Partnerpedia announced that its Private Networks online partner community and channel enablement solution will be integrated with Twitter for content syndication and B2B social networking. Companies should be able to stream corporate Twitter feeds directly to their profiles in Private Networks, providing updates to the community. The added feature also incorporates syndicating content published in Partnerpedia for sharing through Twitter. Expanding on Partnerpedia Private Networks’ customized branding options, companies link their corporate profiles on social networking sites to their corresponding profile in the Private Networks community. This should enable companies to extend communications beyond the Partnerpedia community and increase exposure to new potential partners. An extension of Partnerpedia’s free Open Community, Private Networks helps companies to create a privately branded online community for their network of partners. Leveraging social media, collaboration and sales enablement tools, Private Networks is designed to accelerate company business through partners. Twitter integration for Private Networks should be available at the end of October 2009 at no additional cost. https://www.partnerpedia.com/
Category: Collaboration and workplace (Page 39 of 97)
This category is focused on enterprise / workplace collaboration tools and strategies, including office suites, intranets, knowledge management, and enterprise adoption of social networking tools and approaches.
eTouch SamePage has announced it has released SamePage version 4.2 with a customizable dashboard, stronger e-mail integration and advanced plug-in features in order to meet the needs of a remote and social-media friendly workforce. SamePage version 4.2 includes a number of new features important to remote and knowledge management workers including: advanced email integration that enables remote workers to more easily ‘wikify’ content from any smartphone; dynamic portal-like dashboard with drag and drop widgets that can be personalized at company and individual levels, eliminating the need for a separate intranet portal product; a wide selection of new plug-ins that can be customized for each enterprise, including tag cloud and project member plug-ins, among others; more detailed analytics, usage and content reports for administrators; ratings on Blog posts and more blog analytics; Support for Microsoft Office 2007; WYSIWYG enhancements to further simplify the user interface; and increased privileges for the system user or administrator to manage pages and projects. http://www.etouch.net/
Jive has announced Jive Market Engagement, a new solution that combines the power of social media monitoring with Social Business Software. Jive’s Market Engagement Solution aims to help organizations implement a unified social media strategy to interact with customers. The solution helps to socialize observations from Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and other online sources to move faster in the moment of pain or the moment of opportunity. While a small percentage of organizations use monitoring tools, most companies rely on a patchwork of alerts, people, and email to stay on top of conversations. While these approaches may help organizations listen in on the river of conversations occurring across the social web, they certainly don’t allow companies to measure, share and engage with insights in a productive and timely way. Organizations should be able to listen, measure, engage and share insights using Jive Market Engagement to identify real-time issues, collaborate with a set of colleagues internally and ultimately more and engage in active dialogues with customers and influencers. The Jive Market Engagement Solution is designed to help organizations proactively monitor brand or product issues and competitive threats; enable quick collaboration on appropriate responses or interventions; and elevate and broaden the social conversations with a company. The “war room” environment allows for rapid decision- making from the right people within the organization. These observations are then consolidated into market summary reports, what Jive calls “Viewpoints.” Viewpoints can be shared within an organization to foster collaboration and to develop and implement appropriate responses. Jive Market Engagement also provides the ability to analyze the effectiveness of those responses. www.jivesoftware.com/
MadCap SoftwareExternal link has announced that MadCap Lingo 3.0 is now available. MadCap LingoExternal link, the XML-based, fully integrated translation memory system (TMS) and authoring tool solution, eliminates the need for file transfers in order to complete translation-preserving valuable content and formatting to deliver a consistent experience across multiple languages. With version 3.0, MadCap Lingo adds a new Project Packager function that bridges the gap between authors and translators who use other TMS software. Using the Project Packager in MadCap Lingo, authors should be able to work with translators to streamline the translation process, track the status of completion, and obtain more accurate project cost estimates. MadCap Lingo 3.0 also features a new TermBase Editor for creating databases of reusable translated terms, and enhanced translation memory. Through integration between MadCap Lingo and MadCap’s authoring and multimedia applications, MadCap hopes to offer a powerful integrated authoring and localization workflow. Project Packager in MadCap Lingo 3.0 is designed to make it easier for authors who need their documentation translated into another language but work with a translator who relies on a TMS tool other than MadCap Lingo. Using Project Packager, the author can create a MadCap Lingo project with all the files that require translation, and bundle it in a ZIP file and send it to the translator. MadCap Lingo displays a list of all files that need to be translated, going beyond text to include skins, glossaries, search filter sets, and much more. As a result, the author can ensure that the translator receives all of the files requiring translation. This should streamline the process while enabling more accurate translation project estimates, helping translators to avoid accidentally underestimating project costs based on an incomplete file count-and protecting authors from unexpected cost overruns. Once the translation is complete, the translator sends a ZIP file with the content. The author then simply merges the translated file in MadCap Lingo, which is used to confirm the completeness of the translation. The author can then run statistical reports showing information for each project and file to determine what has/ has not been translated, how many words/segments have been translated and/or still need to be translated, and much more. The author can then export the MadCap Lingo project to a range of outputs, such as a Flare project file for online and print publishing, Word document, or even a Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) file, among others. The key new features of MadCap Lingo 3.0 are: the new TermBase Editor which enables translators to create and manage concept-oriented, multilingual terminology databases, “termbases,” making it significantly easier to reuse translated terms; the ability to import and export Term Base eXchange (TBX) files, an open, XML-based standard used for exchanging structured terminological data; translation memory – Apply Suggestions to Project function, which makes it possible to view and automatically apply translation memory suggestions to an entire project, rather than just one segment, saving hours of effort; dynamic help window pane lock lets the translator keep the current help topic frozen in place while moving around in the MadCap Lingo interface, making it easier to follow steps or other information placed in the Help topic; minimize to system tray option; multiple file support allows multiple files to be selected when creating a new MadCap Lingo project, for example HTM, HTML, XML, DITA or DOC files. http://www.madcapsoftware.com/
Open Text Corporation has announced plans to expand its suite of Web solutions with products and technologies from recently acquired Vignette playing a central role. Offered as part of the Open Text ECM Suite, the solutions should help organizations establish deeper connections to customers and use the Web as a channel for new revenues. As part of this strategy, Open Text will leverage technologies from both Vignette and its existing solutions to deliver new next- generation Web offerings. Vignette Content Management will form the foundation of Open Text’s Web business solutions, providing personalized and multi-channel capabilities integrated with the Open Text ECM Suite. Open Text has said it will continue to develop both Vignette Content Management and Open Text Web Solutions as complementary offerings to meet the full range of WCM needs. Open Text will release Vignette Content Management version 8.0 and Vignette Portal version 8.0 in the second half of 2009. The recently released Web Solutions 10.0 will be followed by the release of Web Solutions 10.1 in the first half of 2010. Within 24 months, Open Text will launch an offering that combines key strengths of Web Solutions with the Vignette Content Management platform. Vignette Social Media Solutions (Community Applications and Community Services) will be the basis of a new Social Marketplace offering, which will be added to Open Text’s Social Media solutions, targeting Internet-style social media interactions and enabling existing Web sites with social content. Current Open Text WCM customers will be able to take advantage of this new Social Marketplace package. In addition, Vignette Collaboration will continue to be enhanced as part of the underlying Vignette Social Media technology stack. http://www.opentext.com/
Dennis Howlett has once again started a useful and important debate, this time with his Irregular Enterprise blog post entitled Enterprise 2.0: what a crock. While I am sympathetic to some of the thinking he expressed, I felt the need to address one point Dennis raised and a question he asked.
I very much agree with this statement by Dennis:
“Like it or not, large enterprises – the big name brands – have to work in structures and hierarchies…”
However, I strongly disagree with his related contention (“the Big Lie” as he terms it) that:
“Enterprise 2.0 pre-supposes that you can upend hierarchies for the benefit of all.”
Dennis also posed a question that probably echoes what many business leaders are asking:
“In the meantime, can someone explain to me the problem Enterprise 2.0 is trying to solve?”
Below is the comment that I left on Dennis’ blog. It begins to answer the final question he asked and address my disagreement with his contention that Enterprise 2.0 advocates seek to create anarchy. Is my vision for the co-existence of structured and recombinant organizational and work models clear and understandable? Reasonable and viable? If not, I will expand my thoughts in a future post. Please let me know what you think.
Enterprise 2.0 is trying to solve a couple levels of problems.
From a technology standpoint, E2.0 is addressing the failure of existing enterprise systems to provide users with a way to work through exceptions in defined business processes during their execution. E2.0 technology does this by helping the user identify and communicate with those who can help deal with the issue; it also creates a discoverable record of the solution for someone facing a similar issue in the future.
From a organizational and cultural perspective, E2.0 is defining a way of operating for companies that reflects the way work is actually accomplished — by peer-to-peer interaction, not through command and control hierarchy. Contrary to your view, E2.0 does not pre-suppose the destruction of hierarchy. Correctly implemented (philosophy and technology), E2.0 provides management a view of the company that is complementary to the organization chart.
Addendum: See this previous post for more of my perspective on the relationship of structured and ad hoc methods of working.
For Immediate Release
Pioneering Research Describes Transformation of Technical Communications Practices to Align More Closely With Global Business Objectives
Cambridge, MA, July 28 — Gilbane Group, Inc., the analyst and consulting firm focused on content technologies and their application to high-value business solutions, today announced the publication of its latest research, Multilingual Product Content: Transforming Traditional Practices Into Global Content Value Chains.
The report is backed by in-depth qualitative research on how global businesses are creating, managing, and publishing multilingual product content. The study extends Gilbane’s 2008 research on multilingual business communications with a close look at the strategies, practices, and infrastructures specific to product content.
The research clearly shows a pervasive enterprise requirement for product content initiatives to tangibly improve global customer experience. Respondents from a mix of technical documentation, customer support, localization/translation, and training departments indicate that “global-ready technology architectures” are the second most often cited ROI factor to meet the directive. All respondents view single-sourcing strategies and self-help customer support applications as the two most important initiatives to align product content with global business objectives.
“Successful business cases for product content globalization address top-line issues relevant to corporate business goals while tackling bottom-line process improvements that will deliver cost savings,” commented Leonor Ciarlone, Senior Analyst, Gilbane Group, and program lead for Multilingual Product Content. “Our research shows that while multilingual content technologies are clearly ROI enablers, other factors influence sustainable results. Cross-departmental collaboration and overarching business processes, cited as essential improvements by 70% and 82% of respondents respectively, are critical to transforming traditional practices.”
Multilingual Product Content is the first substantive report on the state of end-to-end product content globalization practices from multiple perspectives. “Gilbane’s latest research continues to show both language and content professionals how the well-managed intersection of their domains is becoming best practice,” said Donna Parrish, Editor, MultiLingual magazine. “With practical insights and real experiences in the profiles, this study will serve as a valuable guide for organizations delivering technical documentation, training, and customer support in international markets.”
The report covers business and operational issues, including the evolving role of service providers as strategic partners; trends in authoring for quality at the source, content management and translation management integration, machine translation, and terminology management; and progress towards developing metrics for measuring the business impact of multilingual content. Profiles of leading practioners in high tech, manufacturing, automotive, and public sector/education are featured in the study.
Multilingual Product Content: Transforming Traditional Practices Into Global Content Value Chains is available as a free download from the Gilbane Group website at https://gilbane.com. The report is also available from study sponsors Acrolinx, Jonckers, Lasselle-Ramsay, LinguaLinx, STAR Group, Systran, and Vasont Systems.
About Gilbane Group
Gilbane Group, Inc., is an analyst and consulting firm that has been writing and consulting about the strategic use of information technologies since 1987. We have helped organizations of all sizes from a wide variety of industries and governments. We work with the entire community of stakeholders including investors, enterprise buyers of IT, technology suppliers, and other analyst firms. We have organized over 70 educational conferences in North America and Europe. Our next event if Gilbane Boston, 1-3 December 2009, http://gilbaneboston.com. Information about our newsletter, reports, white papers, case studies, and blogs is available at https://gilbane.com. Follow Gilbane Group on Twitter at http://twitter.com/gilbane.
Contact:
Gilbane Group, Inc.
Ralph Marto, +1.617.497.0443 xt 117
ralph@gilbane.com
There are few people who have not heard of SharePoint, but understanding what SharePoint has to offer is another story. The best way to understand SharePoint is to use it. This series of posts will provide an overview of the product, and explains how a non techie can get started.
SharePoint is currently in its third incarnation (SharePoint 2007) and within 9 months Microsoft will be deploying the fourth version, “SharePoint 2010.” There are three distinct SKUs:
- WSS (Windows SharePoint Server)
– Comes with the Windows Server and is free. - MOSS (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server) Standard Edition
– An extension of WSS, and is licensed per server as well as per user. - MOSS (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server) Enterprise Edition
– An extension of the Standard Edition, and is licensed per server as well as per user.
It is also possible to buy a “Public Connector” for MOSS, which is a license that allows SharePoint to be used as a publicly facing site with no limit on the number of users .
Although Microsoft is trying to showcase SharePoint as an excellent platform to build publicly facing sites, there is general agreement that SharePoint is best used in a closed community where users must login. Microsoft touts SharePoint as a product that supports six pillars: (These pillars are about to be rebranded in SharePoint 2010, see SharePoint 2010 has new pillars.) The six pillars are:
- Collaboration
– Allowing members of a closed community to share documents, tasks, calendars, contacts, etc - Portal
– Providing a single web site that is the gateway to an organization’s web based functions. - Enterprise Search
– Competing with Google for the enterprise, - Web & Enterprise Content Management
– A publishing platform that allows for simple workflows among authors and editors. - Forms Driven Business Process
– Allows for easy development of electronic forms and associated automated workflows. - Business Intelligence
– Allows organization to build dashboards summarizing data that reside in disparate electronic repositories.
The original intent behind SharePoint was to empower business users to control their own destiny without being dependent on IT and Development staff. In the author’s experience, SharePoint often requires much more planning and maintenance than business users can provide. Thus one often finds that specially trained SharePoint IT and developer personnel are required to stand-up and support in-house SharePoint deployments.
Although still quite limited, it is now possible to lease robust versions of SharePoint that reside in the cloud and truly are managed without any hidden costs. This series of articles will summarize three services that were tried by the author:
- SharePoint Online – Part of the Microsoft Business Online Productivity Suite.
- Apps4rent – A robust SharePoint and Exchange online implementation.
- WebHost4Life – Similar to Apps4Rent’s SharePoint implementation with a non-Exchange email system.
The discussion will focus only on SharePoint. In all cases, the environments are WSS (Not MOSS) and are hosted in a joint tenancy model, meaning that you are sharing computing resources with other SharePoint sites. Although people will tell you there could be a number of reasons why this may be problematic, the author never experienced any issues due to joint tenancy. Microsoft does offer an expensive service in a dedicated environment. This service requires that a minimum of 5,000 user licenses are being leased.
Both Apps4rent and WebHost4Life have a simple model that is easy for an end user to understand. In contrast, the Microsoft environment is quite confusing with poor documentation. Both Apps4Rent and WebHost4Life offer immediate support with chat sessions, and the customer service staff was knowledgeable and helpful. Again, in contrast to this, Microsoft’s support was poor. Microsoft communicated via a secure email channel, responses took 4 to 6 hours, and the support personnel did not understand the product well…
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