Collaborative Thinking

The Two Cisco's...

For some time I've pointed out the need for the Cisco groups responsible for enterprise collaboration (including unified communications, mobile, WebEx, etc.) to be better aligned with the more consumer-centric, social media-focused EOS group(s). Case in point - below - study released from one side of the house that seems to be disconnected from the broader collaboration message. Eos was not mentioned at the Cisco Collaboration Summit and suddenly it is at the center of a social media social networking storyline that has consumer and enterprise implications.

Should be easy to fix ... repeat: "should be" ... I've pointed this out for some time now.

That said, this theme aligns perfectly with a recent report (see below) Alice Wang and I authored on social media and social networking that addressed similar issues (e.g., need for governance, decision framework, closer involvement from IT organizations due to issues such as identity and security).

Global Study Reveals Proliferation of Consumer-Based Social Networking Throughout the Enterprise and a Growing Need for Governance and IT Involvement

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) today released the results of a third-party global study designed to assess how organizations use consumer social networking tools to collaborate externally, revealing the need for stronger governance and IT involvement. The research is the first of a two-part series that Cisco has commissioned to explore the impact of social networking and collaboration applications in the enterprise.

The new study is based on extensive interviews with 105 participants representing 97 organizations in 20 countries around the globe. Conducted between April and September 2009, the research was carried out by leading business schools in the United States and Europe: IESE Business School in Spain, E. Philip Saunders College of Business at the Rochester Institute of Technology in the U.S., and Henley Business School in the United Kingdom.

The use of consumer-based social networking tools, such as Facebook and Twitter, as collaboration platforms is connecting organizations with the external world in myriad ways. These tools bring technology and business together through innovative experiences, connect people and information, establish potential new routes to market, and enhance customer intimacy and brand awareness. The study findings indicate that the business world is at the early stages of adopting these tools and in the process of identifying key challenges, such as the need for increased governance and IT involvement, which may impact the integration and adoption of these new platforms and technologies.

Global Study Reveals Proliferation of Consumer-Based Social Networking Throughout the Enterprise and a Growing Need for Governance and IT Involvement

Cisco Eos - Social Networking

Branded Online Social Entertainment Experiences
Cisco Eos allows media companies to combine social audience features with their high-value, branded content to deliver a higher-value, interactive entertainment experience today's consumers expect. Eos delivers a social entertainment experience where consumers can interact with others around their favorite entertainment content in an environment defined, branded, and monetized by the media owner. Eos enables:

• Greater online brand visibility and website traffic
• Deeper audience engagement
• New revenue opportunities

Eos Social Networking Features
Over 40 pre-built modules are available to include in each website experience, allowing deeper, more personal consumer connections. Modules include:

• User profiles
• Forums and message boards
• Blogs
• Content sharing (including YouTube uploads)
• Commenting and rating
• Activity feeds and alerts
• Branded video players

Cisco Eos - Social Networking

Burton Group Clients Only:

Many believe that the main purpose of social media is to improve brand awareness and corporate communications. The result is that marketing groups typically own social media initiatives. Although this approach may suffice initially, as strategies become more comprehensive, the complexity of dealing with different solution providers, and a diverse collection of application scenarios, introduces technology-related issues that marketing teams may inadvertently overlook. IT organizations should have a more prominent role in social media programs to help business management address tactical and long-term implications of governance, social computing, identity, security, and risk management.

Social Media’s Cautionary Tale: A Management Overview

Social Media: A Cautionary Tale

Thinking out loud for an upcoming paper...

Social media means different things to different people. For some, it means a presence on Facebook (e.g., a fan page), or use of role-based accounts on Twitter (e.g., customer service), or availability of applications for mobile devices (e.g., Apple’s iPhone). For others, social media implies leveraging customer communities or use of social media by employees acting as brand ambassadors to the public. Internal use of social media in the context of an employee social network site or enterprise social networking initiative can also become part of strategic discussions. Confusion regarding what social media is, what governance model is appropriate, what resources are required, and what risks exist can stymie efforts to capitalize on social media’s potential unless leadership teams adopt a holistic approach involving both business and IT strategists.

Many technologies are associated with social media. Some of the popular ones include blogs, wikis, tags/social bookmarks, communities and social network sites (including social profiles, social graphs and activity feeds), and micro-blogging. As people use social tools to participate in consumer or enterprise-sponsored environments, they construct social identities, assume social roles, and establish reputations in different communities. These activities, when leveraged effectively by organizations, can help improve employee engagement, information sharing, and collaboration within the enterprise. Externally, social media can augment customer relationship management (CRM) programs, strengthen brand awareness, and improve community outreach and social responsibility efforts.

However, use of social media is not without risks. External use of Twitter accounts can lead to identity assurance concerns if profiles are unverifiable. There may be concerns that unfettered us of social media by employees will create situations where personal views can negatively affect brand reputation. In regulated industries, legal and compliance demands may require controls to satisfy discovery and audit needs. Even internal use of social media can encounter similar issues. Social network sites can lack robust identity and security-mechanisms that might cause accidental disclosure of intellectual property or confidential information. Use of social network analysis tools can enable employees to visualize relationships and information that might circumvent need-to-know policies. Absence of privacy controls can lead to HR issues.

Despite such concerns, saying “no” is not the way IT organizations should respond to business strategists interested in social media. Instead, IT organizations should strive to work hand-in-hand with business areas, providing guidance on social media trends and use. For IT organizations to advise business decision-makers on how to mitigate social media risks, IT strategists should particularly understand the ramifications of social media on identity, privacy, and security.

Enterprise 2.0 Conference: Session Proposals

Community voting is now open, if you find the sessions below of interest, please participate in the selection process. Also note, that while I submitted several presentations, that does not mean that I will end up moderating all of them if they end up being selected. As we did with the San Francisco event where I submitted sessions that were accepted on enterprise micro-blogging and OpenSocial in the enterprise, we can load-balance and shuffle moderators. At most, I will be involved in 3 or so sessions.

So please vote on the topic you feel will offer people the best experience. As a member of the Enterprise 2.0 conference board of advisors, it is always my goal to make sure that we deliver compelling sessions for attendees.

Cisco's Collaboration Strategy: Contender Or Pretender? posted by Mike Gotta in Technology Foundations of Enterprise 2.0 on 12/18/2009 07:05 AM CST

Cisco has jumped full-force into the collaboration market, believing that it is delivering a next-generation platform with strategic E2.0 implications. This panel session will engage Cisco in a frank and open discussion on the merits of its collaboration strategy, implications to the Enterprise 2.0 market, and competitive positioning moving forward.

• The panel session on Microsoft was well received at the San Francisco November event. I wanted to duplicate that opportunity for people to hear directly from Cisco management and have the opportunity for an open dialog. I will be joined by Vanessa Alvarez from Frost & Sullivan.

From Social Site To Social Networking Services posted by Mike Gotta in Technology Foundations of Enterprise 2.0 on 12/15/2009 03:00 PM CST

The industry is transitioning from an emphasis on destination sites for communities and social networking towards one where networked services enable social information to be contextually integrated across a wide range of sites and applications. Strategies of leading social platform vendors will be examined in this panel.

• In this post (Social Networking Platform Evolution: From Destination Site To Networked Services), I outlined the evolution of social networking and the trend away from a single destination site and towards distributed/networked services. In this panel, I plan to include representation from leading social networking vendors that represent consumer sites as well as enterprise platforms (SaaS-based and on-premises). For instance - not a promise but an intent - I would like to have some from the following: (LinkedIn or Facebook or Google), Salesforce, and (IBM or Microsoft).

Emerging E2.0 Vendor Round-up: Innovate Or Perish posted by Mike Gotta in Social Tools & Apps for the Enterprise on 12/18/2009 12:26 PM CST

Large enterprise vendors are including Enterprise 2.0 capabilities incrementally as generalized platform features. For organizations looking for market innovation, it is more often represented by smaller vendors leveraging open source and SaaS-based delivery models. This panel provides a forum for out-of-the-box thinking on emerging options to keep pace with fast-paced E2.0 strategies. 

• There are many innovative vendors in the market. In this panel, I will be looking for vendors that have a different perspective on how "Enterprise 2.0 solutions" are delivered and the type of applications these platforms enable. For instance, CubeTree (winner of the San Francisco Launch Pad event) will join us on this panel.  

Taking Innovation To The Next (Social) Level posted by Mike Gotta in Strategy, Planning and Execution on 12/15/2009 09:20 AM CST

Management and R&D teams are no longer the only participants in an organization’s innovation efforts. Social tools have made innovation a more open and transparent effort where customers and employees become active contributors. This session will profile how organizations have leveraged communities and social networking to improve innovation initiatives.

• My co-worker, Alice Wang, and myself will present research findings on how organizations have leveraged social tools as part of formal and informal innovation initiatives. The presentation will define a framework for examining innovation at various levels (external / enterprise / business unit) and rely on real-life stories to illustrate how Enterprise 2.0 concepts have delivered business value.

Social Reputation & Community Equity: The Next Stage In Knowledge & Talent Management posted by Mike Gotta in Technology Foundations of Enterprise 2.0 on 12/15/2009 09:36 AM CST

When people create social profiles, they create identities that often differ from ones ascribed to them by the enterprise. As people interact, they assume social roles that the enterprise may not recognize. This session explores how organizations can leverage social reputation and community equity captured within social platforms.

• While the description of this panel sessions sounds somewhat academic, I believe it is very important that business and IT decision-makers understand not only "why" social identities and relationship structures emerge within the enterprise as they deploy these platforms but also gain insight as to "how" organizations can leverage social environments in ways that benefit strategic goals. This panel will look at topics such as social analytics, identity, and reputation and what it means to the enterprise when people construct their own personas and weave their own networks.

Microsoft SharePoint 2010: Win, Place, Or Show? posted by Mike Gotta in Technology Foundations of Enterprise 2.0 on 12/15/2009 10:06 AM CST

With SharePoint 2010, Microsoft believes it is delivering a robust, feature-rich, and extensible platform for social computing. This analyst panel session will critically analyze Microsoft’s strategy and capabilities. Attendees will gain a better understanding of the role SharePoint 2010 will play in terms of its strengths, gaps, and positioning of competing solutions.

• At the San Francisco event, I was joined by Rob Koplowitz of Forrester and Christian Finn of Microsoft. Irwin lazar of Nemertes was out moderator. I hope to repeat this panel format in Boston in a similar manner with a structure that allows for even more audience participation.

Community & Social Network Sites: Think Adoption, Not Deployment posted by Mike Gotta in Driving Adoption and Organizational Change on 12/15/2009 10:50 AM CST

Understanding the cultural and relationship aspects of how people connect with share information and collaborate with each other is often an overlooked aspect of projects rolling out internal community and  social network sites. This panel session will explore the importance of governance, user experience, and change management efforts.

• This panel has been popular in Boston and in San Francisco. For Boston 2009, I was joined by Genentech, Sabre, and Harvard University. For San Francisco 2009, I was joined by Wells Fargo, CSC, and Medtronic. My goal is always to have representatives participate from organizations actively involved in projects related to "Enterprise 2.0". That will be true for this Boston 2010 panel as well. If you are interested in participating, let me know.

Learning Out Loud: Notes From Social Media Practitioners posted by Mike Gotta in Social Media, Marketing & Customer Engagement on 12/15/2009 10:44 AM CST

Social media projects often fail to achieve optimal results when design and adoption scenarios are not well understood. As organizations look to leverage consumer sites (Twitter, Facebook), success factors have little to do with technology. This panel session will profile social media best practices through discussion of actual real-life examples.  

• My inquiry load really spiked this year on the topic of enterprise use of, and integration with, consumer sites such as Twitter and Facebook. I will be looking to staff this panel with representatives from organizations that have successfully achieved results while addressing the risk aspects of social media. 

Social Media Policies: Practical Advice From The Trenches posted by Mike Gotta in Social Media, Marketing & Customer Engagement on 12/15/2009 09:46 AM CST

Governance and risk management programs have become a critical requirement as organizations assess implications to the enterprise (e.g., identity assurance, data loss, compliance, e-Discovery, security), arising from internal and external use of social networking and social media. This panel will discuss practical approaches that address management concerns.

• At the San Francisco event, this panel included Scott Mark from Medtronic, Doug Cornelius from Beacon Capital Partners and Christopher Burgess from Cisco. The panel offered a diverse perspective (end-user organization, legal, and vendor). For Boston, I plan to repeat the session, updating the discussion to address ongoing regulatory influences (e.g., FINRA). I will have one or two business organizations represented along with Doug Cornelius in a repeat performance to make sure we effectively address compliance topics.

Year-End Thoughts On Enterprise 2.0 & Social Software (Part 3)

Previous posts:

Year-End Thoughts On Enterprise 2.0 & Social Software (Part 2)

Year-End Thoughts On Enterprise 2.0 & Social Software

There are a few vendor events that stood out in my mind for 2009 (related to Enterprise 2.0 and social software) - in no particular order:

Cisco Stumbles Early But Regains Composure & Sets The Stage 

Back in July, I published a post Cisco: Great Expectations But "Where's The (Collaboration) Beef"? that took Cisco to task regarding how strongly it was "talking about" collaboration but was not really "doing" much about collaboration. However, by the end of the year, things become much more clear as I outlined in several posts:

• Cisco Broadens Foray Into Collaboration Market
• Understanding Cisco's Collaboration Strategy (Part1)
• Understanding Cisco's Collaboration Strategy (Part 2)
• Understanding Cisco's Collaboration Strategy (Part 3)
• Understanding Cisco's Collaboration Strategy (Part 4)

The good news is that Cisco delivered its opening ante and salvo (hosted/SaaS e-mail) as it more proactively enters the collaboration market. In 2010, expectations will continue to rise that Cisco will have a decent critical mass of large enterprise accounts before we go too far with putting them on par with traditional collaboration heavyweights IBM and Microsoft. Cisco needs to develop an Enterprise 2.0 message and also come up with a plan to reach some level of solution/functional parity between its on-premises and SaaS-based collaboration solutions. I would like to see Cisco also have a more holistic message regarding collaboration/Enterprise 2.0 and its social media efforts. Finally - Cisco should strongly step up as a Google Wave platform - it should not let Google's XMPP efforts erode position as thought leaders when it comes to XMPP (via the Jabber deal).

On the UC front - Cisco's decision to anchor presence on XMPP should cause many IT architects to take notice. Right now, presence tags along with IM, telephony, etc. Cisco has transitioned presence into a model that not only supports XMPP and SIP/SIMPLE but has service oriented and REST interfaces. If Cisco can take steps to build a story around presence, location, and micro-blogging/activity streams - that could be a top story for 2010. Right now - Cisco should hammer Microsoft and IBM for their lack of broad XMPP support (gateways are just expected nowadays).

Microsoft Bets Its Social Fortune On SP2010

The SharePoint 2009 conference in Vegas provided the industry with the first look at SP2010 and its new/enhanced social computing capabilities. With an expected May 2010 release (my best guess), Microsoft has delivered enough "good enough" enhancements that will satisfy a large majority of enterprises committed to SharePoint overall. There is little in the upcoming release that is truly innovative or moves SharePoint out in front of other vendors offering capabilities associated with E2.0 but it is largely adequate. It provides IT organizations with enough ammunition to make a strong case against platforms that add too much infrastructure complexity/overlap.

That said, there is nothing in the release that I think will satisfy external needs (e.g., social media, external communities, certain extranet applications). For those organizations that have a strong business case that is best satisfied by a strong solution for internal communities and social networking - then over vendors are still very credible and viable as alternatives. This release is Microsoft's first serious attempt to support online communities. Some related posts where I commented on the good/bad that I heard in Vegas:

• Microsoft Social Computing Overview
• Analyst Breakfast With Microsoft Execs: Good Food, Insight Pending
• MySite - Social Architecture & Planning
• Customize Enterprise Wikis In SP2010

Overall, I don't see SP2010 eliminating the need for strategists in committed "SharePoint shops" to look at Jive, Telligent, NewsGator, or Lotus Connections given the right circumstances. There are situational needs that can still be best satisfied by competing platform and/or best-of-breed vendors. There also remains a lack of parity between on-premises and hosted versions of SharePoint so organizations strongly pursing a SaaS/Cloud strategy might have reason to pause re: SP2010 and social computing. However, in general, vendors will have to integrate with SharePoint 2010 at some level (e.g., ECM).

Oracle Comes And Goes (Again) - Stay Tuned For 2010 (Like You Did For 2009)

In May, Oracle seemed to renew its commitment to collaboration as I noted in this post Oracle Beehive 1.5: Still A Work-In-Progress. So I was optimistic that at the OpenWorld event the industry would see a more cohesive and aggressive collaboration strategy. But the event revealed a trail of missed opportunities as I noted in these posts:

• The Art Of The Possible
• WebCenter Vision and Strategy Session
• Beehive Session Notes

Clearly, Oracle has all the necessary technology assets to become a player in the collaboration market, taking on IBM and Microsoft. However, the go-to-market message remains a bit murky with overlapping sub-brands (WebCenter, Beehive) and messages (collaboration and E2.0). I also believe that Oracle seriously wants to have a stronger footprint in the collaboration market - leaving that space open to other competitors will leave its application business vulnerable to developers building collaborative applications in SharePoint for instance (especially given SP2010 improvements). Oracle remains a contender but really needs to streamline its message, product portfolio and most of all, execute well.

Potpourri

• IBM: IBM delivered Lotus Connections 2.5. Now that Microsoft has made SP2010 public I think the expectation bar will be set pretty high for Lotusphere. IBM squandered (my opinion) the time between MOSS 2007 and SP2010 to do the type of broad and deep integration with SharePoint that would have given it a beach head to compete when SP2010 does come out. As it stands, I think we're seeing a play to the Lotus and WebSphere install base - for the most part - there are examples of Connections in "SharePoint shops" - but we'll see if that type of situation remains by late 2011. Shops that are committed to both SharePoint and WebSphere have an "embarrassment of riches" I suppose when it comes to social computing but the duality also creates a very interesting debate on which way to go over time. Overall - Lotus Connections continued to mature in 2009. It remains a platform that Microsoft will be measured against.
• Jive: Jive Social Business Software (SBS) 4.0: While there were a number of incremental improvements the addition of application modules on top of the platform (e.g., Market Engagement, Bridging) stood out most. For Jive to stay above the infrastructure debate (e.g., Microsoft, IBM), they need to continue focusing on application solutions - especially those that connect external and internal constituencies. The idea of a platform that straddles internal/external environments to connect employees, partners, suppliers, customers gives Jive a unique edge. Although the differentiation is not unique, Telligent could duplicate this story as well.
• Google and Novell: Google gained a tremendous amount of media attention with its Wave announcement. I think the company deserves credit for pulling together a lot of various ideas over the years into a single concept and adding a unique angle to the technology (XMPP). However, it remains a "concept car" for me. What was intriguing was how Wave might be taken in unforeseen directions by the community and other vendors. For instance, talk about the past and future coming together. Novell surprised many people, including myself, with its Pulse solution that works with Google Wave. I believe that's how Google Wave will get into the enterprise - not so much by what Google does directly but how the community around Google Wave and more specifically, how the ecosystem of enterprise software vendors embed Google Wave and slipstream it into the Enterprise.
• Salesforce: Salesforce Chatter: Perhaps the most over-hyped media event in 2009 (my opinion). While interesting, the lack of details left me unimpressed so I suppose that by not jumping into the media-created "mosh pit" touting Chatter, I am in the minority here. I do recognize the trend of adding social context to applications - not unexpected for those studying market trends in this area - but I just prefer news that is real news vs. promises of something delivered sometime in 2010.
• Yammer / Socialcast / Socialtext: Micro-blogging becomes hot - then becomes a feature. Yammer and Socialcast helped make "Enterprise Twitter" a reality but then vendors like Socialtext made it a feature in a platform (as have other vendors). As it stands, micro-blogging (or social messaging as I call it), is a topic that clients are still interested in but not so much as a standalone tool. Socialtext might have been the first to convert the capability into more of a platform play - but now most everyone else is doing the same - and including activity streams as well.
• Open Source: Although Mindtouch does not come up often in my client inquiries - the company has been hard at work blending an open source model with SaaS. Architecturally strong, hopefully this solution will also get more notice in 2010. Liferay got a boost in my mind with all the Cisco news (there is a bit of Liferay DNA within Cisco's collaboration platform). Drupal and Elgg came up more often in my calls this year but nothing overwhelming. I am still hopeful that Apache SocialSite gains more notice in the media and traction in the developer community - Apache Social Site builds on OpenSocial and Shindig but does not seem to get noticed. Apache Abdera (Atom/AtomPub) also seems to have dropped off the news front. Hopefully that project will become more visible as well in 2010. 

Year-End Thoughts On Enterprise 2.0 & Social Software (Part 2)

In my last post, Year-End Thoughts On Enterprise 2.0 & Social Software, I wanted to provide a background context on some of the areas where Enterprise 2.0 remains ambiguous:

• Enterprise 2.0 is not a market. Enterprise 2.0 is perhaps best thought of as a collection of principals, organizational practices, and adoption methods that enables emergent participation and contributions models.
• Enterprise 2.0 is not a project. By this, I mean that organizations should not undertake Enterprise 2.0 initiatives for the sake of "doing Enterprise 2.0. This was the fundamental mistake that doomed many KM projects in the late nineties. There needs to be some business purpose - that purpose may be very intangible in terms of ROI, but there should be some localization and internalization of what E2.0 means to the enterprise itself.
• Enterprise 2.0 is not that big of a deal. There are too many voices that are taking E2.0 as the hammer to every nail. Enterprise 2.0 does not address all patterns of communication, information sharing, and collaboration.
• Social Software lacks definition. The Wikipedia definition that McAfee defaults to does not help clarify what E2.0 is about when it comes to use of social software. The best definition that I mentioned in the post comes from Clay Shirky. We too easily constrain social software to specific tools which leaves the door open to ambiguity and vendor posturing.
• Emergent Social Software Platforms remain ill-defined as well. ESSPs form the technical foundation for Enterprise 2.0 yet (1) there has been little effort to examine the evolution of social software platforms over time (made more difficult by a lack on consensus on what social software is in the first place), and (2) if there is such a thing as an ESSP then there must be a non-emergent SSP - so what makes a social software platform emergent - what examples of emergent social software platforms have we witnessed in the past and why did they fail or where did they succeed - and does that mean we have legacy ESSPs/SSps and what can we learn from those older generations solutions.

Enterprise 2.0-related activities overall continued to mature in 2009 from what I have seen in the industry and within Burton Group clients. From a tooling perspective, across the board, IT groups seem much more comfortable with social tools and social applications. Increased calls from identity and security teams indirectly tells me that these systems are getting more scruitiny as they are rolled out to broader audiences. From an organizational viewpoint, adoption challenges remain the most significant hurdle. Project teams consistently under-estimate the need for governance and change management efforts. Getting management to buy off on the business case is also difficult given the discretionary nature of such initiatives and the lack of traditional metrics to gauge ROI.

Wikis are highly commonplace when I talk to clients - sharing content is less "scary" (association with publishing perhaps) than some other tools such as blogs. It is not uncommon for organizations to have more than one Wiki provider but consolidation via standardization is underway. While purists will make the case that Wiki vendors (e.g., Atlassian) have distinct technical advantages over larger platform providers that offer less-than-perfect Wikis (e.g., Jive, IBM, Microsoft), it is clear that platform approaches are winning out. Most conversations now are about platforms that best support 

Blogging seems to be something that organizations remain somewhat skittish about (internally) - there are more blogs discussed during my calls than in 2008 but they still appear to be more controlled (versus letting all employees blog openly). This still strikes me as an irrational fear for the most part. There are valid concerns regarding confidentiality, compliance, etc but the fear that employees will use blogs as a soapbox is one that I have yet to come across when policies and governance programs are effectively put in place.

Tagging/bookmarking remains a nascent topic in my calls. Mostly I chalk this up to most enterprise intranets having poor native web content and the lack of bookmarklets in productivity tools which would allow people to tag/bookmark content in applications other than a browser. Most people I talk to see tagging and bookmarking as a feature not a product.

RSS (including Atom) discussions actually did increase this year vs. 2008 although overall, this topic remains below the level it should within the industry and clients. I chalk this up to the classic middleware dilemma. A feed syndication platform is essential from an architectural perspective. There remains too much emphasis on feed readers and not enough focus on the underlying management platform to handle read/unread marks, de-duping, security, storage and network management, analytics, and so on. NewsGator is the only viable enterprise option (for a feed syndication platform) in most cases. Major vendors (IBM, Microsoft, Oracle) are still missing in action when it comes to a complete feed syndication framework.

Social networking is taking off but from the perspective of a social network site (a "corporate Facebook") that acts as a community and social networking destination hub. Social network sites arguably represent the current E2.0 best practice. These platforms often contain a complete manifest of tools often associated with E2.0 (e.g., blogs, wikis, community spaces) along with profiles, social graphs - and more recently - micro-blogging / activity streams. Back in 2008 I defined (and shared on this blog) an architectural reference model (template) for an enterprise version of a social network site (based on the early work of dana boyd and Nicole Ellison who defined something similar for consumer sites). This model remains an accurate depiction:

Overall, the social network site is where most of the E2.0 action is from a vendor perspective. An illustration of how I personally view the competitive landscape is illustrated below. Platform Vendors are those that have established, broad-based environments. Domain-specific Vendors are those that concentrate on a set of related capabilities (sometimes referred to as best-of-breed). Emerging Vendors are those in a specific domain that compliment or augment an existing market model. Transformational Vendors are those that threaten an existing market model (possibly as a new entrant), or trigger disruption (changing market structure), or act as a template that enterprise vendors mimic (they do not enter the market but what they do has a direct influence).

The goal is to get to the center of the bulls-eye by the way. Note: so far, no one is there.

These charts go nicely with an early post and graphic I shared concerning Social Networking Platform Evolution: From Destination Site To Networked Services. While the focus currently is on a destination site, you can feel change in the wind as the focus shifts towards middleware services that enable social information to be contextually composed into other applications and productivity tools.

Year-End Thoughts On Enterprise 2.0 & Social Software

A partial list of points-to-ponder:

• Enterprise 2.0 is not a "market": A market should have some common definition along with identifiable boundaries that can be measured with metrics (many of which would be related to financial measures). The industry can identify a "portal market", an "enterprise content management market", and even a "collaboration market". However, when it comes to Enterprise 2.0, the "market" remains very ambiguous. If we are thinking in terms of a solution space, perhaps that's a better descriptor - but the word "market" should probably be avoided when it comes to Enterprise 2.0.
  • By the way, to confess, I sometimes inadvertently use this term as well to group a collection of technologies into a solution space - which I think is what most people are actually referring to when the market term is applied. Enterprise 2.0 is more about how social software is used by people vs. what the social tool actually is. You can use tools in ways that are not aligned with the intent of E2.0. 
• Enterprise 2.0 is not a "project": When people talk about "Enterprise 2.0" projects, I often do an internal translation and listen for the real business solution they are delivering. I'm not always expecting concrete requirements that are strongly process-centric (solutions that directly or indirectly impact sales, marketing, customer service, etc). But I am expecting some intent to address a business or organizational pain point/opportunity even if the focus is on something intangible. Many E2.0 projects are focused on people-centric solutions that promise to deliver "soft" benefits related to community, employee engagement, talent management, learning, collaboration, etc).
  • When I sense that the term "Enterprise 2.0" is being used as a desired end-state in-and-of-itself, I cringe. These efforts remind me of the well-intentioned but often misguided KM projects of the late nineties. Organizations should not pursue Enterprise 2.0 for the sake of Enterprise 2.0. 
• Enterprise 2.0 is not THAT big of a deal: The industry has expanded the solution space of Enterprise 2.0 to encompass so many other domains that the term risks becoming irrelevant. Enterprise 2.0 does not address all patterns of communication, information sharing, cooperation, collaboration, community-building, and social networking. And that's ok. Really. Sometimes a meme takes on a life of its own and its success breeds the seeds of its own destruction. The thinking behind E2.0 filled in a critical gap that was long-missing in collaboration and knowledge management circles. The thought-leadership that the E2.0 community has put forth has added tremendous value. However, it (E2.0) remains a piece of the puzzle - it is not the only puzzle piece.
• • For instance, I've read various articles and posts about E2.0 being equated with "contextual collaboration" - sorry, but that term has been around since the late nineties (defined by Matt Cain of Meta Group, now with Gartner Group). Contextual Collaboration referred to the embedding of collaborative services within the context of line-of-business application. It has though taken the industry a long time to actually mature the underlying tooling and infrastructure to enable such solutions on a broad scale.
  • I've also read recent posts that propose that E2.0 become more process-centric. I would point folks back to the original thinking behind the term "contextual collaboration" which was very much a process-centric view of how collaboration can be improved within structured work activities. At one point (late nineties/early 2000's), Microsoft sometimes used the term "directed collaboration" in this regard while IBM talked about contextual collaboration as the "fuzzy front-end" of process-centric work.
  • Process-centric collaboration has been discussed on-and-off for a decade. It is not new - although there are new possibilities of integrating social tools into business applications - still, the definition and intent has been around for some time. What we are hearing now are new lyrics to an old tune - which is great by the way. Let's just add some historical context to the notion of process-centric E2.0.
• Social Software still needs a definition: Unfortunately, we (the industry at-large) use the term but I'm not sure we're all on the same page when it comes to what the terms means. There are a lot of people who equate social software to specific tools, specifically: blogs, wikis, tags, bookmarks, and social network sites (e.g., a "Corporate Facebook" destination site for communities and networking). McAfee does not clearly define the term even though it forms the foundation of his Enterprise 2.0 definition. Defaulting to Wikipedia is a debatable decision I think - the definition in Wikipedia meanders across a lot of territory and does little to put social software into context when it comes to E2.0. E2.0 community should perhaps work within the Wikipedia guidelines to refine the generic social software definition. Better yet, Wikipedia's "enterprise social software" should be scrapped as another option and recast to support the Enterprise 2.0 term.
• • There are some interesting dilemmas created when an industry relies on tools themselves to define what something is rather than a definition that classifies things by attributes, characteristics, and behaviors. I've seen people list tools that have been around for ages like instant messaging as being related to Enterprise 2.0. More recently, anything that is new seems to automatically associated with enabling Enterprise 2.0 solutions. It might be absolutely correct to label tools such as micro-blogging and activity streams as technology enablers for Enterprise 2.0. However, what about augmented reality ... what about video solutions like Cisco's Show-And-Share?
  • Being able to identify what is, or is not, "social software" is important (at least I believe it to be). Perhaps the social software definition I prefer is one from Clay Shirky who has stated simply that: “It's software that supports group interaction.“ Shirky has other interesting points on social software that are worth remembering: “Every time social software improves, it is followed by changes in the way groups work and socialize“ as well as "one consistently surprising aspect of social software is that it is impossible to predict in advance all of the social dynamics it will create".
• Emergent Social Software Platforms (ESSPs): If we look at the evolution of social software and platforms over time, the concept of ESSPs becomes more realistic. Social Software Platforms and ESSPs are not totally new, they have been incrementally improving as infrastructure and networks have matured and externalized interfaces and services:
• • If we adopt a more expansive definition of social software, then when you look at collaboration over the past 20 years, there have been other examples of "social software" - including tools such as email and groupware. One could make an argument that in the late eighties and early nineties, Lotus Notes was the dominant ESSP. However, during that time, ESSPs were severely constrained by platform, infrastructure, and network barriers. 
  • If we look at collaboration in the late eighties and nineties, most information sharing and collaboration strategies focused on improving worker productivity. Later on, things shifted more towards activity-centric improvements (work groups and teams). In general, ESSP solutions were localized and also lacked visibility and transparency in terms of people's participation and contributions). Finally, these older incarnations of ESSPs often did not scale well and were difficult to integrate with other tools. As platforms, infrastructure, and networks matured to where they are today (including more standardized interfaces), we actually have legacy social software platforms.
  • It's important I believe to delineate between social software platforms and "emergent" social software platforms. We should also look at ESSPs over time - that is, to place them into a historical context. If there are ESSPs, then are there simply SSPs? When does a platform transition from being emergent to being "not emergent"? I believe these are important points to understand so we can think of social software and E2.0 as part of an evolutionary trend rather than a recent phenomena. Older ESSPs were fine in their days (focused on personal and team productivity or semi-structured work group activities). However, these legacy ESSPs (perhaps better described now as simply being an SSP) had capabilities within them that are no longer needed. As various platform, infrastructure and networking capabilities became externalized into common services, a new class of social software platforms was made possible - setting the stage for the industry to accept the idea of Enterprise 2.0, etc. 

SharePoint 2009 Conference: Morning Keynotes

Notes from Steve Ballmer keynote...

• Vision: seamless experiences across your life
• SharePoint is at the center of intranet, Internet, etc
• Public Beta in November
• Synergies with SharePoint Workspace (Groove recast for SharePoint with improved offline support)
• Targeting 1H2010 for general release (note: my guess is May)
• What is SharePoint? Collaboration, analytics, social networking, content management, portal, workflow, etc etc
• Want to someday bring SharePoint to consumer market
• New user experience for SP2010 - ribbon and other office UI elements
• Consolidate workloads and costs on a single platform (old argument but more so with this release)
• Adding sandbox environment
• Additional standards support (REST, JSON, ATOM) Note: Encouraging widespread development of third-party applications (e.g., Adobe AIR) that front-end SP2010 via these standards might be one of the most significant advancements in the release and Microsoft doesn't push this concept strongly enough - look at all the AIR apps around other social tools for instance
• Demo
  • Business Connectivity Services (next generation of business data catalog)
  • Many more templates within Visual Studio specific to SharePoint
  • Sandbox solution:enable developers to create applications that can be throttled by IT ... isolate application ...
• Note: so far, 45 minutes into keynote, not a single message that would be considered a message to a "business decision maker" - interesting ... pitching to developers and support people in audience, no focus on business solutions, processes, etc (few side comments but nothing in-depth and compelling)
• Cloud, discussion on hybrid split between SP online and SP on-premises
• Important: Still no parity still between SP2010 in cloud and on-premises - better, but not 100%
• Note: When will cloud/SaaS be the primary target environment for SP releases? Seems like on-premises is the target environment creating this lag in terms of parity
• Internet-facing SP: SP in cloud for intranet different than customer-facing Internet
• First real business scenario: Kraft example, consolidated 200 web sites. Volvo also using SP externally for Internet. Not clear what percentage though in these examples are SP - are they 100% run on SP or other platforms are also leveraged
• Demo Internet Facing
  • SharePoint Server For Internet Sites
  • FAST Search Server for Internet Business
• Intranet 2010 Products
  • SharePoint Foundation (successor to WSS)
  • SharePoint Server
  • Fast Search Server
  • SharePoint Online
• Question on long elapsed-time between releases: Basically, SteveB reply is that it has taken them this long (to the 2010 release) to get to the point where the foundation is at a point where they can release application-level functionality faster. But no insight as to what people should expect in the future - is the next release 2013? No guidance so I'm not sure anyone should believe that cycle times are going to get any better until there is proof...
• Question on social computing: SteveB rightly points out the need for social computing to address security and identity aspects of related applications and that IT organizations play a key role to help mitigate risks but no specific insight as to how data loss, identity and security issues are handling in 2010 social computing. Hopefully more to come in this space...

Notes from Jeff Teper keynote

• SharePoint 2010: the business collaboration platform for the enterprise and the web
• Sites: single infrastructure for intranets, extranets and Internet sites
• "Replumbing" of UI, adding ribbon, etc
• SharePoint and Groove user experience consistent now - SharePoint Workspace, offline support, better mobile support
• Collaboration: wiki, blog, tags, etc etc all improved
• Social tagging was a significant focus area
• MySite - some rewriting of history on how MySite was positioned originally. Back circa 2003, MySite was an orphan feature that no one seemed at Microsoft was able to clearly position. Was never intended to play the role it is being positioned for today re: social computing.
• Profiles - revamping search and finding people
• Single metadata store for tags, taxonomy etc
• Search - query on experience, people search, KM aspects, social graph, org chart, etc
• Social Computing Demo
  • Activity feed, tags, tag clouds, recent blog posts, etc
  • Can see aggregation of other connections re: activities, etc
  • Ratings fro documents
  • Expertise location: people search ... displays people and profile information, can view recent content from person, authored content, browser where person is in organizational chart
  • Note board (like FB wall) on profile page

One Way To Look At Social Computing

Lately, over the past couple of months, I have been doing a high number of customer briefings and traveling a lot. The workload increase has been noticeable for those following me either via this blog or through Twitter. One of the slides that has been well-received is one that I use to peel away the different terms associated with social computing. This is not the only way to look at the topic - and not necessarily the right way for all possible situations when you are trying to advise someone on a particular strategy or question. However, Figure 1 below helps with the conversation I have with people on the topic. It seems to add value and remove some of the confusion that people have when it comes to "social everything".

What I've tried to illustrate more than "define" are how different terms and memes relate to one another. Again - it's not a perfect chart. If I had to define social computing more purely, I'd lean more towards definitions used by academic institutions or by social computing research labs of major vendors (e.g., HP, IBM, Microsoft). But in more simple terms - I find people thinking of social computing transition to a conversation on social media, social networking, or social software. Other times - especially when it comes to mobility - the discussion tends to anchor itself around devices and their form factors (e.g., iPhone) as well as what's possible (in terms of application scenarios given connectivity advances (e.g., location services, augmented reality).

But we also need to learn from history and see things in both an evolutionary as well as revolutionary lens - so collaboration, content, communication and productivity discussions - long time initiatives across many organizations are still very credible pursuits with relevant business benefits. Interestingly, these conversations often include debates on the merits of the same underlying social software tooling that comes up in conversations related to other domains such as social media. For instance, blogs comes up in multiple contexts, as do communities and wikis - it becomes a circular discussion as people try to describe these domains by tools ("what is") rather than by their application ("how used"). Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 are additional memes that have been kicked around for some time with additional debate as to what exactly is included in those terms when it comes to tools.

For example - if social media includes blogs and communities - then what makes it different from Web 2.0? Or, if Enterprise 2.0  includes wikis, then how is that different than collaboration (joint work)? When you describe domains by tools - you'll never get out of this endless debate - which promted me to create the simple illustration in Figure 1.

Figure 1

And yes, I agree totally that this is not purely a technology discussion but that's not the point I'm trying to convery with this illustration.  What you'll notice (based on the color coding of social software) is that social software becomes the ingredients more-or-less for these other terms and memes to dip into. Social software answers the "what is" while the other terms describe "how used". This does require you to agree with a very broad definition which I have leveraged from Clay Shirky, who made three interesting statements on social software:

1. “It's software that supports group interaction.“
2. Every time social software improves, it is followed by changes in the way groups work and socialize.“
3. "One consistently surprising aspect of social software is that it is impossible to predict in advance all of the social dynamics it will create."

That lead me to the illustration depicted in Figure 2 - that social software has been around for a very long time - and has constantly evolved while being called many different names (e.g., groupware, etc). Again - Figure 2 is not meant to be the only way to look at the topic - just one way to help people clarify the confusion out there so they can formulate what all of 'it" (social media, Enterprise 2.0) means to them, the people they are delivering solutions for, and the organizations they support.

Figure 2

When we think of social software in terms of "waves" (with all due respect to the Google folks), coupled with maturing platforms, infrastructure and networking services - you can actually clear up a lot of confusion that people have when they try to de-tangle all the jargon out there and begin focusing on what is really more important - the people and organizational aspects unrelated to the various technology debates.

Hopefully this helps... I used these slides to level set groups as to what my research focus is here at Burton Group. While I tend to summarize it as covering social computing - the technology aspects are only one component of my research - in reality, what I end up spending more and more time on is exploring how social formations and participatory cultures emerge - and how IT augments relationship structures and behaviors. While somewhat academic - it does better describe where I am right now.

Avoiding Bias In Social Software Design

Interesting point in this article, however if the design of IBM's social software is over-reliant on use cases within its own workforce, the risk is that those traits unique to its own culture and operation are passed onto clients of Lotus Connections (user experience, etc). Not all organizations have a culture like IBM, nor necessarily want one like IBM's. It is not "defacto" a benefit or competitive differential to hang your hat on when representing a solution to the market.Other social software companies I talk to don't "guess what customers want to buy" - they ask them - and some do so continuously.

Most vendors must guess what customers want to buy, and how they'll use it. For IBM, however, with about 400,000 employees, it has the potential to be its own best laboratory, one that becomes even more potent when mixed with active participation in open-source communities.

That potential, as I discovered in an interview on Friday with Jeff Schick, IBM's vice president of social software, isn't a "gimme," but is powerful if you can enable the right sort of corporate culture and processes.

For example, Schick mentioned that IBM has a technology adoption program for employees that spans the gamut of new products, add-ons and patches to existing products, and still-raw technologies direct from IBM's labs. While the invitation list and process is different for each particular item, IBM generally encourages its product groups to "experiment" upon each other. The earlier in the development process, the better.

Synch.rono.us

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

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