Bookmarks for April 19th from 15:44 to 17:05

Social business pinboard links for April 19th, syndicated automagically:

  • Die Corporate-IT-Abteilung von Amazon stellt SharePoint 2010 in der AWS-Cloud bereit – Die Corporate-IT-Abteilung von Amazon stellte ihre äußerst geschäftskritische IT-Anwendung, das unternehmenseigene Intranet, in der AWS-Cloud bereit. In dem Whitepaper werden die Bereitstellungskriterien, die Sicherheitsanforderungen, die Architektur und die Implementierung der betriebsnotwendigen Anwendung erläutert. Es wird nicht nur beleuchtet, wie sich die Abteilung die Sicherheitsfunktionen von AWS und Microsoft SharePoint 2010 (und Microsoft SQL Server 2008) zu Nutze machen und eine Anwendung, die überaus vertrauliche Daten beinhaltet, bereitstellen konnte, sondern auch offen und ehrlich dargelegt, welche Lehren daraus gezogen werden konnten.
  • Three Principles for Net Work | Harold Jarche – Conclusion These three simple principles of narration, transparency and shared power should provide enough guidance to motivated leaders in an organization. Implementation depends on the specific context of each organization and the ability to keep things in what I call, “perpetual Beta”. Power-sharing and transparency enable work to move out to the edges and away from the comfortable, complicated work that has been the corporate mainstay for decades. There is nothing left in the safe inner parts of the company anyway, as it is being automated and outsourced. The high-value work today is in facing complexity, not in addressing problems that have already been solved and for which a formulaic or standardized response has been developed. One challenge for organizations is getting people to realize that what they already know has increasingly diminishing value. How to learn and solve problems together is becoming the real business advantage.
  • Alexander Stockers Weblog zu Web 2.0 für Unternehmen: Erfolgsmessung von Social Media – Die Frage ist (für mich) immer, was kann überhaupt gemessen werden – und was nicht.
    Sind denn vielleicht gerade die nicht messbaren Effekte jene, die den meisten Nutzen für das Unternehmen bringen.
    Eine einheitliche Aussage zur Erfolgsmessung gibt es nicht und wird es niemals geben – denn die Ziele sind zu individuell und die Parteien zu interdisziplinär.

    Ich selbst stelle mich aber grundsätzlich auf die Seite der Befürworter der Erfolgsmessung – denn wer nicht misst, der kann sich und andere nicht verbessern. Dennoch gebe auch ich zu bedenken, dass man nicht jeden Effekt zu jeder Zeit messen kann. In Zeiten der Wirtschaftskrise befürchte ich daher, dass viele gute Projekte daran scheitern werden, wenn ROI-fokussierte Entscheider diese gleich verhindern bzw. laufende Projekte abdrehen

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Past, present and future of ECM

After a week filled with designing concepts/drawing and revising flow charts/troubleshooting and caring/explaining and advocating/et al. I feel stressed out. This may get better over the weekend, and some original content may emerge. But until this I am happy to relay other people’s stuff (spirit of sharing, yes) – say the things John Mancini published on the past, present and future of ECM. This is timely because I had a loose discussion on this topic these days (Sharepoint at al., how fast everything changes in technology, what role [commercial] Open Source [vendors, solution providers and integrators] plays, etc.).

How will social technologies affect the future o

It’s funny because it’s true – there was no Sharepoint in the industry’s mind 5 years ago, this has changed for sure.

And yes, the perception of ECM has also changed – if only because the people in the niches are developing curious ideas about the nature of social intranets, what role “ECM” intelligent information management should have in the design of (social) business, how trends and opportunities like cloud computing, mobile use, open platforms and open source, big data and the collapse of data/document walls will play out. Add to this the challenges of dealing with social (and ad hoc) content and communiaction and collaboration and you see what I mean …

Needless to say that the ad-hoc stuff is the most interesting area to deal with, this is where the real (business) action and the tacit knowledge is.

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Outlook on collaboration in 2009

Besides playing experimenting with some new (sometimes cloudy) collaboration services and technologies (and I didn’t even make it halfway here), battling a nasty cold and family time I’ve been reading my share of Enterprise 2.0 outlooks for 2009 lately, starting off with Gil Yehuda of Forrester (“Predicting the battle over collaboration infrastructure in 2009“) who answers short questions with good long analysis.

Gil, do you think companies will cut back on Enterprise Web 2.0 in light of the economy?

First reaction – it depends. I’m an analyst, that’s always our first answer. […]

That’s not all for sure, he goes on to ponder what lies behind all this, i.e. he delves into the relation between IT department and business units, diagnoses an increased need for collaboration functionality as a result of “layoffs, mergers, and deepening external partnerships (requiring new infrastructure to collaborate outside the firewall with trusted, external partners)”, and sees a slowdown of IT-driven collaboration projects in 2009 compensated by more business-driven collaboration projects. A good read.

More general are FastCompany’s predictions that 8 experts have for Web 2.0 in 2009, even with Charlene Li among them who holds

“[that] the biggest innovation will be the opening of social networks so that they can exchange profiles, social relationships, and applications. As such, companies need to think about how they will “open” up their businesses.”

Read-write web compiles a list of enterprise-focused web products that are already doing well and are poised success in 2009, nice that there’s a subcategory of Wiki++ (oh, this geeky humour):

We added “++” to “wiki” because the leading vendors are rapidly incorporating micro-blogging, social networking, forums, and other collaboration tools. Integration is key, so we see this market moving towards suites, but with wiki at the core.

Yes, said that before, think “middleware for humans” – one might even argue that wikis are archetypical infrastructure, and being flexible enough to cater for diverse and changing needs.

Then Craig Roth of the Burton Group presents their views of the 2009 landscape for communication, collaboration and content and warns

It’s also important to note the cyclical nature of organizational dynamics, which underlies everything we talk about related to communication, collaboration, and content.  Rather than just disappearing, terms like “knowledge management” fade from view only to be rediscovered when their time is right.  Governance has been on the tip of the tongue for at least five years now in our space, but it may fade only to be rediscovered under a new name ten years from now.

That is why it is so important to understand the basic concepts and dynamics behind communication, collaboration, and content before delving into the specifics of any specific technology.  If you don’t understand your history, for example, social networking can be felled by the same issues that caused collaborative workspaces to fail before them.

Craig also blogged about the implications of the tough economic conditions on the collaboration (and IT) market, something on which I will post a follow-up soon as well. Actually I think that the economic crisis might even turn out good for collaboration initiatives, open source and Enterprise 2.0 …:

Companies that come out of recessions in a stronger position than they went in are those that judiciously invest in technology and related processes that let more work get done with less resources as well as reducing costly delays and red herrings when making decisions. And when the market downturn ends – and it will – opportunistic organizations will be in a better position to succeed than those that had hunkered down during the recession.

Some more quotes and notables:

– Mike Gotta thinks about some acquisition possibilities (or dangers) in the Enterprise 2.0 market, triggered by an article in CIO magazine “Web 2.0, Social Networks in ’09: The Year of Consolidation, Not Innovation” that puts Lotus Connections and Sharepoint in perspective (btw, I don’t buy the article’s argument that consolidation in the enterprise Web 2.0 market could hamper innovation around those tools, I guess the innovators in this space have set high standards already, plus the real issues aren’t with nifty tools et al.). Yet, the triggered reasoning by Mike on “strategic fits” is good, and I can’t help wondering if some of these M&As might turn reality in 2009. Besides he’s done a great rundown of various Enterprise 2.0 issues too …

– Robert Scoble sees a fight coming between the collaborative web and Microsoft, besides being busy talking to Socialtext and Jive Software (during his Enterprise disruption week), while  David Coleman examines the underlying thinking (in “The Evolution of Collaboration Technologies“): “Most of these organizations are betwixt and between. It is safer to go with what you know (IBM or Microsoft) but also can be expensive in a recessionary period. Or phase out the aging collaborative infrastructure for something a bit more up to date, with more collaborative functionality. So far most of them seem to be playing it safe, a few are looking for new tools that will meet their collaborative needs both today (with the Millenials) and tomorrow.” and Kevin Mullins offers some Technology Predictions for 2009 (“I see Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 becoming feature sets in new products and services in the Enterprise, however they will not become feature sets in all Enterprise products”). Well, fair chance and clever arguing 😉

– At last, CBC had a feature interview with Clay Shirky on the pros and cons of social media, new online business models online, and how big change comes from human motivation, not shiny new technologies. Well, yes, don’t blame the web intranet when it’s filter failure, yes, the ability to pay attention in the Web 2.0 age is the “work smarter, not harder” version 2.0

    So now I wish all my readers, friends, colleagues, partners and clients a happy and successful 2009. I hope you all had time and rest to enjoy some quiet days with friends and family before the rat race starts again. Oh, again it’s making-fun-of-rats-time – I really must look out lest this turns out a standard operating procedure …?

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    AdventsWikiWednesday Stuttgart

    Heute abend muss ich selbst livebloggen – der etablierte Liveblogger vom WikiWednesday ist heute leider verhindert. So kurz vor Weihnachten ist es heute nur eine kleinere Runde von 15 Leuten, Kai Nehm ist aber dabei, ein paar Bilder werden sicher noch folgen.

    Meine Präsentation von Open Source Wikis, insbesondere DokuWiki stelle ich in kürze zur Verfügung.

    Dr. Christoph Giess von Avono präsentiert nun Confluence live.

    Wichtige Punkte:
    – Attachments (durchsuchbar)
    – Suche (kann vom Anwender auf Bereiche eingeschränkt werden)
    – Restrukturierbar
    – Word-Dokumente können im Wiki “angeschaut” werden
    – Informationsarchitektur <=> verschiedene Sichten auf die Daten, gut für Reports die flexibel (aber schon von der internen IT, ist nicht ganz so einfach) erstellt werden können
    – nicht besonders interoperabel mit anderen Systemen (in Bezug auf das semantische Netz)
    – Selbstselektion der Inhalte – Mitarbeiter können Bereiche angeben, die sie interessieren – auch in Verbindung mit einem personalisierten RSS-Feed
    – Confluence kann an bestehende Authentifizierungssysteme angekoppelt werden (LDAP, Active Directory etc.)
    – Confluence bietet auch fein granulierbare Zugriffsrechte, u.a. Bereichsadminstratoren
    – kann in bestehende Portale eingebunden werden, zudem in Filesysteme, Webdav et al.
    – viele Erweiterungen verfügbar (teilweise von der Nutzercommunity entwickelt), Schnittstellen mit externen Systemen bspw. XML-RPC

    Interessante Diskussion nun – warum nicht auf Sharepoint warten? Nur ein Grund: Sharepoint ist dokumentenorientiert, eher Dokumentenmanagementsystem. Und Dokumente werden überschätzt …

    Und last not least stellen Björn und ich noch die Enterprise 2.0 @ CeBIT vor – hier das Blog und das Wiki.

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    Microsoft Sharepoint integriert Confluence Enterprise Wiki (und RSS wird immer wichtiger)

    Die interessanteste Nachricht des Tages ist die Anbindung von Confluence von Atlassian an MOSS 2007 (Microsoft Press Release) – ähnlich wie es mit der Einbindung von Socialtext in MOSS 2007-Umgebungen vorgesehen war/ist.

    Zwar basiert Atlassian auf Java (J2EE), dies ist aber sicherlich kein Hindernis für diese strategische Kooperation. Der Hintergrund liegt darin, dass Anwender durchaus leistungsfähige Wikifunktionalitäten benötigen, die das bestehende SharePoint-Wiki nicht erfüllen kann. Der SharePoint Connector wird daher den bidirektionalen Informationsaustausch zwischen SharePoint und Confluence ermöglichen, bzw. die Integration der Datenbasis sicherstellen (“providing single sign-on, search, content sharing and linking between the two applications”, Dennis Howlett).

    Robert Scoble hat ein Interview mit den Gründern von Atlassian gemacht, in dem diese über die neue strategische Partnerschaft mit Microsoft sprechen:

    Eine gute Analyse der strategischen Hintergründe findet sich bei Richard MacManus:

    This is another great example of big vendors partnering with more agile, and smarter, startups to create better Web Office functionality in their products. It’s win-win for both companies […] For Microsoft, they get a ‘best of breed’ Web Office app to beef up their hugely profitable SharePoint product.

    Interessant ist auch der zweite Teil der Press Release, die Kooperation mit Newsgator, die auf die Ergänzung und Erweiterung der integrierenden (Middleware-)Funktionalitäten von RSS in SharePoint abzielt: Die NewsGator Social Sites sollen Inhalte, Menschen und Gruppen mittels RSS verbinden, Jeff Nolan von Newsgator kommentiert:

    What MS is doing with Sharepoint is actually pretty cool, our Social Sites add-on brings content management and an explicit social dimension to the mix. What that means is that administrators and users can use RSS to integrate content in Sharepoint AND then connect that content to people and groups.

    Tagging, clipping, sharing, and recommending bits of content is turning out to be a lot more useful that even I would have expected. I’m also constantly surprised with little things I can do, like drop my twitter feed in a widget on my Sharepoint profile page, and it’s all powered by RSS.

    Treffende Analyse, RSS ist die wichtige Technologie, die den Einsatz von Social Software im Unternehmen erst lohnend macht …

    1 * Update: Die Rolle von RSS wird u.a. hier bei elliptical diskutiert:

    You got it right that it enhances the existing social networking functionality within SharePoint (but also WSSv3). It’s also a great solution to surface what’s going on in my organization. We have some really nice rollup views into SharePoint that help people discover other people and discover content within SharePoint. To date, most people’s answer to content discovery in organizations has been “just search for it.” But, it’s also effective to be able to grasp what’s going on organically at a quick glance.

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