Recently in RSS, Atom & Syndication Category
Tim Bray reports Atom 1.0 is complete. Atom is the XML app that is meant to be a better RSS. We have been using both in our newsfeeds for awhile, sometimes switching depending on various newsreader support issues, and have been reluctant to completely switch from RSS. But this will edge us closer.
Finally there is some quantitative research on enterprise use of blogs, wikis, tagging, etc. to complement the very informal surveys we have taken, and the work done at the University of Massachusetts. Reports from Forrester (CIOs Want Suites For Web 2.0) and McKinsey (How businesses are using Web 2.0: A McKinsey Global Survey) published this week provide interesting, though not surprising, data. The McKinsey report is free with registration, and the Forrester report isn't expensive.
I haven't read the Forrester report (119 CIOs), but the executive summary focuses on their finding that most CIOs want to buy enterprise social software in suite form from large vendors rather from the smaller specialist software vendors. This fact itself is of course totally predictable, but it raises two interesting issues. First, just what are all the larger vendors, as well as midsize (e.g., content management vendors) doing about all this? (Short answer - all are doing something, but the details are often vague.) Second, what will be lost or gained in the process of force-fitting the "engage and collaborate" functions and culture into the "command and control" (last week's post) of top-down IT directives?
The McKinsey report (2847 executives, 44% C-level) found "widespread but careful interest" in "Web 2.0 technologies", and that they are strategic and will be invested in. I think their conclusion might be a little overly conservative given their findings. For example, 77% of retail and 74% of high tech plan to increase investment in these technologies. Note, however that McKinsey includes web services as a "Web 2.0" technology which not everyone would agree with.
See comments on these reports from Nick Carr, who points out where the Forrester and McKinsey findings differ. And see Richard MacManus' comments on what the Forrester findings mean for the startups in this space.
For a couple of vendor perspectives, Socialtexts' Ross Mayfield covers these findings here, and FAST's Hadley Reynolds talks about some similar research they have been working on with the Economist here.
Also (while not commenting on these reports) Andrew McAfee provides some info on how he is seeing enterprises using these technologies.
I'm not at the conference this week (we do have several people from our shop there), but to answer a question posed by Frank Gilbane:
What is the future of software as a service, and is it appropriate for enterprise content applications like content management, authoring, etc.?
The SaaS model seems to have been proven to the point where it's hard to imagine that it won't keep growing. We recently posted a whitepaper on SaaS myths, which debunks most of the common arguments against SaaS. In addition to that discussion, I'd offer the following four points:
1) SaaS is a proven technology. It arguably extends to the early days of the web with software ASPs. I guess you could even argue the lineage goes all the way back to mainframe apps! :-) Certainly, though, the existing SaaS companies have been working successfully with this business model for more than six years now.
2) Web technologies have reached a point where SaaS is an out of the box solution. You can now count on fast network connections for users both in the office and home. Security systems are complete from SSL with web browsers up through terminal services like Citrix which allow even HIPAA compliance. For web apps, browser technologies like IFRAMES and AJAX allow apps to be easily integrated on a page (mashups).
3) SaaS provides much more robust server management and security, especially for small and medium sized businesses. As web applications grow more complex, SaaS allows much more convenient, rigorous and cost-effective control over hosting. By centralizing and focusing, the best resources can be brought to bear on fewer hosting environments.
4) This one is a bit of a prediction, and is specific to web sites. Currently, you have a couple options when adding components like blogs, rss, ecommerce, polls, surveys, and search to web sites. You can install apps for those services, which allows you to control ad placement and design. The alternative is to use free hosted apps where the ad revenue goes to the SaaS company. So, the logical next step is for high quality hosted apps where the ad revenue is shared with the web site. This is already appearing with sites like MetaCafe. For an advanced CMS, though, I am not sure this will happen since the CMS tends to be the hub for all the other web apps, but it is certainly possible for a basic CMS.
Looks like Microsoft is adding blog posting support to Word 2007 in a way that not only does not screw up your HTML, but attempts to take advantage of Word features bloggers care about without other features getting in the way. This is more appealing than it may sound at first, and may be useful when building enterprise blog applications where Office is entrenched and familiar. It will be in Office 2007 Beta 2. Learn more from the developers.
Frank does a great job of filtering the news and getting it out to our readers. We get several press releases a day, and on busy days it can be a dozen or more. When one of our conferences or a trade show like AIIM is coming up, the flood of news can be pretty overwhelming. To make it more challenging, most of the news ends up in our email in-boxes--along with dozens of other legitimate email and, some days, hundreds of spam. I have pretty good spam filtering, but sometimes it overflags, and a vendor email will end up in my junk mail folder. Every week or so, I go through the spam and flag these email addresses for my white list.
So I have a proposal for vendors. Come up with an RSS feed for your news, and I will subscribe to it. A few of you already do this, and I have subscribed, but most of you don't. So add an RSS feed for your press releases and let us know--by email of course. ;)
While you are thinking about it, you could consider a more general RSS feed for other elements of your Web site--events, new documents, and so forth. I am sure your customers would appreciate it too.
Here is a quick update on next week's event:
New Sponsors & Exhibitors
Adobe has joined us as a Gold sponsor - their Enterprise Solutions and Developer Group in particular. See announcements on some of the new products and features to be shown from our 50+ exhibitors.
New Debates
In addition to our popular analyst session, two analysts will face-off on 7 topics they disagree on in Content Technologies: A Town Hall Debate. And of course, don't forget CMS Idol.
Keynote Survey
The early results from our survey on questions to ask the keynote panel show the topics attendees are most interested in are, in order:
UPDATE: You can see partial final results of the responses to all the questions here, and contribute to the survey here.
Content Globalization
Also, the top write-in question topic so far is on globalization and content management. This is a hot topic at the event - there are multiple sessions covering it, and many vendors showing related products and services - some of them have even put together a Content Globalization Pavilion.
We have over 100 expert speakers covering these and other topics. Conference program .
And don't forget to look into the Content Management Professionals Association Spring Summit
Onfolio, a company and tool I have used and liked, is being acquired by Microsoft. Onfolio is led by J. J. Allaire, one of the incredibly bright and hands-on entrepeneurial Allaire brothers who developed Cold Fusion. According to the Boston Globe, the entire six-person Onfolio team is moving from Massachusetts to Redmond. This is much like the case of Ray Ozzie's Groove, where Microsoft is acquiring Allaire as much as they are acquiring Onfolio.
Also according to the Boston Globe, the Onfolio tool, which came in three retail versions ranging in price from $30 to $149, will be available for free, starting today, as part of the Windows Live Toolbar. However, I checked the Windows Live Ideas site quickly and couldn't find it.
UPDATE: The Toolbar Beta is there now.
In our informal survey of enterprise use of blogs and wikis, the most popular application that organizations are using blogs and wikis for was "knowledge management". While our survey is a far cry from what a rigorous market research effort would be, the results are in sync with what we and others are hearing from companies. I recently heard from Rod Boothby, who is leading an effort with Ernst & Young to build an internal enterprise blogging system to support knowledge sharing, and has written an essay based on his findings while building the business case for the project. I have just read the 37 page essay, Turning Knowledge Workers into Innovation Creators, and it is a great tool for describing the benefits of enterprise blogging to senior management. Rod is publishing sections of the essay on his blog at www.innovationcreators.com.
We are getting ready for our upcoming Boston conference and hope to see you there. But whether you join us or not, you can contribute to the debate by commenting on this blog entry. Below is the session description with links to the participant's bios and their blogs. Comments and trackbacks are on.
Keynote Debate: Blog, Wiki, and RSS Technology - Are they Enterprise Ready? Applicable? Or a Passing Tempest in a Teacup?
Most of you have probably not seriously considered using these technologies in enterprise applications. Yet there are companies using these technologies for collaboration, knowledge management, and publishing applications in corporate environments, and there are vendors marketing products based on these to businesses like yours. Do these companies only represent the experimental fringe, or are they early adopters of technologies that will soon be part of every IT department's bag of tricks? In this session we'll take a look at the suitability of these for corporate use and hear from both skeptics and proponents of, for example enterprise or group blogs. You will come away from this session able to discuss these issues with your colleagues back in the office.
Moderator: Frank Gilbane, Conference Chair --- Blog
David Berlind, Executive Editor, ZDNet --- Blog
Ross Mayfield, CEO, Socialtext, Inc. --- Blog
Bill Zoellick Senior Analyst, The Gilbane Report --- Blog
Charlie Wood, Principal, Spanning Partners, LLC --- Blog
We updated our survey on enterprise use of blog, wiki and RSS technology for our presentation on the same subject to a group of documentation and training managers yesterday. With 91 respondents the results are a little more respectable. The only obvious differences from our earlier results were an increase the use or planned use of RSS, and the amount of support provided by IT for blogs, wikis, and RSS. We are not sure if there is real "hockey stick" growth going on here - our results don't show it - but there just might be. Chris Shipley thinks their numbers show it. Perhaps they do, but we need to know more about the demographics. Our own demographics are very broad and include a sizable non-technical component, which could explain the difference. There was certainly strong interest among the doc and training folks yesterday, but deployment was almost non-existent. The only other sort of relevant survey we are aware of is Technorati's, but that was aimed at bloggers so is a very different animal.
Based on all the evidence, my inclination is to believe the growth is hockey-stick-like. We'll try and come to some more concrete conclusions on this in time for our keynote debate on this in Boston next month.
Almost forgot to mention the new Yahoo! White Paper on RSS (pdf). If you thought most internet users knew what RSS was you had better read this.
Addendum: Here is more info on the demographics and methodolgy we were looking for re the Guidewire/Edelman survey mentioned by Chris Shipley we referenced above.
Now available! "Beyond Search: What to do When Your Enterprise Search System Doesn't Work, by Stephen Arnold
