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.

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.

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.

How Will CMIS Be Adopted?

Blogger: Larry Cannell

Since the content management interoperability standard (CMIS) is moving closer to becoming a reality, I began thinking again about how it might be used by commercial vendors and open source projects. The committee developing the CMIS standard described a number of use cases to help determine the most important capabilities that needed to be supported. However, what they came up with is a fairly barebones set of content management capabilities (primarily support for documents and folders). In short, CMIS is a simple application programming interface (API) that will be supported by Documentum, FileNet, SharePoint, or any content management system to provide a simple documents/folder-style access to their content. The basic capabilities provided by CMIS may prove either valuable as advocates encourage adoption of the standard or may prove limiting because some use cases require additional content management capabilities (such as common representations of content policies or workflow).

The potential applications that can use CMIS are seemingly endless, but we can start brainstorming them nonetheless. Will CMIS be the “SQL for content systems", enable a new collaborative presentation layer for content management systems, or possibly create a whole new category of application? Below are three categories of CMIS use cases, presented here to stimulate thinking and provoke dialog.

Server-to-server or portal scenarios: These are perhaps the most common scenarios referenced when CMIS is discussed. Use cases include presentation of content by portals and other forms of content aggregation, like search or mash-up applications. Historically, we can look towards SQL as an example of how CMIS may evolve to support these use cases. Of course, the SQL standard was overwhelmingly successful, resulting in an uncountable number of applications that store data in databases (to the point where many of us may not remember how data was stored before SQL-based databases).

It may also take a path similar to that of portal standards (JSR 168, JSR 286, or WSRP). These standards have proven useful but have not seen near the same level of success (as SQL). We can also look towards JSR 170 (Java Content Repository) as another possibility. However, CMIS will have to continue evolving new capabilities (in future versions of the standard) to get to the same level of sophistication as JCR. Regardless, for many enterprise-developed applications involving similar use cases, CMIS will likely be quite useful.

A collaborative front-end to a repository: Another use case considered by the committee was “Collaborative Content Applications.” Although details behind this scenario are sketchy, most references assume this involves using CMIS to support a wiki or other type of collaborative workspace. Imagine a collaborative workspace product (like SharePoint or Quickr) presenting links to documents stored in a CMIS-compliant repository. However, it is difficult to see this scenario evolving beyond simply referencing external documents (rather than authoring or managing external documents) unless a future version of the CMIS standard includes support for access control and other management structures.

Lightweight desktop clients: Although not considered an initial use case by the committee, a CMIS-based desktop client market may evolve. Consider the evolution of RSS. Initially, a protocol developed to support syndication of portal content, its popularity caught fire when blogging platforms adopted it and aggregator clients were developed. Companies such as Generis and WeWebU have plans to develop or enhance their existing desktop clients with CMIS (thanks to Word of Pie for pointing this out).

Using CMIS with a desktop client also eliminates a particularly thorny challenge. Authenticating a user running a desktop client accessing a content system via CMIS is much easier than in server-to-server scenarios because of the use of single sign-on systems that can pass a user’s logged-in identity through the web browser to a web application. This is not part of the CMIS standard, but rather uses authentication that comes along with the HTTP protocol (in Apache, this is done via the REMOTE_USER environment variable). An example of how this can be done is an intranet that uses Windows Domain single sign-on that is passed on to a server that supports this form of authentication (e.g., like a SharePoint server) to retrieve an authenticated RSS feed. Alternatively, the desktop client could store the username and password (e.g, like FeedDemon does). In the server-to-server scenarios, there is significantly more effort required to delegate the desktop user’s credentials through a portal or web application, which the web application uses to authenticate with the content system on the user’s behalf.

This is a case where simplicity may prove valuable. Think how simple and lightweight RSS is, but now enable it with basic traversal of folders and fetching of content. We may be surprised what lightweight desktop clients emerge.

Finally, these are only client scenarios (applications that consume CMIS services). There is nothing that says a CMIS server application must be provided by a traditional content management system. At this point the services provided by CMIS are so primitive that they could conceivably be provided by many types of applications. In fact, there is already an implementation of a CMIS server based on a file system.

The passage of CMIS as a standard, and the broad support it has received so far, may turn out to be a major inflection point, but in ways we did not anticipate. Let the innovation begin!

Iron Mountain Buys Mimosa Systems

Blogger: Guy Creese

On Monday, February 22, data archiving specialist Iron Mountain announced that it had acquired Mimosa Systems for $112 million in cash. Mimosa Systems brings with it 1,000 enterprise customers and an on-premise solution that archives e-mail, SharePoint data, and other unstructured data. This allows Iron Mountain to offer both on-premise and cloud-based archiving.

For a sampling of news stories, see:

• Chris Preimesberger, "Iron Mountain Acquires Data Archiver Mimosa Systems," eWeek,February 22, 2010.
• Chris Kanaracus, "Iron Mountain Buys Archiving Vendor Mimosa", PCWorld, February 22, 2010.
• Jeffrey Schwartz, "Iron Mountain Acquires Mimosa," Redmond Channel Partner, February 22, 2010.

Mobile User Interface Innovation, An Opportunity to Rethink “Document”

Blogger: Larry Cannell

Not too long ago we were introduced to the Apple iPad, and this week we saw a glimpse of Microsoft’s new Windows Phone 7 operating system. One of the most interesting aspects of the ultra-competitive mobile device market is the innovation it is driving in user interface design. It was enlightening to read in the New York Times that Microsoft is using the development of their latest phone operating system to take a fresh approach:

“Microsoft’s executives called the software a departure from traditional PC software, saying past fixations on Windows traditions had stifled the company”

Microsoft Starts Over in Phone Software

In observing the changes the latest generation of mobile devices are enabling, Stowe Boyd recently made a similar reference to past approaches.

“But the thing that is blocking us from moving forward, to a better user experience centered on social interaction and not physical data, are the existing metaphors of OS's. Since we are living in a world of general purpose computers running Unix, Mac OS, and Windows -- and we need to have them interoperate -- we seem stuck in the 90's.

“To have a break with the past, and to make the past a platform, we have to push it under and not pretend that its constructs are desirable. We need to push files, folders and the notion of a desktop under the surface of a better user experience, and keep it under. Let a new generation of user experience shield us from that drudgery and detail.

“The only way forward is to build a new user experience on top of the physical hardware and software that form a platform for it, and conceal it's nasty details from us.

“This is one aspect of the genius of the iPhone and iPad generation of devices: we don't need to know about the files and folders. We don't need a desktop with data bundles lying in piles.”

Why Closed Works: Moving Past Steampunk Thinking About The Future Of Computing

I couldn’t agree more. Two years ago I wrote something similar regarding the file/folder user interfaces that dominate enterprise desktops, entitled I Hate Files:

“I don’t even want files. What I want is the information stored in a file. I want documents… you know, reports, analysis, recommendations, etc. Files are overhead. Computers are supposed to take care of overhead.”

So I have been thinking about files and documents lately and I have come to the conclusion that our reliance on the computer file as the primary structure for storing our digital "stuff" is hurting us in ways we cannot see. This is holding us back from realizing truly breakthrough capabilities.”

Disruptive events, such as the introduction of new mobile user interfaces, are opportunities for us to rethink the metaphors that dominate our assumptions; especially those that influence how we interact with information and how work is done. In particular, a “document” does not need to be stored in a file (which is organized in folders and edited with specialized applications), in the same sense that a mobile device does not need to use application or file icons as its primary user interface. In my opinion, documents stored in files are black holes of information. They are hard to share (people take personal ownership in files) and require far too much overhead to manage.

Online productivity suites, like those provided by Google Docs or Zoho, are one approach that might break us free of the constraints of the documents-as-files metaphor. Wikis are another. But neither of these approaches has taken the enterprise IT market by a storm, so I’m sure there still more approaches that may be effective. Google Wave’s stream of information and ability to support multiple authors is another approach that is worth watching.

Even Microsoft (although a company seemingly motivated to propagate the documents-as-files metaphor) seems to be grappling with how workers manage documents with forthcoming web versions of Office 2010, the “enterprise wiki” site template in SharePoint 2010, and the introduction of “Document Libraries” (made up of multiple folders) in recent versions of Windows.

But these measures are band-aids, at best. The promise of large scale creation and collaboration around content (while also meeting the information management needs of large enterprises) has mostly been unfulfilled. What we need is the emergence of a market disturbance (like what the iPhone has done for the mobile device space) that stimulates Microsoft (and other large enterprise vendors) to come to the realization that the existing documents-as-files path is no longer sufficient and they need to “start over” (like Microsoft said they did with Windows Phone 7).

Meanwhile, a good start towards realizing a better future for online enterprise collaboration is to focus on what information is needed by workers to get their jobs done and not just focusing on managing or sharing files.

A Tale of Two Community-Derived Open Source WCMs

Blogger: Larry Cannell

This past week I had conversations with both Acquia and DotNetNuke about their open source web content management (WCM) solutions. Acquia is a commercial entity, launched in Q4 2008, to support the open source WCM system Drupal. DotNetNuke Corporation is a commercial entity supporting the open source WCM system DotNetNuke (DNN), and launched its first commercial product in February 2009. There are some surprising similarities between the two projects and companies, but also some subtle (yet distinct) differences as well.

Both Drupal and DotNetNuke (DNN) provide the foundation for vibrant open source ecosystems, which were established years before their commercial entities were funded (the first release of Drupal appeared in 2001, DNN in 2003). Each community has over 700,000 members and boasts over half a million known Internet websites running their software. In addition, these companies have a surprising number of customers for the short time they have been in business; each has in the neighborhood of 450-500 companies who are paying for their WCM product.

Both of these products are well architected and extensible. As a result, each community has thousands of add-ons available that enable new features or change the appearance of the product. Both can be used to quickly build websites leveraging advanced Internet services and providing cutting-edge capabilities.

However, there are some distinct differences between the two. The type of open source license they employ has influenced many of these differences.

DNN is licensed under the permissive MIT open source license. This license places almost no restrictions on how source code can be reused or relicensed. Of the thousands of DNN extensions and themes available, some are also licensed as open source. However, many are commercially licensed and must be purchased. This makes for an active ecosystem of system integrators selling commercial DNN add-ons. To facilitate this, DotNetNuke has an online marketplace, Snowcovered.com, that provides a convenient catalog of available DNN extensions. DotNetNuke also sells prepackaged versions of DNN as well as developer and support services.

Drupal is licensed under the GNU Public License (GPL). This license restricts how the software can be reused or combined with other products (this CCS Blog post describes the GPL in more detail), limiting the proprietary software opportunities for system integrators. Nonetheless, this has not stopped the Drupal community from thriving and building businesses based on the product. Acquia, for example, provides various levels of support packages, a hosting service, advanced search services (based on Solr), professional services, and is beta testing DrupalGardens.com (Dries Buytaert, Drupal’s project founder, describes it as ‘Drupal as a Service’).

These are not the only open source WCM systems on the market. Nevertheless, I thought the outright similarities and the subtle differences were worthy of some discussion. I am also not saying these are the only types of WCM businesses that can be supported by a permissive open source license (like the MIT license) or a hereditary license (like the GPL). However, it shows that an open source license can significantly influence how vendors leverage their communities’ resources.

Should Rich-Text Web Editors Be Separate Products?

Blogger: Larry Cannell

I had an interesting conversation this week with Ephox, makers of a rich-text editor used within web content applications (e.g., web content management systems, collaborative workspaces, blogs). Their product, EditLive!, provides the rich-text editing within CrownPeak’s WCM, Oracle’s Universal Content Management, EMC/Documentum’s Webpublisher and others. In addition, they also sell EditLive! directly to enterprises for use within their own applications. Longer term they are planning to extend support to SharePoint and Drupal.

If you aren’t familiar with web rich-text editors, here is how they work: instead of a web application prompting the user to enter text with a simple text box, a rich-text editor replaces the text box with a small embedded browser-based application, which is based on rich Internet application technology, such as Javascript or Java. The editor application looks similar to Microsoft Word or WordPad. It provides buttons for bolding or underlining text, creating bulleted lists, left/center/right justification and many others.

The end result is the user enters and formats text in a familiar interface and the web content application receives HTML returned in the form. The application may not even recognize the HTML, but when the text is returned (e.g., a web page or blog post is displayed) the browser formats it as the user intended. Other rich-text editors that you may be familiar with include Telerik’s RadEditor (popular among SharePoint developers) and the open source products TinyMCE and FCKeditor (popular among many open source projects).

To me, rich-text editors seem to be in one of those “can’t win” positions in technology (like Rodney Dangerfield, they can’t get any respect). Bad rich-text editors can be downright frustrating to use (and can impact user acceptance of an application), but good rich-text editors never get the recognition they deserve. Many of us have come to expect usable rich-text editing capabilities and the editor only gets noticed if it is frustrating to use.

Ephox thinks there are opportunities to provide value beyond simply bolding and bulleting text. Of course, many web rich-text editors provide advance features, such as spell-checking and smart-pasting of text from Word. However, Ephox is betting you will also need features such as:

• Checking against web accessibility standards. These standards ensure people with disabilities can access information on the website (e.g., WCAG 2.0 recommends always having alternate text to support someone who cannot see an image)
• Support for tracking changes (similar to Microsoft Word) to enable multiple authors to see each other’s changes and to approve or reject them
• Support for adding comments or annotations (also similar to Microsoft Word) to enhance scenarios provided by tracking changes (e.g., someone may add a comment saying “I deleted this sentence because…”)

Checking against web accessibility is something that should get the interest of IT strategists supporting a large global enterprise. However, what about support for tracking changes and commenting on text? To me, these are features I had not considered the province of rich-text editors before. Shouldn’t these be features of the web application itself? I can see arguments either way.

What do you think?

• Is there a market for rich-text editors that are separate from the web application vendors? (So far, based on the success of rich-text editor vendors and open source projects, the answer seems to be “Yes”)
• Should rich-text editors provide capabilities beyond what might be expected by a web application (such as tracking changes and adding comments)?