerly seeking the next major innovation that they can bring into their enterprise. But while acquisitions can lead to great products for their enterprise business, what’s happening with natural development based on client feedback.

I’ve worked with some of the big vendors out there, SAP, IBM, and Microsoft and so forth and so on. All have built a strong consulting business that is focused on understanding the needs of their clients. In some instances this is backed by great internal development teams, and where they don’t have one, they find the right development partners. But their core strength has always been their ability to look under the hood of a business, study it from the inside out and help it to determine what applications it truly needs. Now that’s not to say this is always the fastest of processes, with lead times that can even stretch for years.

I can remember when Windows 2000 Server launched. Microsoft was everywhere, meetings upon meetings with IT teams across the country, helping them to understand how it worked, how to work with it, and its value to the organization. This was critical, this was absolutely necessary to help IT leaders to work with their business leaders and push to make the necessary infrastructure changes and incorporate Windows 2000.

But at the same time that’s almost where I would want to see a Google step in and change the game, bringing that amazing development talent to quickly turn around the apps that corporate clients are looking for, and create a simpler but secure deliver infrastructure that would lead to faster implementations. But they seem to be missing that external facing outreach to develop relationships directly with corporations
It’s my lowly opinion that while Google clearly has Microsoft in its target, it’s still a long way off from unseating it. Those strong relationships with enterprises are still a major advantage.

So the question becomes, can Google develop that expertise to work directly with enterprises in order to truly understand their needs, or will Microsoft begin to shift its development processes to more quickly respond the way Google does while utilizing its corporate relationships to shape the next generation of enterprise applications? Well, its easy to play pundit, but I certainly don't have the answer, but its a question I think will become more pronounced as Google takes bolder steps with enterprise applications, and everyone else responds accordingly.

A New Day

What a week. While we haven’t blogged from the event, that’s not to say there isn’t so much going on and even making headlines. If you haven’t seen the press release or the newswire, Day’s new software project, Communiqué Advanced Collaboration (CQ AC), was introduced this week at our very own Portal, Collaboration and Content Conference. Day, who leads the way in global content management in infrastructure software, introduced this new package, abbreviated as CQ AC, which focuses on the management of Enterprise 2.0 tools. The software allows business social computing to come easier to a company by introducing a Wiki, blog, and calendar capabilities in one software package. It’s exciting to have in attendance companies who make a major announcement like this. There’s so much happening it’s hard to stop and take it all in.

Small Vendors Have an Advantage on Enterprise 2.0

Huge corporations such as IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle are being left in the dust in regards to Enterprise 2.0 applications. Smaller vendors are developing far more innovative technology with quicker release cycles. That is the main focus in Jon Brodkin’s blog on NetworkWorld. Rob Koplowitz, analyst at Forrester, has this clear-cut view on what’s happening with this race:

“Right now I’m seeing a clear preference toward smaller vendors. Generally speaking the big vendors are playing catch up and the big vendors have a deployment model that is not very attractive.”

Smaller companies offer quicker deployment, usually through SaaS. When will bigger companies begin to follow their rivals’ success strategies? Even though there is progress in the offerings these large vendors have for knowledge management, CMS, and collaboration, they often lack the ability to deploy and customize their solutions as quickly and easily as many of their clients require. These longer deployment cycles are preventing innovation in IBM, SAP, and Oracle, which may slow down their ability to deliver Enterprise 2.0 applications. Clearly, smaller vendors have the upper hand in this situation for now, but can we really count these larger vendors far behind, and who knows for how long?

Web Trend Map 2007 Version 2.0

Information Architects Japan recently released an updated version of their Web Trend Map. Modeled after the Hong Kong metro, the stops are the most visited websites on the web. The lines represent the different categories that are popular such as social sites and knowhow sites. Is it a surprise that some of the biggest sites on the metro map are ones we turn to for Web 2.0? Some of these sites are Technorati, Google, Facebook, You Tube and Wikipedia. All these tools are used on a daily basis by the public. Most employees have the knowledge to use these tools. With such sites and tools becoming so common, it seems a lost opportunity that employers incorporate such similar functionality sooner rather than later. How much more productive will employees be if they are using tools similar to what they use in their personal life? Is your company taking full advantage?

Microsoft: Ahead of the game

Microsoft recently launched the new generation of Windows Live services in 36 languages and 59 countries across the world. Wow! Folks are we finally thinking about maximizing our global collaboration efforts? Well it look like Microsoft’s new launch might serve as a stepping stone for other corporations to come in and follow suit according to Peter Galli's blog on eWeek.

Brian Hall, general manager of Microsoft's Windows Live business group sheds some light on there project:

"This is the first release that really pays off on that. It pays off with a suite of Windows applications that not only work well with Windows Live but also work with many other popular online services. You can have your AOL Mail, Gmail and Yahoo Mail—if you have POP access—all coming in to one client”

Users can share their photos from the Windows Live gallery on flickr, and they are even able post in manage their blogs in a rich way from any blog service that supports RSD (Really Simple Discovery).

Microsoft is definitely changing the face of Web 2.0 with their latest edition of Windows Live. When will we see a similar announcement from Microsoft regarding their latest offerings on Enterprise 2.0 capabilities? After all, constant updates to new technologies in Enterprise 2.0 are essential to stay on top. I will definitely stay tuned in to watch. Will you?

XM Satellite Radio: Enterprise 2.0 Example

It has been debated over whether Enterprise 2.0 can actually change the behaviors of corporations. In the Fast Foreword blog this week, Bill Ives wrote about the success XM Radio had with the implementation of the Quick Base program into the company’s operating system. Read the blog here. Has this happened at your company? How have Enterprise 2.0 applications affected the way your business runs?

What’s holding your company back?

Dr. Todd Stephens visited New York and had the opportunity to see the effects of Enterprise 2.0 in New York City businesses. One underlying problem he realized was that employees are trying to build the bridge and let their knowledge of the technology launch their businesses into the new era, but there are a few roadblocks that are obstructing the progress. It was the middle-level managers that chose to stick to what they knew and used old technology instead of new technology such as wikis and blogs. You can read Dr. Stephen’s article here. Is there something setting your company back that’s not allowing you to enter the new Enterprise 2.0 era?

The Recruiting World and Web 2.0

As we know, Web 2.0 will quickly make Enterprise 2.0 a new dynamic place where meeting and sharing information with colleagues becomes possible from everywhere in the country. So now, why not extend this to the recruiting process? Today in EWeek, Deborah Perelman wrote the article Leveraging Web 2.0 to Recruit. Many of the recruiting processes now will soon out date, as they are standard and provide very little feedback to candidates. Web 2.0 will make it easier to communicate back and forth throughout the recruitment process, as Zach Thomas states below:

"It makes the whole process a lot more transparent. It puts the community in control of the information out there, versus the traditional 'here is the position and we will tell you what it is all about,' where the candidate can't ask questions or see for themselves," Thomas said.

The potentials that social networking will bring to the recruitment world will impact those who remain on the Web 1.0 spectrum. How will this affect your business in the future?