Collaboration and Content Strategies Blog

From Enterprise 2.0 Boston To Catalyst San Diego: Enterprise Social Networking Workshop

Blogger: Mike Gotta

Bill Ives (Portals and KM) provided a write-up of the workshop delivered in Boston last week. I've read his blog for some time as well and it was nice to meet Bill and many others in the E2.0 social circle at the conference. I'll get around to some thoughts on E2.0 event itself soon but wanted to share Bill's summary and remind folks that it's still not too late to sign-up for Burton Group's Catalyst conference in San Diego July 27-31. If you heard good things about the social networking workshop (described below), I will be repeating the session on Tuesday morning, July 28th (so why not register and attend?). If you heard less-than-good things about the workshop, then let me know so I can make corrections! Feedback is appreciated either way...

Social networking promises to address an array challenges and opportunities within the enterprise such as bridging generational shifts in the workforce, facilitating collaboration and community building, and supporting strategic talent initiatives. Despite these potential benefits, a number of organizations moving forward with enterprise social networking projects experience a noticeable level of uncertainty. The road to success is complex. Project teams need to overcome the perception that social tools and applications are not a critical investment. Common issues proponents of social networking face include: establishing the business case, acquiring funding, determining metrics, developing governance policies, and addressing security concerns. In addition, strategists need to anticipate how best to handle cultural issues and adoption barriers that will emerge over the course of social networking projects.

In the fall of 2008, Burton Group conducted a series of in-depth interviews with 65 business and IT personnel representing 21 organizations to gain greater insight on enterprise social networking. These unguided discussions captured a variety of real-life stories, emerging best practices and common barriers confronting social networking project teams. Indeed, analysis of the study data reveals a repeating pattern of 15 critical issues organizations will likely encounter as the move forward with their internal social networking initiatives. This workshop provides an interactive forum for people to learn more about what other organizations are doing - their challenges - their successes - as well as their pain-points. Q&A time will be set aside after each module. The workshop will end with a general summation, updates on market trends, and address any remaining audience concerns.

Who Should Attend

• Business and IT staff whose job responsibility involves the following: innovation, talent management, collaboration, knowledge management, or community-building
• Corporate communications and HR staff involved in employee engagement strategies, learning, and strategic talent initiatives
• Social networking project teams who wish to learn more about business and cultural barriers, employee profiles, expertise location, community seeding tactics, and adoption strategies
• Business or IT executives and managers with responsibility for creating, sponsoring, or implementing social networking initiatives
• Strategists who would like to expand their knowledge of social networking trends

You Will Learn

• What are the critical issues confronting social networking project teams, and how organizations are responding to those challenges and opportunities
• How project teams are dealing with the business case for enterprise social networking, including concerns over ROI and metrics
• What cultural issues do social networking projects tend to surface, and how did organizations in the study address legal, HR, compliance and security considerations
• What difficulties project teams will likely encounter as they try to convince employees to adopt social networking platforms (e.g., profiles), and what adoption tactics were used to jumpstart participation (e.g., expertise location, communities)
• How interviewees felt their IT organizations were handling the topic of social networking, along with high-level impressions from participants regarding their experiences with different tools (e.g., IBM Lotus Connections, Jive Software, and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server)

Catalyst pre-conference workshop agenda - Project Concordia

Blogger: Mike Gotta

Another option for those wishing to leverage attendance at Catalyst (on top of all the great Burton Group workshops, sessions, guest speakers, etc). Alice Wang and I will be exploring the intersection between identity and social networking during the workshop below:

Use Cases Driving Identity in Enterprise 2.0: The Consumerization of IT

We will hold a pre-conference workshop at the Burton Catalyst North America 2009 conference on Monday, 27 July 2009, from 10am to 5pm, in San Diego, California. Participate in this working session as end users, deployers and technology providers discuss identity-based use cases reflecting the intersection of traditional enterprise with Web 2.0 and SaaS, models with consumer underpinnings that are turning traditional IT approaches inside-out. The group will problem-solve together to discover and define:

• Different styles of provisioning/federating identities
• Privacy concerns around unmanaged employee usage of outside tools
• Security and policy approaches to address virtualization and the cloud
• Authorization models that combine flexible access to resources with appropriate administrative controls

In Concordia workshops, real-world use cases rule: we work together to understand trends and requirements, and then facilitate effective results in future technology development and harmonization. We have gathered use case presentation and discussion proposals, detailed below, in order to form the workshop agenda.

Registering to attend

It is free to attend this Concordia workshop; you just have to let us know you're coming. You can do this by adding your name to the list below or by sending mail to Britta Glade (britta at projectliberty.org).

If you are also planning to attend the Burton Catalyst conference taking place during the rest of the week, you can get a fantastic Catalyst discount for attending this workshop! Use the code concordia when registering on the [Catalyst site to get a full-conference price of $1,295 (this is an almost 50% discount for non-Burton Group clients who would normally pay $2,495 to attend).

Catalyst pre-conference workshop agenda - Project Concordia

Social Analytics: The Key When Splitting Hosted And On-Premises e-Mail?

Blogger: Mike Gotta

I'd like to add some additional context to a recent post by Eric Malwald in our SRMS group. Eric brings up a very good point - that organizations cannot assume that adoption of a hybrid model that splits e-Mail services across a hosted and on-premises topology makes an organization safer when it comes to protecting sensitive information. With relative ease, people can expand the group of message recipients to people whose inbox resides on the hosted system (on purpose, inadvertently, or as part of a "back channel" conversation with a co-worker). That action defeats the intent of keeping sensitive information "on premises". 

Then again - it all depends.

First, e-Mail systems include more types of data than just e-Mail messages. There are calendar entries, task entries, and contact information for example. You might even add unified messaging to the mix as well. Second, while it is true that e-Mail "is information on the move", it is also very true that e-Mail systems are a core piece of an organization's information management duties once it rests in an inbox. e-Mail is also often classified as a type of business document. Not only due to the issue of attachments, but people compose "documents" in e-Mail that make it a critical business artifact. Calendar entries may also have attachments, contain sensitive information regarding appointments and attendees. Workflow information and contact information also make e-Mail systems critical information systems beyond its messaging roots. As e-Mail products have improved over time, many modern topologies are more centralized than years earlier. Increased use of e-Mail and reliance on more centralized e-Mail "farms" has made information and storage management (as it relates to e-Mail systems) a top priority for many organizations. The reason I point this out is that we need to expand Eric's point beyond the flow of messaging. When e-Mail is not on the move - it is at rest. In fact, most e-Mail "rests" more than it "moves" I imagine.

So are we more or less safe with the idea of a split configuration? I think the answer remains "it depends". 

What would Xobni say? That might sound like an odd comment at first but let me explain. Given my research in social networking, I have been examining Xobni (and similar tools) for some time. When this topic came up internally, I looked at my Xobni statistics and discovered that my top e-Mail "partners" where my own team members. I'm pretty sure that held true for me when I worked at Meta Group. I think it might hold true for a lot of people.

So back to the topic - it would make sense to identify and understand e-Mail usage patterns (including calendar, tasks, contacts) before making the decision on a hybrid approach. Eric brings up a good point - you cannot assume that you are better off. Then again, you might be - especially if those groups that would be part of the on-premises e-Mail topology are inwardly focused to a large extent when it comes to their usage patterns re: e-Mail, calendars, tasks, contacts, etc. This still does not eliminate the question Eric brings up - but it may be a minority concern in some instances. You may find that there is a significant amount of email messaging within teams and groups of various kinds that is more informal and reflects “flow of thought” than the type of messaging that is more formal and sent out in broadcast form or otherwise (directed messages) to other teams.

The key point: Perform the email messaging analytics to determine sender-receiver patterns and the type of messaging content being shared. To Eric's point – don’t assume that you cannot shift that group to a cloud and don’t assume that you are safe because email does move around and is stored in a variety of inboxes – but also recognize that intra-group messaging can be more dominant and contain information the team never shares outside their own group.

Security and Risk Management Strategies Blog: Risks Around Hosted Email

Email is information on the move! It is different than information at rest.

In talking to analysts in Burton Group’s Collaboration Strategies Service about one of their talks at Catalyst, I heard a very disturbing idea. We were discussing hosted email and one of the analysts, Bill Pray, mentioned that enterprises that were moving toward using hosted email (email in the cloud) were keeping “sensitive” departments (HR, finance, etc.) on internal email systems. The reasoning was that these departments dealt with sensitive information and therefore should not be included on a hosted system.

But wait! This assumption may sound right on the face of it but it does not hold on further analysis. Back in (ancient) history, information was stored in filing cabinets. Cabinets in HR and finance were locked to prevent unauthorized people from seeing the information. As we moved to a more computerized environment, sensitive departments were given their own file servers so all of the sensitive information was stored together and the number of people authorized to access the files was limited. This worked as the information was at rest.

Email is information on the move and violates this base assumption. You can segregate the email from HR, Legal, Finance, and other sensitive departments to protect it, but as soon as someone sends email out of the protected environment, all bets are off! Most email is likely to be between team members but not all. Just think about HR. Employees may send sensitive emails to HR people and vice versa. The sensitive information exists in the email system – not just within the HR email system. The same is true for any of the other departments as well.

Don’t just assume that the paradigm used for information at rest works for information in motion. You have to treat them differently!

Of course, the bottom line for very sensitive information is: Do not send it over email in the first place. If you absolutely, positively, have to send very sensitive information over email, use some type of encryption mechanism along with a strong authentication mechanism to protect it.

Security and Risk Management Strategies Blog: Risks Around Hosted Email

Virtual Collaboration for Lotus Sametime

Blogger: Craig Roth

Some of the great research work that IBM was doing around virtual worlds has now made it onto enterprise desktops through IBM's announcement of the availability of the "Virtual Collaboration for Lotus Sametime" plugin for Lotus Sametime 8.0.1 or later.  An OpenSimulator instance runs on the server and connects to Sametime through a bridge. There is a web client, although most users would probably use the SecondLife client.

The plugin provides 3 enterprise virtual world environments that I'd classify as virtual collaboration: collaboration spaces, boardrooms (meeting rooms), and theatres (see details in the slideshow below or the YouTube video).

Sametime 3D - Virtual Worlds in OpenSim

View more presentations from Chris Sparshott.

It looks like neat stuff to me.  And from what I can tell, there's no cost to Sametime users to add this since OpenSimulator and the SecondLife client are free.  Even though this has moved from research to general availability, I still consider it an experiment.  Now is when early adopters can start playing around with this, find good uses, and report their stories back to start assembling a business case.  I haven't had a chance yet to read the "Business Value Study" they reference. From my research last year, the best business cases were around rehearsal and training, not virtual collaboration, but I look forward to seeing what they came up with once I get past Catalyst season.

ThinkFree Behind the Firewall; Zoho for SharePoint

Yesterday was "news rich" in the productivity suite market. Two small vendors, ThinkFree and Zoho, made interesting announcements.

Blogger: Guy Creese

ThinkFree released its ThinkFree Server Enterprise solution on June 22 and announced it on June 23. Basically, this allows an enterprise to take ThinkFree's SaaS productivity suite/document sharing solution and install it on an internal server behind the firewall.

At the Enterprise 2.0 Conference on June 23, Zoho announced Zoho Office for Microsoft SharePoint. The e-mail I got from the PR person says,

This add-on, when installed on a Microsoft SharePoint Server, integrates Zoho Office Suite with Microsoft SharePoint.

The add-on provides users with the following functionality:

• Create new documents and save them to SharePoint in MS Office formats.
• View existing documents within SharePoint using Zoho Apps (Zoho Writer, Sheet and Show).
• Edit existing documents with Zoho Apps and save them back to SharePoint.
• Provides collaborative editing capabilities based on SharePoint's sharing permissions.

You can find more information about it in a post on the Zoho blog.

Via a server-side install, this connects Zoho to a document sharing/management application, similar to Google Apps, Microsoft Office/SharePoint, and ThinkFree--a capability that isn't offered by Corel, IBM, Novell, or Sun.

If you've been poking around, looking for alternatives to Microsoft Office/SharePoint, these are both worth looking at. With the entrance of Adobe into this space earlier in the month, the options just keep getting better and better.

Looking for People to Interview on Productivity Suites

Blogger: Guy Creese

As I hinted in yesterday's post, I'm writing a quadrant report on office productivity suites. The list includes:

• Corel WordPerfect Office
• Google Apps, Premier Edition
• IBM Lotus Symphony
• Microsoft Office
• OpenOffice.org
• OpenOffice.org, Novell Edition
• Sun StarOffice
• ThinkFree
• Zoho

While I've talked to some reference customers supplied by the vendors, I'd like to talk to some customers who haven't been cherry-picked. So if you're an IT manager responsible for purchasing one of the above packages and are willing to spend half an hour answering 36 questions, I'd like to talk to you.

The answers are confidential--I won't be using any customer names, and I won't be blabbing to the vendors--I just want to get a feel for what works and what doesn't. The questions cover things such as product quality, customer support, what's still wanting in features, etc. You can contact me at gcreese at burtongroup.com. Thanks for your help.

Four Key Points About Enterprise Attention Management

Blogger: Craig Roth

I'm just putting the finishing touches on a new document on Enterprise Attention Management.  This one will be a short primer on our view of the subject.  It's been over two years since my main document on EAM was published and my thinking has evolved as I've hit questions from people at presentations and in private conversations.  It's also been shaped by the press coverage of information overload and e-mail overload - often by encouraging me to put warning signs in front of some slippery slopes that they wander into: Counting all distractions as interruptions?  Lumping interruptions into information overload?  Using 100% focus and efficiency as the benchmark to compare "cost of overload" to?  Assuming only tips and tricks for individuals can chip away at it?  Yeesh!

After a brief description of what enterprise attention management is and its business context, I describe 4 points that are key for my position on EAM:

1. Not Everyone Feels Overloaded

As strongly as you and a few like-minded people may feel about the impacts of information overload, a lot more people just don't notice or care.  But improving efficiency and reaction time: that's something everyone can get behind.  Get away from having to shake everyone awake about the "problem" and its a lot easier for others to get on board with your efficiency argument.

2. Key People in an Organization Can Take Action to Improve Efficiency of Information Workers

You can try to organize your little information garden and give tips to your teammates to do the same and one small portion of your company will breathe a little easier.  But there are a few people who select the gardening tools and set expectations for everyone's gardens - they have a different set of things they can do to help everyone in the organization.

3. Use EAM as a Lens to Understand Impacts of New Information-based Technologies

Enterprise attention management can be used as a lens to analyze how various technologies and programs will impact the attention of information workers.  One recent example of applying this architecture is the "EAM for e-mail" posting I did here.

4. Influence Process and Culture Selectively

An evangelical approach to "information overload" starts with declaring it "bad" and then figuring out how to force people not to overload each other.  A more practical approach does not see lots of information as good or bad, but rather focuses on efficiency and looks for key moments when processes and culture can be influenced.  These include teachable moments, such as new hire training or rolling out a new technology.  They do not include an e-mail blast or interoffice memo out of nowhere telling everyone how they should now behave.

This is a cross-posting from the KnowlegeForward blog

The $64,000 Question: Google Docs, Acrobat.com, or Other?

Blogger: Guy Creese

A week ago, ReadWriteWeb published an interesting poll, entitled, "Poll: Which Web Office Suite Would You Pay For? Adobe or Google?" At the moment, out of 519 votes cast, 22% (114 votes) were for Adobe, 38% (199 votes) were for Google, and the greatest percentage, 40% (206 votes) were for neither. A number of commenters took the article to task for failing to point out ThinkFree and Zoho, two startups that offer productivity suites. ReadWriteWeb replied, "...we intentionally left them out so as not to dilute the vote between the two companies that are arguably industry giants as opposed to (awesome!) startups."

The problem with such open polls is you never really know the survey universe--it could include some Adobe or Google employees, hoping to tilt the results; it could include many respondents from SMBs, rather than large enterprises; and so on. Probably the more interesting part of the article is the comments, as they highlight many of the viewpoints I hear from clients. Here is a sampling:

Blogger: Guy Creese

A week ago, ReadWriteWeb published an interesting poll, entitled, "Poll: Which Web Office Suite Would You Pay For? Adobe or Google?" At the moment, out of 519 votes cast, 22% (114 votes) were for Adobe, 38% (199 votes) were for Google, and the greatest percentage, 40% (206 votes) were for neither. A number of commenters took the article to task for failing to point out ThinkFree and Zoho, two startups that offer productivity suites. ReadWriteWeb replied, "...we intentionally left them out so as not to dilute the vote between the two companies that are arguably industry giants as opposed to (awesome!) startups."

The problem with such open polls is you never really know the survey universe--it could include some Adobe or Google employees, hoping to tilt the results; it could include many respondents from SMBs, rather than large enterprises; and so on. Probably the more interesting part of the article is the comments, as they highlight many of the viewpoints I hear from clients. Here is a sampling:

Google’s Outlook Connector – First Bug of Many

Blogger: Bill Pray

Both Microsoft and Google released blogs this week concerning an issue with Google’s Outlook Connector whereby “Programs that interact directly with the Outlook data file, including Windows Desktop Search and PGP.com's encryption plugin, don't currently work well with Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook” (Google’s take) or “The installation of the Google Apps Sync plugin disables Outlook’s ability to search any and all of your Outlook data” (Microsoft’s take). This illustrates my point in my previous blog that, from my experience, building an Outlook connector is difficult and fraught with problems.

In fact, the list of things that do not work (go to the section entitled “What’s Different from Exchange”) – provided by Google – is rather daunting if you are an enterprise looking to use the connector and want to replace Exchange on the backend. For example, it is a rare enterprise executive who doesn’t have a need to delegate her calendar to an assistant – a feature not available with Google's connector. I expect that this week’s issue with the connector will be the first of many for Google.

Burton Group @ Enterprise 2.0

Blogger: Larry Cannell

Next week is the Enterprise 2.0 Conference, taking place at the Westin Boston Waterfront hotel in Boston’s Seaport district. Both Mike Gotta and I have been involved with the Enterprise 2.0 Advisory Board for a number of years and will also be speaking at the conference. Here is a quick run-down of our scheduled sessions:

Monday, June 22

• 1:00pm – 4:45pm :  “Reality 2.0: Getting Started With Enterprise Social Networking” – A half-day workshop, taught by Mike Gotta, that will provide an interactive forum for people to learn what other organizations are doing with social networking.

Tuesday, June 23

• 1:00pm – 2:00pm : “Is Email the Next Killer SaaS App?” - In this session, Larry Cannell will describe how a high-stakes competitive SaaS e-mail market is emerging to offer cost-effective options for enterprises.

• 2:15pm – 3:15pm : “Socializing Enterprise Portals” - In this session, Mike Gotta will moderate a lively discussion with leading portal providers after brief presentations from each vendor.

Wednesday, June 24

• 9:15am – 10:00am : “The Future of Social Messaging in the Enterprise” – Mike Gotta will be a panelist participating in a “free-wheeling discussion” looking into the challenges and opportunities for using social messaging within enterprises (Burton Group alum Irwin Lazar moderating).

• 2:15pm – 3:15pm : “Community & Social Network Sites: Think Adoption, Not Deployment” - In this panel session, Mike Gotta will moderate a discussion with practitioners involved in social networking projects.

Thursday, June 25

• 8:30am – 9:15am : “Reality 2.0: Enterprise Social Networks (A Field Research Study)” - Mike Gotta will be sharing the findings of a field research project that interviewed over 60 people representing 21 large enterprise organizations on the topic of social networking within the enterprise.

• 10:45am – 11:45am : “Is Enterprise Search Ripe for Open Source Disruption?” - In this panel session, Larry Cannell will moderate a discussion with enterprise search experts involved in both open source and commercial search products.

The rest of the agenda looks excellent. It’s going to be a busy week. If you are attending, please stop by and say hello!