Gilbane Group Blog

Go With the (Enterprise 2.0 Adoption) Flow

2009-07-02T18:14:28Z

People may be generally characterized as one of the following: optimists, realists, or pessimists. We all know the standard scenario used to illustrate these stereotypes.

Optimists look at the glass and say that it is partially full. Pessimists remark that the glass is mostly empty. Realists note that there is liquid in the glass and make no value judgment about the level.

The global Enterprise 2.0 community features the same types of individuals. I hear them speak and read their prose daily, noticing the differences in the way that they characterize the current state of the E2.0 movement. E2.0 evangelists (optimists) trumpet that the movement is revolutionary. Doubters proclaim that E2.0 will ultimately fail for many of the same reasons that earlier attempts to improve organizational collaboration did. Realists observe events within the E2.0 movement, but don't predict its success or demise.

All opinions should be heard and considered, to be sure. In some ways, the position of the realist is ideal, but it lacks the spark needed to create forward, positive momentum for E2.0 adoption or to kill it. A different perspective is what is missing in the current debate regarding the health of the E2.0 movement.

Consider again the picture of the glass of liquid and the stereotypical reactions people have to it. Note that none of those reactions considers flow. Is the level of liquid in the glass rising or falling?

Now apply the flow question to the E2.0 movement. Is it gaining believers or is it losing followers? Isn't that net adoption metric the one that really matters, as opposed to individual opinions, based on static views of the market, about the success or failure of the E2.0 movement to-date?

The E2.0 community needs to gather more quantitative data regarding E2.0 adoption in order to properly access the health of the movement. Until that happens, the current, meaningless debate over the state of E2.0 will continue. The effect of that wrangling will be neither positive or negative -- net adoption will show little gain -- as more conservative adopters continue to sit on the sideline, waiting for the debate to end.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that E2.0 adoption is increasing, albeit slowly. The surest way to accelerate E2.0 adoption is to go with the flow -- to measure and publicize increases in the number of organizations using social software to address tangible business problems. Published E2.0 case studies are great, but until more of those are available, simply citing the increase in the number of organizations deploying E2.0 software should suffice to move laggards off the sideline and on to the playing field.

Assessment of My Enterprise 2.0 Conference Predictions

2009-06-30T13:57:33Z

The Enterprise 2.0 Conference was held last week, in Boston. Prior to the event, I made some predictions as to expected learnings and outcomes from the conference. Today, I will revisit those prognostications to determine their accuracy.

Here is the original list of things that I anticipated encountering at the E2.0 Conference this year. Each prediction is followed by an assessment of the statement's validity and some explanatory comments:

A few more case studies from end user organizations, but not enough to indicate that we've reached a tipping point in the E2.0 market: TRUE The number of case studies presented this year seemed to be roughly the same as last year. That is to say very few. The best one that I heard was a presentation by Lockheed Martin employees, which was an update to their case study presented last year at E2.0 Conference. It was great to hear the progress they had made and the issues with which they have dealt in the last year. However, I was genuinely disappointed by the absence of fresh case studies. Indeed, the lack of new case studies was the number one conference content complaint heard during the event wrap-up session (indeed, throughout the show.)

An acknowledgement that there are still not enough data and case studies to allow us to identify best practices in social software usage: TRUE This turned out to be a huge understatement. There are not even enough publicly available data points and stories to allow us to form a sense of where the Enterprise 2.0 market is in terms of adoption, much less of best practices or common success factors. At this rate, it will be another 12-18 months before we can begin to understand which companies have deployed social software and at what scale, as well as what works and what doesn't when implementing an E2.0 project.

That entrenched organizational culture remains the single largest obstacle to businesses trying to deploy social software: TRUE The "C" word popped up in every session I attended and usually was heard multiple times per session. The question debated at the conference was a chicken and egg one; must culture change to support adoption of E2.0 practices and tools, or is E2.0 a transformational force capable of reshaping an organization's culture and behaviors? That question remains unanswered, in part because of the lack of E2.0 case studies. However, historical data and observations on enterprise adoption of previous generations of collaboration technologies tell us that leadership must be willing to change the fundamental values, attitudes, and behaviors of the organization in order to improve collaboration. Grassroots evangelism for, and usage of, collaboration tools is not powerful enough to drive lasting cultural change in the face of resistance from leadership.

A nascent understanding that E2.0 projects must touch specific, cross-organizational business processes in order to drive transformation and provide benefit: TRUE I was very pleased to hear users, vendors, and analysts/consultants singing from the same page in this regard. Everyone I heard at E2.0 Conference understood that it would be difficult to realize and demonstrate benefits from E2.0 initiatives that did not address specific business processes spanning organizational boundaries. The E2.0 movement seems to have moved from speaking about benefits in general, soft terms to groping for how to demonstrate process-based ROI (more on this below.)

A growing realization that the E2.0 adoption will not accelerate meaningfully until more conservative organizations hear and see how other companies have achieved specific business results and return on investment: TRUE Conference attendees were confounded by two related issues; the lack of demonstrative case studies and the absence of a clear, currency-based business case for E2.0 initiatives. More conservative organizations won't move ahead with E2.0 initiatives until they can see at least one of those things and some will demand both. People from end user organizations attending the conference admitted as much both publicly and privately.

A new awareness that social software and its implementations must include user, process, and tool analytics if we are ever to build a ROI case that is stated in terms of currency, not anecdotes: TRUE Interestingly, the E2.0 software vendors are leading this charge, not their customers. A surprising number of vendors were talking about analytics in meetings and briefings I had at the conference, and many were announcing the current or future addition of those capabilities to their offerings at the show. E2.0 software is increasingly enabling organizations to measure the kinds of metrics that will allow them to build a currency-based business case following a pilot implementation. Even better, some vendors are mining their products' new analytics capabilities to recommend relevant people and content to system users!

That more software vendors that have entered the E2.0 market, attracted by the size of the business opportunity around social software: TRUE I haven't counted and compared the number of vendors in Gartner's E2.0 Magic Quadrant from last year and this year, but I can definitely tell you that the number of vendors in this market has increased. This could be the subject of another blog post, and I won't go into great detail here. There are a few new entrants that are offering E2.0 suites or platforms (most notably Open Text). Additionally, the entrenchment of SharePoint 2007 in the market has spawned many small startup vendors adding social capabilities on top of SharePoint. The proliferation of these vendors underscores the current state of dissatisfaction with SharePoint 2007 as an E2.0 platform. It also foreshadows a large market shakeout that will likely occur when Microsoft releases SharePoint 2010.

A poor opinion of, and potentially some backlash against, Microsoft SharePoint as the foundation of an E2.0 solution; this will be tempered, however, by a belief that SharePoint 2010 will be a game changer and upset the current dynamics of the social software market: TRUE Yes, there are many SharePoint critics out there and they tend to be more vocal than those who are satisfied with their SharePoint deployment. The anti-SharePoint t-shirts given away by Box.net at the conference sum up the attitude very well. Yet most critics seem to realize that the next release of SharePoint will address many of their current complaints. I heard more than one E2.0 conference attendee speculate on the ability of the startup vendors in the SharePoint ecosystem to survive when Microsoft releases SharePoint 2010.

An absence of understanding that social interactions are content-centric and, therefore, that user generated content must be managed in much the same manner as more formal documents: FALSE Happily, I was wrong on this one. There was much discussion about user generated content at the conference, as well as talk about potential compliance issues surrounding E2.0 software. It seems that awareness of the importance of content in social systems is quite high among vendors and early adopters. The next step will be to translate that awareness into content management features and processes. That work has begun and should accelerate, judging by what I heard and saw at the conference.

So there are the results. I batted .888! If you attended the conference, I'd appreciate your comments on my perceptions of the event. Did you hear and see the same things, or did the intense after hours drinking and major sleep deficit of last week cause me to hallucinate? I'd appreciate your comments even if you weren't able to be at E2.0 Conference, but have been following the market with some regularity.

I hope this post has given you a decent sense of the current state of the Enterprise 2.0 market. More importantly, I believe that this information can help us focus our efforts to drive the E2.0 movement forward in the coming year. We can and should work together to best these challenges and make the most of these opportunities.

Enterprise 2.0 Conference Predictions

2009-06-22T18:14:26Z

The Enterprise 2.0 Conference begins this evening in Boston. Conference organizers indicate that there are approximately 1,500 people registered for the event, which has become the largest one for those interested in the use of Web 2.0 technologies inside business organizations.

The most valuable part of last year's conference was the case studies on Enterprise 2.0 (E2.0) from early adopter organizations like Lockheed Martin and the Central Intelligence Agency. They presented an early argument for how and why Web 2.0 could be used by businesses.

Here are some things that I anticipate encountering at the E2.0 Conference this year:

a few more case studies from end user organizations, but not enough to indicate that we've reached a tipping point in the E2.0 market
an acknowledgement that there are still not enough data and case studies to allow us to identify best practices in social software usage
that entrenched organizational culture remains the single largest obstacle to businesses trying to deploy social software
a nascent understanding that E2.0 projects must touch specific, cross-organizational business processes in order to drive transformation and provide benefit
a growing realization that the E2.0 adoption will not accelerate meaningfully until more conservative organizations hear and see how other companies have achieved specific business results and return on investment
a new awareness that social software and its implementations must include user, process, and tool analytics if we are ever to build a ROI case that is stated in terms of currency, not anecdotes
that more software vendors that have entered the E2.0 market, attracted by the size of the business opportunity around social software
a poor opinion of, and potentially some backlash against, Microsoft SharePoint as the foundation of an E2.0 solution; this will be tempered, however, by a belief that SharePoint 2010 will be a game changer and upset the current dynamics of the social software market
an absence of understanding that social interactions are content-centric and, therefore, that user generated content must be managed in much the same manner as more formal documents

So there are some of my predictions for take-aways from this year's E2.0 conference. I will publish a post-conference list of what I actually did hear and learn. That should make for some interesting comparison with today's post; we will learn if my sense of the state of the market was accurate or just plain off.

In the meanwhile, I will be live-tweeting some of the sessions I attend so you can get a sense of what is being discussed at the E2.0 Conference on the fly. You can see my live tweets by following my event feed on Twitter.

Deadline extended for Gilbane Boston speaking proposals

2009-06-16T12:45:46Z

We've extended the deadline till end-of-day Friday the 19th.

http://gilbaneboston.com/

http://gilbane.com/speaker_guidelines.html

Emerging Enterprise Content Management Trends

2009-06-10T15:00:28Z

I was at the Gilbane Conference in San Francisco last week, where I answered questions as a panelist, moderated another panel, heard many excellent presentations, and joined in many engaging discussions. On the plane ride home, I took some time to piece together the individual bits of information and opinion that I had absorbed during the two-day event. This reflection led to the following observations regarding the state of enterprise content management practices and technologies.

Up With People

Many content software vendors are now focusing on people first, content second. This is a huge shift in perspective, especially when voiced at a content management conference! Kumar Vora, Vice President & General Manager, Enterprise at Adobe was the first person to proclaim this philosophical change during his opening keynote presentation at Gilbane San Francisco. He reported that Adobe has shifted its business philosophy to focus on serving people and their needs, as opposed to thinking about content first. Many other vendor representatives and attendees from end user organizations echoed Kumar's emphasis on people during the event. It is too early to say definitively what this radical change in perspective means, but we should see more user friendly enterprise content management tools as a result.

Keyword Fail

Keyword search has largely failed end users and incremental improvements haven't been able to keep up with the explosion in newly created content. Jeff Fried, VP Product Management for Microsoft's FAST search engine actually proclaimed that "keyword search is dead!" The business world is at a point where alternatives, including machine-generated and social search techniques, must be explored. The latter method was on many attendees minds and lips, which should not surprise, given the shift to people-centric thinking identified above. Social search will be an increasingly hot topic in 2009 and 2010.

SharePoint Upheaval

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 has the potential to completely shake up the information management market. The next version of SharePoint will likely include a raft of (as of yet unconfirmed) Web Content Management features that have been missing or rudimentary. In her keynote address, Tricia Bush, Group Product Manager for SharePoint said that the promise of content management has not yet been realized and that her team is focusing diligently on the opportunity. This increased emphasis on content management is contrary to the first trend that I described above, and the negative perceptions many hold of SharePoint may increase unless Microsoft also better enables people in SharePoint 2010 (it is rumored that the product will also see substantial additions to its currently limited social collaboration functionality.) Those placing bets should do so knowing that Microsoft intends to, and probably will, be a major force in enterprise information management.

Simplicity Trumps Complexity

Enterprise applications and systems managed by IT departments continue to grow in complexity. As this happens, end users turn to simpler alternatives, including consumer oriented Web 2.0 applications, in order to get work done. The "problem" is that these consumer applications aren't approved or controlled by the IT function. The opportunity is a potentially large market for software vendors that can create enterprise ready versions of Web 2.0 applications by adding security, reliability, and other attributes demanded by CIOs. For those vendors to succeed, however, they must retain the simplicity (intuitiveness and ease of use) that are the hallmark of consumer Web 2.0 applications.

Communication Beats Publishing

Communication applications are increasingly being used by end users to collaborate, because enterprise content management applications have become too complex (see the trend immediately above). Additionally, communication tools are favored by end users because they can use them to simultaneously create and distribute content. This increased speed of content publication also accelerates general business process execution, allowing users of communication tools to be more productive than users of formal enterprise content systems. Communication tools will continue to become an important and growing back channel that employees use to share content when overly complex publishing tools impede or fail them.

Having one's ideas validated by a reputable peer is always rewarding. John Mancini, President of AIIM, published a blog post in the time between when I first formulated these thoughts on the flight home from San Francisco last week and when I published this post today. Reading John's post should encourage you to believe that the trends I (and he) have described are for real. The question for all of us now is how will we respond to these emerging realities.

Buzz from Gilbane San Francisco Conference

2009-06-09T13:47:13Z

The Gilbane Conference held in San Francisco last week was a great success! There were informative presentations, lively discussions, and abundant tweets both days of the event. If you are skeptical about this admitedly biased assessment, check out the following tweets that were broadcast by attendees during and after the conference.

Thanks to everyone who attended the conference and especially those who live tweeted during the event. We look forward to seeing you again at Gilbane Boston in December!

Gilbane Boston call for papers

2009-05-28T14:03:18Z

Gilbane San Francisco is next week, and soon after we'll be switching our energies to our annual Boston conference. The 2009 dates are December 1-3, and we are returning to the Westin Copley hotel for our 6th year. The first important date is the call for papers deadline, which is June 15th. Instructions for submitting speaking proposals can be found at: http://gilbane.com/speaker_guidelines.html.

The track structure this year will be similar to what we are doing in San Francisco. We are still fiddling with the exact names and descriptions, but currently the tracks are:

Web & Business Engagement
Managing Collaboration with Colleagues and Customers
Integrating, Searching & Publishing Enterprise Content
Content Infrastructure Strategies

We'll be continuing our focus on enterprise use of social software and how it integrates into various business applications. We'll also be adding more coverage of mobile content strategies and technologies. The mobile channel is no longer just for pure consumer applications, but has a critical role to play in mainstream business applications, for collaborating and content delivery, and much more. "Smartphone" platforms are rapidly becoming at least as important as desktops, notebooks and netbooks. Some specific technology areas at the Boston conference will be:

Web Content Management
Enterprise Social Software
Enterprise Mobile Content
Authoring & Publishing
Content Globalization
XML & XBRL
Enterprise & Site Search
Semantic Technologies
Enterprise Content Management

The preliminary Gilbane Boston 2009 site is live at http://gilbaneboston.com/. If you have questions about speaking proposals email us at speaking@gilbane.com.

UPDATE: ~~We have just created a Twitter account for the conference:~~ ~~http://twitter.com/gilbaneboston, and we'll use #gilbaneboston for the hashtag.~~ We are going to use our main twitter account for Boston at http://twitter.com/gilbane .

Have a question for our analyst panel?

2009-05-26T12:43:59Z

Looking forward to seeing many of you next week at Gilbane San Francisco. Whether you will be there or not, you can suggest questions to ask our analyst panel. Each of the panelists have specific areas of expertise covering web content management, web governance, enterprise social software and social media, collaboration, and enterprise search. The panel is a keynote session after the two keynote presentations from Microsoft and Adobe, so we'll also be covering reactions to those. You can submit your questions directly to me via a comment, email, or twitter (DM or post using the hashtag #gilbanesf).

Registration for the conference is still open and will be available on-site. If you register in advance you can still get a $200. discount using GILBANE as the discount code. There is no charge for the keynotes or the technology demonstrations or product labs.

K2. Keynote Analyst Panel
We invite industry analysts from many different firms to speak at all our events to make sure our conference attendees hear differing opinions from a wide variety of expert sources. A second, third, fourth or fifth opinion will ensure you don't make ill-informed decisions about critical content and information technologies or strategies. This session will be a lively, interactive debate guaranteed to be both informative and fun.
Moderator: Frank Gilbane
Panelists:
Jeremiah Owyang, Senior Analyst, Social Computing, Forrester
Hadley Reynolds, Research Director, Search & Digital Marketplace Technologies, IDC
Larry Hawes, Lead Analyst, Collaboration and Enterprise Social Software, Gilbane Group
Lisa Welchman, Founding Partner, WelchmanPierpoint

Conference update

2009-05-06T14:29:14Z

There are only 4 more weeks until our annual San Francisco conference. If you haven't already made plans to attend, you should check it out. We have more content than we have ever had in San Francisco, so whatever kind of enterprise web or content application project or responsibility you have, you'll find learning and networking opportunities.

Our marketing group has been posting updates on our announcements blog and on Twitter. But for those of you who only read this stream, here is a quick update:

The early discount rates have been extended to May 8th.
Gilbane conference room rate of $220 at the San Francisco Westin includes complimentary daily guest room internet use, valued at $14.95 per day.
There are 46 conference sessions, workshops or product labs, 90 expert speakers, 36 sponsors/exhibitors.
Keynotes from Microsoft & Adobe on the future of web platforms and customer engagement
Keynote analyst panel with Forrester, IDC, Gilbane, and WelchmanPierpoint.
We'll be using #gilbanesf as the hash tag.

See you there.

Best of luck Fal

2009-05-05T19:43:43Z

Contributing Enterprise Content Management Analyst Fal Sarkar is moving on to the vendor side of the aisle. Fal has always been a pleasure to work with, and I expect we'll be working together again before long, just in a different way. Fal has a great new job that looks like a perfect fit for him. He is "... responsible for marketing EMC's Content Management and Archiving products (Documentum, Captiva, Document Sciences, etc.) in a geography that ranges from Pakistan to the Philippines. The largest market in the region is India." Fal's Gilbane email address will continue to work for a while, but his new contact info is below.

Fal Sarkar
Head of Marketing South Asia
Content Management and Archiving
EMC Corporation

UPDATE:
Oops!
~~Sarkar_Falguni@sun.com~~ should be Sarkar_Falguni@emc.com
Direct: +91 80 66228013
Mob: +91 9742264725

New Orleans Tourism Marketing's Web Strategy

2009-05-04T20:43:47Z

On Wednesday, May 6, 2009, at 1:00 p.m. (Eastern), the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corp. (NOTMC), the Gilbane Group, and ISITE Design will host an online repeat of one of the most popular sessions from the 2008 Gilbane Conference in Boston. Join us to hear Nathan Williams, NOTMC's Interactive Director, talk about their exhaustive search for the right WCM solution and the extensive user experience planning they undertook in the process. I (Tony White) will describe the process the Gilbane Group used to help NOTMC evaluate WCM products, and ISITE Design will highlight key ways in which they helped NOTMC plan a successful information architecture.

To register for this online event, click here.

Join the Gilbane WCM Practice at the CMS2009 Conference in The Netherlands

2009-04-29T14:54:34Z

On May 19, I will be giving a keynote address on the Web Content Management market landscape at the CMS2009 Conference in Nijmegen, Holland (http://www.cmscongres.nl/). In the presentation, I will discuss recent trends in client demands for WCM products as well as strategic directions that vendors will take over the next year. On May 20, I will also lead an interactive two-hour workshop on estimating the total cost of ownership of WCM products over a five-year period (see "Workshop Tony White" in the sidebar of http://www.cmscongres.nl/). And for you English speakers, don't worry about the language. Even though the CMS2009 website is in Dutch, the presentations will be in English.

Critical mass

2009-04-27T13:37:38Z

Every now and then the question of critical mass pops up when discussing the uses of social media in companies and organizations. "How many users should we have before social media is useful?" IMHO there is no absolute answer to the question, as it depends entirely on what you use social media for. A wiki can be very useful for a project team of 4 people to produce project documentation - especially if they happen to reside in different countries. A board of directors consisting of 6 people can save time by having agendas and and meeting minutes stored in a shared workspace and edited by all members.

Social media is inherently social, so instead of defining critical mass one could say that the minimum mass for social media is 2 people. If writing a blog saves you a couple of emails, that is already good. Now, I am not against email per se (although my inbox is a disaster, and I never remember which folder I stored that email containg a really good link). It is just that email was never intended to be either a teamwork or an information management tool, although it is often used as such.

Tomorrow I will be talking about business opportunities in multilingual social media here in Helsinki. It should be an interesting event - more about it tomorrow. As for now, I want to conclude this entry by referring to the fact that lack of time is often mentioned as one of the main obstacles to using social media. This can well be a generational issue. The younger generation uses IM and Facebook and is almost constantly online. I still seem to spend a lot of time in meetings, or writing and preparing materials, or reading and evaluating a lot of stuff. And despite of coming from the land of mobile phones I prefer calling people to sending SMS or Twitter messages. A good friend of mine has done a lot of research on learning, and has pointed out that learning requires long enough quiet time to absorb and understand new topics and ideas. In an environment with constant instant messaging, where do we find that quiet time for learning?

Microsoft now a platinum sponsor at Gilbane San Francisco

2009-04-22T15:59:38Z

More on this later, but the title of the keynote by Microsoft's Tricia Bush, "The Web Platform of The Future", should suggest Microsoft's presence will be interesting.

Join us at: http://gilbanesf.com

Of Twits

2009-04-21T16:26:39Z

I came across an interesting scene the other day on Larry King. Ashton Kutcher was basking in his success to be the first person to have 1,000,000 followers on Twitter, beating CNN by just minutes. My first thought was "Why Ashton Kutcher?" My second was "Why not?" As an aside, should we now call Ashton King Twit?

Anyway, it got me thinking about Twitter and how I communicate electronically. I have been a rabid user of text messaging for several years. It has become the primary mode of communication with my college age sons (except when we are in the room together), who have all but abandoned email, even IM. Phone based text messaging even allows my wife and I to constantly keep in touch while I travel without requiring both of us to be talking synchronously (another way of saying being tied up at the same time). Asynchronous communication in the form of emails, text messages, tweets, IM, etc. have freed people up from maintaining a real-time state with their conversation partners. Maybe asynchronous messaging has helped me stay married for so long. Also, messaging has become invaluable for work, allowing me to multitask and keep things moving with coworkers asynchronously.

Now I am using Twitter, ramping up, getting to know it better. One thing I really like about Twitter is that it is device and software independent unlike cell phone messaging which I must do from my phone. I can twitter from my computer, phone, or IPod Touch. If you haven't added your phone to your Twitter account, do it now (more info at http://help.twitter.com/forums/10711/entries/14014).

By the way, I looked up Twitter and Twit on a couple online dictionaries. The noun Twit means "an insignificant person" or "an excited state". The verb means to "taunt". The verb Twitter means "to talk lightly and rapidly" just like a small bird twitters. I don't think Mr. Kutcher is an insignificant person, or his accomplishment unworthy of attention, but he does tend to talk excitedly and to taunt ("You've been Punked!"). Why not Ashton Kutcher indeed!