Collaboration and Content Strategies Blog

Quick Summary Of Client Meetings At Catalyst

Blogger: Mike Gotta

Just a quick summary of my client meetings during our Catalyst event. Due to my speaking schedule and my role as a track moderator, I was available on one of the three days for onsite discussions. But, what a day ... 14 meetings, 30 minutes each - so 7 hours. Here's the quick overview of my impressions:

• Every meeting involved a Microsoft product
• 2 of the sessions involved OCS
• 12 of the sessions involved SharePoint (re: social computing)
• Of those 12
  • 2 were “happy” (happy as defined by either (a) the capabilities matched the awareness of such tools by their end-users and/or (b) a belief that the social software tools would improve in the next release and that the platform approach was best in the long run
  • 10 were not-so-happy (with the social computing aspects of SharePoint, not with SharePoint overall)
• 10 had seemingly reached a point where they felt they should look beyond what SharePoint offers out-of-the-box, via Codeplex and  through customization - and explore where partner solutions can augment current capabilities, fill in gaps, or replace weak capabilities (e.g., SharePoints wiki which one person agreed with the metaphor “it’s not really a wiki, it’s more like a rich page editor”).
• Many of those 10 were most open to NewsGator, Telligent, and Atlassian. 
• Jive was viewed as the most credible “mini suite vendor” with a viable alternative for shops that wanted a cleaner and more explicit separation from SharePoint. The reasoning was based on a pro/con of managing and coordinating multiple vendors that extended SharePoint and the longevity of the integration model as the next version of SharePoint matures to some extent. Jive, although more architecturally opposed to SharePoint (e.g., Java, etc) seems attractive because of an all-in-one platform, compelling user experience and perception that it is more modern re: Web 2.0 / Enterprise 2.0. (Note: That said, Jive still is missing certain functional areas such as feed syndication so vendors like Attensa and NewsGator are still needed.)
• IBM Lotus Connections came up in a few of the conversations but unless the client already had WebSphere Portal or Notes/Domino, there seems to be some hesitancy to rekindle past wars over e-mail and collaboration – not really a Connections critique at all, but more of an IBM/Lotus vs. Microsoft debate. 
• Most of those 10 also seemed to be in various stages of disappointment with (1) the functionality of its social software (2) the long lapses between releases and (3) uncertainty that things will get dramatically better in the next version (Note: Those familiar with Microsoft’s internal effort called “TownSquare” were more optimistic and would like that solution now – although it is unclear whether that solution will be in the next release).
• Only one session did a client actually seem intrigued with Codeplex and that was only after I explained the best way to look at it (e.g., not as a Microsoft product but as something that is better than building it internally since virtually all shops customize SharePoint anyways). If you set expectations correctly, it can be a decent option. (Note: Microsoft should really support these extensions – or they need to go back to feature/function upgrades via service packs - people are getting very grumpy over the three year release cycle that, when it does come out, delivers functionality that is behind where the bar has now been set). 
• The two OCS meetings were much more positive – one client seemed to be at a 12K deployment level (the largest I have found “in the wild”) although there are concerns often regarding interoperability with PBX vendors (especially when it comes to rich presence) and the overall maturity of the platform.

That's it ... back to writing my reference architecture template on social network sites.

Second Life Avatars Teleport, But the Virtual Moving Truck Stays Behind

Blogger: Craig Roth

In "Avatars Teleport Away From Second Life", Don Clark of the WSJ's "Business Technology" blog described how an experiment to teleport an avatar out of Second Life into another world (based on an IBM implementation of the open source OpenSimulator project) was successful.  It's worth noting that this was from one test grid to another and only involved the avatar, not any items, script, or currency.

To me, this is a nice stunt.  It gets attention for its sci-fi undertones, but doesn't address the real barriers to mobility in virtual worlds, nor does it do much to address disgruntled Second Life residents.  From a technical point of view, if someone knows the data structures that define an avatar in Second Life, and knows the same structures in OpenSim (which is open source and publicly available), it should just be a relatively simple matter of programming to enact a transformation, transmission, create (on OpenSim), and delete (in Second Life).  That also assumes the two structures are compatible, which they apparently aren't entirely since clothing doesn't transfer (The Terminator got it right 25 years in advance!).

Clearly the problem to be solved is not technological.  It is a morass of issues such as:

• Legal: How can intellectual property be protected when it can be infinitely copied and transferred (like with unprotected digital music and movies)?
• Business: Does openness or proprietary lock-in provide a better business model?
• Economic: If worlds have different ease and cost of content creation and pricing, how will virtual arbitrage impact the fortunes of residents and the business models of the content creators?
• Design and development: If each world has to support a lowest common denominator for items and avatars, how will metaverses differentiate themselves and incrementally improve?

These issues can all be addressed over time.  For example, maybe the business issues can be handled by charging a fee to travel from one metaverse to the other, just like flying from Chicago to Salt Lake City (two very different worlds) today cost me $600.

For residents of Second Life who are developing content they want to protect and extend, the philosophical issues don't matter.  What matters is whether Linden Lab will push this forward.  According to the company, "Linden Lab sees interoperability as essential for virtual worlds to reach their full potential." But about when this will be possible for regular residents they say "We don’t know exactly. We’re working toward that goal but we’re still very much in the experimental phase."

Clearly the "virtual movers" scenario I depicted in my Enterprise3 conference presentation on Enterprise Virtual worlds (see slide below) is still too far off.

 

SaaS Survey Results Announced

Blogger: Craig Roth

Everyone seems to be talking about SaaS and its potential benefits and risks.  But what are companies really doing with it and what can anyone thinking of deploying SaaS learn from the actual implementations over the past 3 years?  We partnered with Ziff Davis Enterprise to conduct a study to find the answer to this question.  In April, 2008, Burton Group and Ziff Davis Enterprise conducted a study of 318 organizations in the U.S. and Canada. 

We found that the most common use of SaaS, at about 25% of organizations, was web conferencing.  This is no surprise since web conferencing requires little setup, minimal integration with a company's directory or data stores, and the web conferencing vendor doesn't store much of your data so information security risks are low.  Still, Salesforce.com seems to have won over information security fears as CRM showed up as #2 on the list.  The good news for some applications lower on the list is that they are due to double in SaaS market share (the dark blue "plan to use" bar is about the same as the light blue current users).  Collaboration and content management seem to have great SaaS potential since, not only are they due to double, but penetration of installed versions of this software (the green bar) demonstrates this is an important category for users.

 

While SaaS implementations generally went as planned (about 3 months), there were twice as many bad surprises as good ones.  The chart below shows how long the SaaS implementation took compared to expectations.  The issue is then how to stay out of the red and orange parts of this chart - to implement SaaS in a way that it can meet expectations. 

Our survey delved more into what the expectations were, where companies tended to spend the most time, and how contractual changes were used to mitigate risk.  I won't describe all of that here or you'd be scrolling down quite a lot in this blog and I'll be writing a full report on this that will be out in late August or early September.  But I do want to show some interesting results around what controls organizations put around their SaaS implementations.  While contractual terms can be used to help mitigate the risk of the vendor not doing what it is supposed to, there are also tasks in the hands of the implementer.  For example, it's up to you (the implementer) to do disaster recovery and continuity planning.  For conventionally licensed software practically every major installation has some backup and continuity plans, but only 54% of SaaS users had the same plans (see chart below for percentage of SaaS implementations with necessary controls).  Likewise, while about 70% of major installed systems have defined a provisioning process, only 45% of SaaS systems have done so. 

 

In summary, I'd say that while SaaS has proven to be a positive experience for organizations that are using it and can offer financial benefits that have justified the few negative incidents that have occurred, maturity in how organizations approach SaaS is still lagging.  Using SaaS instead of conventional software doesn't eliminate the need for common sense in planning, setting expectations, implementing controls, and insisting on contractual protections where possible.

Those are just a few of the findings we announced at Catalyst.  You can read more in the July issue of Baseline Magazine and in an upcoming overview from the Burton Group in late August or early September.

Hosted Collaboration Services and the Fourth Amendment

Blogger: Bill Pray

A recent court decision in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has some interesting implications for organizations using or planning on using a third party for collaboration services.

First, a quick introduction: My name is Bill Pray. I recently joined the Collaboration and Content Strategies team as an analyst. I come from the product management ranks of LexisNexis and Novell.

Given that this blog is about a court decision, I want to caveat my comments by saying that I am not an attorney. Organizations should consult with their own legal counsel about this court decision and the possible impacts.

The decision in Quon vs. Arch Wireless, published in June, addresses the privacy rights of employees when the employer utilizes a third party collaboration service. Specifically, the court held that the employees’ text messages were protected from being accessed without their consent by their employer, even though the paging service was contracted and paid for by their employer. The Fourth Amendment protects the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.”

Even though this particular case is about text messaging, it is likely that it sets a precedent that can be applied to e-mail and other forms of hosted collaboration.

While the political impacts of this decision are significant for privacy advocates, I want to focus on three key points that surface in this court decision that are important for hosted collaboration services. An organization that uses or plans on using a third party SaaS solution for collaboration should consider:

1. You need to determine if your service provider is a “remote computing service” (RCS) or an “electronic communications service” (ECS) as defined by the Stored Communications Act of 1986.

If your service provider stores information for your organization as a defined part of the service for your future use and access, then they are likely to be defined as a RCS, and the Fourth Amendment privacy protections may not apply - based on the reasoning in this court decision.

However, if your service provider is an ECS - meaning that they act as channel for the electronic communication for the users, but do not provide services to the subscriber to store the data for future use and access - the users may have Fourth Amendment privacy protection.

Knowing if your provider is a RCS or an ECS is important to insuring that you picked a provider that will match with your communication content governance strategy. It all comes down to answering the question: Do you want to own and be legally responsible for the data? If the answer is no, then choose an ECS for your provider.

2. The court decision states "The recently minted standard of electronic communication via e-mails, text messages, and other means opens a new frontier in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence that has been little explored."

I completely agree that hosted collaboration is largely unexplored legal territory. We will continue to see cases flowing through the judicial system regarding hosted collaboration and privacy. This is part of the normal process of technological development and legal evolution.

The emergence of the cases should not be deterrent to organizations, but rather a part of the process. It is why organizations should invest in legal counsel to protect their interests when making technology decisions.

3. Perhaps the least surprising key point of this case is that policy and “operational reality” must match or the policy is moot. Even though the employer in this case had a written and communicated policy - communications by the employees using services or equipment paid for by the employer were subject to review and access by the department - the “operational reality” did not conform to the policy.

Frequently, organizations pay the penalty when their policies are not the realities of operation. When implementing hosted collaboration, organizations must verify that policies are also practices.

Setting the politics of individual privacy aside, the impact of this court decision depends upon the organization’s desired governance of the communications handled by their third party SaaS.

If the organization wants to divest itself of the legal responsibility for the content of the communications - and there are several advantages to doing this - then seek out an ECS and make sure your policies and “operation realities” clearly indicate that the organization is not responsible for the content. This potentially will make the ECS the primary responsible party and free the organization from some of the legal responsibilities associated with the “privacy” of the communications content.

If the organization wants to maintain control and “at will” access to the content of the communications, then use a RCS and establish policies and “operational realities” that grant the organization access to the content.

 

I anticipate more court decisions over the next several years will continue to define the legal responsibilities of the users, subscribers, and providers of hosted collaboration. Needless to say, it will be well worth monitoring.

For Social Networks To Go Big, They Need To Go Small

Blogger: Mike Gotta

The article below provides a good overview of one way to look at distributed social networks. I have become a fan of microformats (e.g., hCard, XFN – some deeper insight here) and how they create “social network fragments” that other systems (perhaps using Google’s Social Graph API) can leverage by aggregating such fragments into a representation of someone’s social network or even a stream of a their activities (example here). There are also interesting synergies between XFN and identity (for more, check out this article Identity consolidation with the XFN rel="me" value) and and between XFN and FOAF.

After you think about some of the concepts outlined in the article, ask your “favorite enterprise vendor” where they stand on some of the following technology trends: microformats (especially hCard and XFN), FOAF, Apache Shindig (which leverages OpenSocial), Project SocialSite (sponsored by Sun) and related initiatives such as Google’s Social Graph API. Try not to be too disappointed by their replies - many vendors struggle to look beyond their own marketing efforts and product roadmaps.

In any case - the article below remains a good read...

The New Social Networking

The Distributed Social Network—or DSN—is the idea of bringing together disparate user information easily and interoperably between social services. It’s often used synonymously with ‘Portable Social Network’, which is a term more focused on moving data between services.

The motivation of DSN is not about being able to ‘dump’ social networks for others. This isn’t about being able to effortlessly quit Facebook and join Bebo. The motivation is to let people use different services with less effort—being able to get set and running with Dopplr and Flickr without having to find friends and contacts by hand every time.

This technology is about surfacing information which is already published. User names, profiles, and contact lists are already out there, buried in HTML. No user is being asked to expose themselves any more than they are; what we’re doing is to make that public information consumable in a consistent manner, to create a better user experience across sites.

Digital Web Magazine - Portable Social Networks, The Building Blocks Of A Social Web

Enterprise 2.0: Oracle & BEA Webcast

Blogger: Mike Gotta

After the commentary, you will find a collection of links to different resources that provide additional information on Oracle's recent webcast regarding the BEA acquisition and Oracle's Enterprise 2.0 effort.

Webcast Notes

On Tuesday (7/1/08), Oracle provided an in-depth overview that provided insight regarding alignment, integration, and convergence of BEA and Oracle products into a common middleware solution. While I was mostly interested in the information provided on collaboration and social computing, I found some of the over-arching messages very important since that context established the lens through which you should judge what Oracle is offering to the market (e.g., Enterprise 2.0).

• First, I thought Thomas Kurian did an outstanding job of presenting the information in a manner that held my attention throughout the webcast. It was very detailed but not to the extent where you were lost overall.
• It was clear from the outset of the webcast that the notion of platform consistency is the foundation for everything Oracle is doing. In fact, "foundation" was perhaps a key sense conveyed throughout the session.
• Investment protection was another key take-away for those listening to the webcast. There was no rip-and-replace discussion.
• Unification and convergence were other words used frequently.
• Other key words that were repeated quite often: "complete", "pre-integrated", "standards-based", and "hot-pluggable". A paraphrased quote that might be revealing to keep in mind: "Install together, upgrade together, deploy together"
• Oracle views E2.0 as communication medium that is multi-channel - you can run composite UI on mobile, browser, PDA or other styles of devices - by composite UI Oracle sees a convergence of application styles:
  • when building rich media web site or building transactional application or building traditional portal or when building social computing site (portal with embedded communities) you had to pick different framework and tool set
  • key value proposition of Oracle is to leverage a single programming model to develop all four application styles (i.e., rich media style or traditional transactional application style or traditional enterprise portal style or a social computing style (e.g., communities)
  • Oracle's E2.0 plan is to unify the programming model for all of these patterns
• Oracle also views Enterprise 2.0 as a transformation in the way that people share information. Consider traditional scenarios: a business person runs a BI report (sales report), they want to share the report, today they use e-mail which leads to version problems, data inconsistency, search challenges etc. But Now, with Oracle's E2.0 foundation, that business person puts the document into the ECM system where it becomes secure, managed and searchable - they can make the report available within a workspace (that leverages the ECM system) and then RSS feeds can help get the information to subscribers. People can then interact around the document (chat, discussion forums, presence, VoIP) and when the interaction is complete, the document can be tagged/bookmarked where a tag cloud can help people find the information.
• For Oracle, the notion of "portal" is evolving (1) continued integration of web publishing, transactional applications and community and (2) evolving into integration of forums, wikis, blogs, rss, communities - portals are becoming a platform for richer communication
• Oracle is evolving its middleware to embrace E2.0 and "NextGen Portal" (think "Portal 2.0".
  • portals abstract all systems accessing through standard interface (implemented via JSR168, Web Service Remoting like WSRP or REST/HTTP)
  • portals have basic content management and search
  • portals provide the assembly and development environment 
  • portals expose data binding into all types of standard interfaces
• Everything goes though the portal layer.
• BEA AquaLogic User Interaction satisfied a more social style of portal where communities evolved. That will converge with WebCenter Suite. Customers will leverage WebCenter (e.g., content management, search, E2.0, integration with packaged applications, and BI). Pathways has a bright future. Oracle sees it as integral to user interaction with portal as it examines people's interaction patterns and will be able to personalize what people see based on how those interaction patterns are correlated to other activities  interaction and perhaps sets the ground for Oracle's network analysis of social patterns.
• Enterprise 2.0 slides:

Source: screen capture of Oracle webcast

First Reaction

Based on this webcast, I would categorize what Oracle is doing as "Portal 2.0" rather than "Enterprise 2.0". If you look back on some of the key points made during the webcast:

• An argument Oracle makes implicitly: what Oracle is doing represents a very robust, technically engineered middleware that is modular and standards-based as well as open - you can choose Oracle middleware alongside different products from other vendors ... Oracle and non-Oracle app servers, databases, etc.
• The argument continues but is more subtle on these points: This represents a single integrated toolset - you do not need to pick different tools and switch back-and-forth all the time - productivity win - yes we support multiple tools, multiple products, etc - but we don't think you need to do that - you are better off with a single, unified environment.
• So when you talk about E2.0 - it's about an Oracle stack and one that follows a portal and MVC (model view controller) interaction style. Note: in the block architectural diagram below, there is no Enterprise 2.0 component

Source: screen capture of Oracle webcast

Some of the examples cited during the webcast are more closely related to concepts put forth when the industry discussed the notion of "contextual collaboration" (circa 1999 through today - it is still a very relevant concept). The embedding of the collaborative services within the context of an application is not new. There are certain functional activities related to communication, information sharing and collaboration that can be correlated to the processing of certain tasks and process activities. That type of "directed" interaction is not really the foundation for E2.0 which is more about the use of social software for emergent collaboration.

What You Should Expect

Organizations can expect Oracle to push hard on the concept of a single interaction platform built for the enterprise that spans just not social computing but all the application patterns it sees (system, human, document, decision). Oracle will pitch convergence of

Content Management

• Document management, content publishing, collaborative content creation, content approval, security/audit/compliance, and information lifecycle management

Internet/Intranet Web Presence

• Website creation, portlet creation/orchestration, single sign-on, multi-channel delivery (mobile etc), secure search

Community/Social Collaboration

• Teams and individual expertise
• Project productivity
• Mashups
• Team collaboration
• Web 2.0 "stuff"
• Desktop integration

Composite Applications

• SOA processes
• Integrated development
• Component assembly/orchestration
• Process portals
• Custom and packaged enterprise applications
• Alerts

And roll all of this into an "Oracle Enterprise 2.0" umbrella.

Summary

Some key points came to mind immediately after viewing:

• Please do not confuse how Oracle defines the term Enterprise 2.0 with how the rest of the industry is using Enterprise 2.0. If you want to call this Portal 2.0  that might fit better.
• I think Oracle is close to getting it right but really needs to understand the free-form and emergence aspects of E2.0 - right now, this comes across as a solution that is not really aligned with the cultural dynamics around E2.0.
• There also needs to be a better job done at the ecosystem around the platform. Yes, this was about Oracle and BEA - but some of the messages here seemed to imply that "third party vendors need not apply" (or if you do so, do it at your own risk because we view you as tactical) - if you are a best-of-breed vendor specializing in the E2.0 space, I'm not sure I saw the long-term business model laid out during this webcast.
• I saw nothing to convince me this is relevant to the external social media efforts of large organizations. The social networking insight was also weak - although again, this was an Oracle/BEA alignment so I did not expect it to be addressed in that context. There were some hints re: Pathways.

Overall, the Oracle position revealed so far leads me to believe that this webcast reflects a message that is more about an Oracle brand and marketing program that leverages the Enterprise 2.0 meme than a deep understanding of the tooling and organizational dynamics associated with E2.0:

• It is a very centralized and portal-centric view - missing was much information on how Oracle's version of Enterprise 2.0 aligns with some of the information it has shared on its "Beehive" collaboration project. In fact, there was actually little insight as to how Oracle will resolve the overlap in its portfolio related to blogs and wikis, or where Oracle Collaboration Suite fits (or does not).
• Also, I did not hear Oracle talk about the concept of "emergence" or some of the other key concepts discussed within the E2.0 community. Yes, the platform approach discussed by Oracle does allow for "patterns and structure inherent in people's interactions become visible" and for “contributions and interactions are globally visible and persistent over time" but the context was always about more structured and directed interactions. So I am not convinced Oracle (based on what information has been shared so far) fully comprehends the social dynamics of what E2.0 is all about.
• That said, Oracle's jump into the E2.0 competitive landscape will clearly position it against Microsoft and IBM. In some ways, the application integration offers Oracle a means to competitively differentiate itself from other platform vendors (IBM, Microsoft).
• Oracle is over-reaching however when it tries to jam so much into an E2.0 message (document capture and imaging?!) that smaller vendors such as Jive might be able to attract Oracle customers by touting its agility and ability to integrate with external consumer sites and deploy external-facing solutions for social computing.

This confusion over directed vs. volunteered participation reminds me of an earlier post on social software which I strongly recommend people read through again (or for the first time).

RESOURCE LIST

BEA Welcome and Oracle's Middleware Strategy Briefing

The BEA Welcome and Middleware Strategy Briefing is now available on demand. Learn more about Oracle Fusion Middleware and the important role BEA's products will play.

Recorded Tuesday, July 1, 2008
9:00 a.m. PT / 12:00 noon ET

Click here to view the webcast via RealPlayer.

Watch Oracle executives Charles Phillips, President, and Thomas Kurian, Senior Vice President, give an informative briefing on how the addition of BEA products to Oracle Fusion Middleware creates a best-in-class combination, advances a common vision, and reinforces Oracle's middleware strategy.

Events Overview

Enterprise 2.0: User Interaction & Portals

Oracle delivers the industry's only complete, open, and manageable portfolio of user interaction and portal products including Oracle WebCenter Suite (which includes WebCenter Interaction, formerly BEA AquaLogic User Interaction), Oracle WebCenter Services, Oracle WebLogic Portal, and Oracle Portal.

Oracle WebCenter Suite and Oracle WebCenter Services are Oracle's strategic solutions for developing Enterprise 2.0 enabled portals, composite, and web applications. Oracle WebCenter Suite is a comprehensive collection of user interaction components that can be used to create out-of-the-box enterprise portals and highly customized web-based applications. Oracle WebCenter Services enriches any standards-based Web interface with advanced Enterprise 2.0 user interaction services for community based interactions, web analytics, content management, and social networking.

Oracle plans to continue to develop and support Oracle WebLogic Portal and Oracle Portal, and expects to converge these products with Oracle's strategic solutions over time. Existing deployments of these products will benefit from complementary products such as Oracle WebCenter Services and Oracle Content Management.

Learn more about the role of Oracle WebCenter Suite and Oracle WebCenter Services in Oracle's middleware strategy.

Enterprise 2.0: User Interaction & Portals | Oracle Fusion Middleware

Oracle WebCenter Suite

Oracle WebCenter Suite is the industry's only complete, open, and manageable user interaction and portal platform that integrates Enterprise 2.0 capabilities into ad hoc and structured business processes, as well as custom and packaged enterprise applications. The suite includes components of Oracle WebCenter and Oracle WebCenter Interaction (formerly BEA AquaLogic User Interaction) and allows organizations to securely deliver Enterprise 2.0 services like wikis, discussion forums and RSS feeds through both out-of-the-box and customized portals. Oracle WebCenter Suite allows enterprises to enhance information worker productivity through a highly scalable, centrally managed platform that uses open standards to integrate with existing IT systems.

BENEFITS

• Complete—Comprehensive development framework and a rich set of Enterprise 2.0 services supports the creation of flexible and extensible portals and composite applications that meet the full range of business requirements
• Open—Support for industry standards and hot-pluggable compatibility with existing information systems extends the value of existing IT resources and skill sets and provides an open alternative to proprietary architectures
• Manageable—Centrally managed architecture seamlessly scales from workgroup to enterprise-wide deployment and is integrated with best in class web analytics and system management tools

WebCenter Suite | User Interaction | Oracle

WebCenter Services

Oracle WebCenter Services provides standards-based components that enrich existing portals and Web sites with the industry's most complete and open set of Enterprise 2.0 capabilities. These Enterprise 2.0 services are also available as part of Oracle WebCenter Suite and include community based interactions, online awareness and communications, content management, web analytics, and social networking. Oracle WebCenter Services enable organizations to use their current portals and web sites to empower their end users with Enterprises 2.0 services that work with their existing information systems.

BENEFITS

• Bring Enterprise 2.0 to your existing portals—Provides componentized services such as wikis, blogs, discussions, RSS feeds, virtual content repository, web usage analytics, and contextual enterprise search

• Open Standards based—Support standards including JSR-168, JSR-170, WSRP, AJAX, REST, RSS and SIP

• Minimize disruption and risk—Integrated and secure services work with each other and with your existing IT systems

WebCenter Services | User Interaction | Oracle

Enterprise 2.0 Bootcamp - Oracle Wiki

July 28, 2008 | Oracle Conference Center, Redwood Shores, Calif.

Web 2.0 technologies and techniques like wikis, blogs, tagging, social networks and mashups are now enterprise-strength and being used by organizations to collaboratively work smarter. Leading companies are using these new technologies to grow revenues, spur innovation, and lower costs, but the overall impact on the organization needs to be well understood before embarking on the Enterprise 2.0 journey
Enterprise 2.0 Bootcamp is a free, interactive, 1-Day workshop for Oracle customers, partners, and users (and anyone else who wants to show up!) designed to educate attendees about the impact of Enterprise 2.0 on business today, in a highly participatory (unconference) format.
Have Enterprise 2.0 insight that you want to share? Come prepared to sign-up and lead an unconference session!
Topics can include:

• PR, Legal, Security, and Privacy
• Cultural Change
• Metrics and Measurement/ROI
• Internal Collaboration
• Outbound Marketing
• And more…

Enterprise 2.0 Bootcamp - Oracle Wiki

Web 2.0 Resource Library - Oracle Wiki

Make this wiki more valuable by adding your Web 2.0 insights, experiences and findings!

*Get started by clicking on the "Join This Wiki" button to set-up your profile.

Welcome to the Web 2.0 Resource Library. The intent of this wiki page is to give you direct access to a variety of useful information on the growing topic of Web 2.0…especially related to the enterprise.

To begin, we have included links to iSeminars, demonstrations, white papers and much more.

Web 2.0 Resource Library - Oracle Wiki

Fusion Reaction: Oracle Fusion Middleware Gets Additional Nucleus from BEA

Blogger: Craig Roth

I got a chance to talk to Oracle yesterday about how they plan to integrate the BEA middleware assets they picked up in their acquisition into their own middleware portfolio.  Oracle let it be known that - no surprise - Oracle strategy is constant and BEA integrates into it.  Fusion Middleware is the brand and it's all about Fusion in this integration strategy.  Dictionary.com defines fusion as "a nuclear reaction in which nuclei combine to form more massive nuclei with the simultaneous release of energy."  That seems to be what is happening at Oracle these days as the nucleus of Oracle and the nucleus of BEA (which had already combined with the nucleus from Plumtree) combine to form something pretty massive.  And there is certainly a lot of energy being released, so that definition certainly applies. 

Still, Oracle assures BEA customers that all products continue under "existing BEA support lifetimes", there's no forced migration, and license costs are grandfathered for existing customers. In fact, some support costs may come down since Oracle policy is to price support as a percentage of net price rather than list, but others could increase or decrease a bit since Tuxedo's pricing tiers get remapped to CPUs.

I won't comment much on development since that isn't my coverage area.  I will say that JDeveloper is still the flagship development platform for Oracle.  BEA Beehive is just in maintenance and Workshop is a freebie in the Eclipse Pack. 

And now, the answer to the portal conundrum I wrote about in my "Four Portals of the Apocalypse" posting when Oracle announced its intention to acquire BEA.  For portals, as expected, the winner is WebCenter.  It's not that the others are dead, but WebCenter is the "hot" product they want to talk about first, connect everything to, and anoint with all the cool, buzzword-compliant enhancements.  Users of the other portals (Oracle Portal, BEA WebLogic Portal, AquaLogic User Interaction aka Plumtree) need to figure out how soon a rewrite is going to be in their future since those products are in the "continue and converge" category (C&C).  A C&C portal will keep going forward for existing customers for quite a while (Thomas Kurian publicly stated the lifecycle would be about 9 years), but will not have new customers steered towards it and will eventually be merged into WebCenter. 

So, here's my recommended strategy based on which Oracle portal product you're using based on what I know so far. I’ve been told that more detailed migration plans will probably come out in 2-3 months:

• Oracle WebCenter: You lucky dog!  You picked the winner.  It's a rosy future for you, full of the best piece parts from other portal products, new Enterprise 2.0 functionality, and you'll meet lots of new friends at each annual WebCenter user's group meeting.  For a new portal project being planned, WebCenter is the only reasonable choice in the Oracle portfolio unless you're into planned obsolescence. 
• Oracle Portal or BEA WebLogic Portal: You're probably OK coasting along as is unless you fall into one of a few categories.  If you're really thinking of adding the newest functionality (Enterprise 2.0) and architectural standards (REST, RIA) you'll want to start thinking about migration soon, although Oracle intends to have some WebCenter services plug into WebLogic Portal, Oracle Portal, and ALUI to be leveragable without migrating.  And if you are in the rare situation of having a strategic portal with a long lifespan expected ahead of it (5+ years), you'll have to make a reminder for yourself in 2010 or so to start thinking about migration. 
• AquaLogic User Interaction: The picture for ALUI users is pretty similar to that of Oracle Portal and BEA WebLogic Portal – it’s in the C&C category so expect it to be supported for quite a while. Still, it’s my personal opinion that Oracle will have a harder time with ALUI since it will be chopped up into more pieces and there are lots of legacy installations with deep customization. Also, ALUI has a .NET side to its heritage. In the Plumtree days they had spent quite a bit of effort on building out .NET support. For example, the Enterprise Web Development Kit (EDK) could be installed with either a Java or .NET (C#) development and there was a .NET version of the EDK is available as a dynamic link library (DLL).  The .NET portlet creation capabilities are going to be rebranded as the Oracle WebCenter .Net Application Accelerator.

Oracle is rolling out a few new SKUs (packages) that will help portal owners. 

• WebCenter Services combines the WebCenter Framework with some Oracle pieces (BPEL Worklist, their portlet bridge and JSR 168 container) and sprinkles some ALUI and WebLogic Portal pieces in.  Ensemble is renamed Oracle Ensemble and put into services SKU and Analytics gets Oracle branding. 
• WebCenter Suite has everything in WebCenter services as well as restricted licenses for content, Oracle Presence, BPEL Process Manager, and search.  ALUI is renamed WebCenter Interaction and goes in the suite for now, although as of 11g there's nothing in ALUI that they'd recommend for new deployments. AL Collaboration is renamed WebCenter Collaboration and goes in the suite until they can roll out new collaboration in WebCenter 11g.

I was a fan of the BEA Pages and Pathways products, both of which will melt into Fusion Middleware.  Pages melts into the WebCenter Framework. It will be part of WebCenter Composer for users to create mashups and its wiki and blog capabilities go into WebCenter Services in the 11g timeframe.  Pathways melts into two separate places.  Its social search merges into secure enterprise search and the social tagging merges into the 11g foundation.

All in all, this roadmap is pretty complete and as good as owners of Oracle Portal or BEA WebLogic Portal could have hoped for.  Owners of complex, customized ALUI portals need to see the writing on the wall and plan to migrate to the new WebCenter model (method TBD by Oracle) or re-architect off the Oracle platform entirely.  But one more telling statement about nuclear fusion may shed light on Oracle's strategy of unifying all its pieces under the Fusion umbrella.  Wikipedia notes that "Artificial fusion in human enterprises has also been achieved, although not yet completely controlled." Ah, yes, how true.  We still have to see how well this bit of fusion winds up being under control over the next few years.