Collaboration and Content Strategies Blog

SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 Officially Launch

Blogger: Craig Roth

The U.S. SharePoint launch was held yesterday morning at Saturday Night Live’s studio at 30 Rock, NY, NY. It was an appropriate location as they put on a good show that was webcast as it happened to many more locations (Tuesday Morning Live?).

We have a quite a few reports coming out on SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 so I won’t go through even a brief analysis here. There will be one each on the BPOS, portal, content management, social software, and security aspects of SharePoint from the Garter IT Practitioners (née Burton Group) analysts and much more from the classic Gartner analysts including a First Look. And one on co-authoring.

But I can say that 1) Microsoft is right about the tons of great enhancements they’ve made to SP2010 and 2) I’m hard pressed to find any of these enhancements that weren’t in competing products for years already. I know - but now it’s all in one package, or with a familiar UI information workers trust, or leverages the synergy of other aspects of the Office suite. Whether it is operational improvements (more ability to spread services across servers, sandboxing), content management (metadata-based policy management), social software (real wikis, social “wall”s), or co-authoring, one should ask anyone interested in them “if those features are so cool and useful why you didn’t pick them off the shelf from other vendors years ago”?

Still, SharePoint is growing up and that’s good for organizations of all sizes that are implementing it. Better stability, multi-tenancy, scaling architecture, automated compliance features, and reporting all point to a more mature environment. And having all these new features under a single umbrella means no separate business cases, ROI calculations, evaluations, and purchasing approvals that would prove difficult for cool services whose exact usage and value is difficult to predict.

I don’t think any vendor or product is capable of ushering in a new age of collaboration and productivity. Rather it is something that happens by fits and starts. The same technology needs to be re-wrapped and re-presented several times before it finally hits an audience that is receptive and ready to adopt it. This takes time and trial-and-error. Maybe SP 2010 will be that re-wrapping and re-packaging needed to capture the interest of frazzled information workers that need to collaborate. If so, it won’t be a killer feature of the new release, but resignation to the idea that it’s finally time to let go of e-mail, shared folders, and solo authoring and accept a new collaborative interaction model in its place.

A Lesson From Open Source: Make Time To Collaborate

Blogger: Larry Cannell

Earlier this week I was listening to the Drupalcon keynote “State of Drupal” presentation given by Dries Buytaert, project lead for the popular open source content management system. I wanted to hear Dries discuss any interesting new capabilities (Drupal providing the basis of WCM “distributions,” kind of like Linux distributions, is intriguing to think about) as well as project metrics (3,000 Drupalcon attendees, 6,700 add-on projects, some other big numbers). However, to me, neither of these were the most interesting parts of the presentation.

At one point in the presentation Dries said the following:

“The key message is, as we grow we need to stick to our core values and core culture…It's a culture of sharing and collaboration and it is absolutely key to everything that we do.”

He said this while showing the slide below:

Open source projects can be great examples of successful collaboration. Although it sounds simple, expecting your people to make time to collaborate (and to put it on their schedules), I think, is a big deal. Many executives have outlined, in some form, the same challenges (we are growing, stick to our culture, collaborate). However, I suspect far fewer of them took it the step further and told their people to put collaboration on their schedules.

When was the last time you reserved time on your calendar to collaborate? Outside of meetings (where someone else reserved time on your calendar) have your ever reserved time to collaborate?

Volcanoes and Web Conferencing

I never thought I would be saying this, but volcanoes are a good use case scenario for web conferencing.

The eruption of ash from Eyjafjallajökul in Iceland is shutting down air travel and driving travelers to alternatives. For businesses, there are potential negative impacts if the appropriate meetings and conversations are unable to happen. Hence, web conferencing to the rescue. In the past, major events that have impacted travel spurred interest in web conferencing. The good news for businesses today is that there are a plethora of choices for web conferencing solutions and many of them are in place in the organization already.

From a technical point-of-view, web conferencing has steadily improved and, generally, has become more intuitive, fast, and feature-rich.

Most enterprises already have two or more web conferencing solutions implemented within the organization. It is not uncommon for the enterprise to have software-as-a-service (SaaS) web conferencing contract in place (usually purchased by the marketing department), as well an on-premise solution that is part of a larger collaboration platform.

The major vendors for web conferencing all offer SaaS and on-premise solutions – Adobe, Cisco, IBM, and Microsoft – but, you need to be wary of differences in features and capabilities and map those to your use cases.

So, while the volcano blows, fire up your web conferencing.

White House Forum and Report on “Workplace Flexibility”

Blogger: Larry Cannell

Yesterday’s White House forum on workplace flexibility offered a good opportunity to see how our notion of “workplace” has been evolving. In addition, a report entitled “WORK-LIFE BALANCE AND THE ECONOMICS OF WORKPLACE FLEXIBILITY” was also issued by the White House. It highlights why workplace flexibility is needed and how “many employers have adapted to the changing realities of American workers.”

Stewart Friedman, who attended the forum, posted these interesting observations:

“More than any particular policy initiative or new program announcement, yesterday's session at the White House was a symbolic moment that signified, at last, a new era in which we are really talking and thinking differently about work and its relationship with the rest of our lives. The First Couple, relaxed and confident in their choices, spoke candidly about the difficulties they have faced in cultivating a successful marriage and family while pursuing careers about which they feel passionate.”

Social Sharing, E-mail, and Web Analytics

Blogger: Larry Cannell

This week I had an interesting conversation with Tynt, a company that provides a unique method of measuring what people find interesting on websites. In a recent blog post Derek Ball, the CEO of Tynt, contradicted statements made by TechCrunch, which essentially said FaceBook was the most popular method people use to share information found on the web. Based on data gathered by Tynt’s service Ball concluded:

“Clearly, e-mail is by far and away the largest source of social sharing.”

Tynt Insight » Sorry TechCrunch – FaceBook is NOT the Biggest Driver of Social Sharing on the Web! (Its e-mail at 70%)

Based on Tynt’s data, for every one person clicking a “Share This” button (to post a snippet on a social networking site like Facebook) 50 people (!!) grab content using copy/paste. A significant number of these copied pieces of content are shared via e-mail. The chart below from Tynt shows the breakdown of how people share information gleaned from a webpage:

But this only gives a partial picture. Just how effective are these links at generating visits back to the originating site?

While content shared via e-mail appears to be less effective at generating clicks back to a site (probably because it is being sent to and read by fewer people), it still drives almost half of the resulting visits.

Beyond these observations regarding the use of social media versus e-mail, I find the technology behind this fascinating. Like many web analytic products, Tynt’s approach involves embedding Javascript into a web page. Javascript is used to infer or sense what a user is doing and communicate this data back to a central analytics server. By tracking which links are clicked and where the user moves their mouse, an analytics solution infers what the user finds most interesting or engaging on a web page.

However, Tynt’s approach is different. They have discovered ways to hook into a browser’s copy/paste mechanisms. By doing so they can track what pieces of content are most engaging (because the user was compelled to copy them) and can also modify the text placed into the paste buffer. These text modifications enable Tynt to rewrite links to be redirected through a central server so clicks on these links can be tracked, as well as embedding other text to encourage the link to the clicked. For a simple example, this is how a Gmail composition window looked when I copied/pasted text from Ball’s blog post reference above (note the addition of “Read more”):

It will be interesting to see what opportunities these copy/paste hooks might enable and how the web analytics market responds to this deeper perspective on user behavior.

The Whole of the Data

Blogger: Larry Cannell

If you haven’t seen it yet, I recommend watching this video of Gary Flake’s presentation at TED, where he talks about new ideas for dealing with the overwhelming amount of information in our lives.

Flake, a Technical Fellow at Microsoft Live Labs, starts out with this introduction:

“The whole of the data, in which we consume, is greater than the sum of its parts. Instead of thinking about information overload, what I'd like you to think about is how we can use information so that patterns pop and we can see trends that would otherwise be invisible."

This perspective is similar to what Craig Roth recently said about the assumptions we make regarding information overload.

“Can't questioning a few overly used assumptions yield some new avenues of exploration?  If one assumes that information overload is within the realm of consciousness and under rational control, different solutions can apply.”

After watching the video (which visualizes mortality rates, magazine covers and Wikipedia pages) think about the overwhelming amount of information that exists just within your enterprise. This is information only you have and, as a result, can be the genesis of insight that helps separate you from competitors, if only you could tap into it.

In other words, instead of just “managing” documents and databases, what if we could work past existing assumptions and envision how information might be used to create competitive advantage (e.g., resulting in new products, entering new markets, or lowering costs). To start with, imagine being able to help knowledge workers explore and visualize information in ways that are relevant to them, instead of forcing them to fetch information on a system-by-system basis and then putting the pieces together themselves. For example, an engineer surfing through information about product programs (regardless of where this information comes from, be it a content management system, e-mail, a warranty claims system, or a bill of materials application) or a purchasing agent getting a complete picture of suppliers that provide a particular type of component.

We will be covering this perspective on information in a track called “Leveraging Information to Gain Insight” at this year’s Catalyst Conferences in Prague and San Diego.

By the way, Pivot is available as a Windows desktop application, so you can start experiencing what it is like to explore data now. More information is on the Pivot website.

SaaS E-mail Presentation at Interop

Blogger: Bill Pray

I will be presenting at Interop in “Lost Wages” next month:

Interop Las Vegas
April 25-29, 2010
Mandalay Bay Convention Center
www.interop.com

Conference: Enterprise 2.0 Track

http://www.interop.com/lasvegas/conference/enterprise-20.php

Wednesday, April 28

2:00 PM–3:00 PM

The Amazing SaaS E-Mail Race

Major vendors are racing to build out viable, enterprise-class, software-as-a-service (SaaS) e-mail solutions. For IT, e-mail is only conspicuous in when it is absent, so treating e-mail as an utility and managing it for maximum uptime is IT’s mantra. Therefore, the opportunity to offload e-mail to reliable service is very attractive because of the management and economic benefits.

Speaker - Bill Pray, Analyst, Collaboration and Content Strategies, Burton Group

Elliott/Novell: What Might Happen to GroupWise?

Blogger: Bill Pray

The bid by Elliott for Novell has lead to speculation on what may happen should the buyout be successful. Blogs from Drue Reeves (Novell Going Private?) and Richard Jones (Elliott/Novell: Implications on SUSE) have highlighted their observations. Having been a former Novell employee and product manager for GroupWise, I want to take the opportunity to add my observations on what might happen to Novell’s communications and collaboration technologies should the buyout occur.

GroupWise has been a solid, mature, feature rich, enterprise solution for many years. However, over the past few years GroupWise has seen a decline in market share. GroupWise has trailed the leading vendors (IBM and Microsoft) in development of functionality. Novell has increasingly relied on partnerships to provide new functionality such as mobile access, business application integration, and team workspaces (eventually acquiring the technology). Given Novell’s investment in and the current state of GroupWise, it is likely that it would be sold off to a partner.  GWAVA or Messaging Architects are the leading candidates. These partners have the capability to take the technology and run with it as a vertically focused alternative to the bigger vendors.

Novell also has the Teaming solution (technology acquired through the acquisition of Sitescape) and the recently announced Pulse that might of interest to a variety of vendors.

Adobe is one of those vendors. Adobe continues to push into the collaboration market and might be interested in Novell’s communication and collaboration technologies and the loyal customer base. Adobe has a solid web conferencing solution and is diving into the software-as-a-service productivity suite market, but does not have e-mail yet. GroupWise has had success in the state/local government and health care verticals – which are also strong verticals for Adobe.

Novell’s solutions are weak in their support for the SaaS delivery model (except maybe Pulse when it is available), but Rackspace might also be interested in expanding their solution set with Novell’s collaboration technologies and taking them to a SaaS or managed service delivery model.

In sum, despite being viewed as an “also ran” in the communications and collaboration market by some, I believe Elliott is correct in its bet that there is significant value in the various Novell technologies and they will be of interest to several other vendors.

Google Re-Launches Apps Marketplace

Blogger: Larry Cannell

Last night Google announced the launch of their marketplace for Google Apps. Actually, this should probably be considered a re-launch. Google has long featured partners building on their enterprise products (Google Apps and the Google Search Appliance) and as recently as 2008 launched a “Solutions Marketplace” site (checkout this page from the Wayback Machine). However, this re-launch seems to be a more concerted effort aiming to make it easier to find partners and providing new capabilities for integrating these products within the Google Apps environment (for example, using OpenID to provide cross-app single sign-on).

From a collaboration and content management perspective a renewed marketplace effort which brings in new partners could bear some fruit and be an interesting development to watch. For example, by partnering with companies like Box.net, which announced a number of integrations with Google Apps, Google is able to connect users with companies that have experience supporting the diverse needs of team (or activity-based) collaboration that go beyond document sharing.

Box’s ability to create, edit, and view Google documents and spreadsheets facilitates an interesting layered approach to processes involving different levels of worker engagement. A lightweight layer where someone can simply edit a Google document or spreadsheet (which could be used to submit information) and a slightly beefier layer that enables more comprehensive collaboration (which could be used by a team that needs to make decisions or execute processes based on this input). Similar approaches have been taken in the past to enable lightweight process participation, but it is refreshing to see it emerge within a cloud-based environment as recognizable as Google Apps.

Google Buys DocVerse: Maybe This Collaborative Authoring Thing Finally Has Legs?

Blogger: Craig Roth

This morning, Google announced it is buying a little company in San Francisco that enables real-time and asynchronous (offline) collaborative authoring of Microsoft Office docs called DocVerse.  The founders of DocVerse are actually ex-Microsoft product folks.

As I wrote back in September 2008, I believe collaborative authoring is one of the top five trends for next generation authoring.  The increase in technological solutions to the challenges of dealing with multiple authors has continued since then, with many approaches to different aspects of the problem.

First, we've seen responses from the big guys.

• Microsoft: Office 2010 provides a slew of simultaneous editing features (i.e., multiple cursors typing in different positions of the same document), some in conjunction with SharePoint 2010.  Simultaneous editing was already in OneNote, but since that product is mostly relegated to simple note-taking status by all but a few aficionados, having it in Word, PowerPoint, and Excel is hitting the big time.
• Google: Google Docs allows multiple users to edit the same document in their own format, although in January they added the ability to share any file type (not with simultaneous editing).

To figure out who has the best answer requires knowing the problem you're trying to solve.  The term "co-authoring" is vague and doesn't specify what aspects of multiple authors are being addressed.  Is it:

• Check-in, check-out, and versioning:  The most basic functionality required by multiple asynchronous authors is the ability to tag a document as "checked out" and file it back in later.  Document management systems, collaborative workspaces, and source code control systems have provided this functionality for a long time.  Let's skip right past this category.
• Review and Commenting: Often there is one document owner who writes most of the content and has primary responsibility for the finished product, but many reviewers whose input needs to be managed.  Microsoft has promised to allow multiple reviewers to comment up a "single version of truth" document, which would solve many hassles involved with emailing documents around and merging changes.  Other vendors such as TextFlow and Backboard have taken stabs at managing the review process.  Managing the process (verifying reviewers have been heard from, that all comments have been addressed, etc.) is still not directly addressed and provides a more difficult procedural and cultural hurdle than technically figuring out how to merge comments.
• Simultaneous authoring: Students in classes that want to contribute to a single document of notes during a class have used SubEthaEdit, a basic text editor that has been around for quite a while and allows co-authoring with multiple cursors in documents. Zoho allows this too.
• Componentized authoring and content reuse: Except for shared note taking and intensive review sessions, simultaneous authoring is not very useful.  What is more common is divvying up pieces of a deliverable to multiple authors for final assembly by a chief editor.  This may involve assigning sections of a presentation deck to a series of authors or dividing a Word document into sections or chapters for members of a team to work on.  High end document creators use XML authoring software such as Altova XMLSpy, Arbortext Editor, BroadVision QuickSilver, JustSystems XMetaL, PTC Arbortext and, Stylus Studio. But a large swath of non-professional authors need easier, less-expensive tools.  One example is Vasont which manages content components as collections, particularly for translation projects.  This problem requires fundamentally different tooling than the set provided by Office 2010 or Google/DocVerse.  It's less whiz-bang than seeing a demo with multiple people typing away with different colored cursors and arrows to their locations in a document, but I think attention on componentized authoring would yield higher productivity for organizations than simultaneous authoring.

As far as I'm concerned, this purchase is not a big deal yet until it yields some fruit in the unknown future.  And I'd rather see an emphasis on helping authors to componentize and reuse content rather than worry about how to handle about them typing over each other's cursors.