Archive for October, 2009
by Bill Ives
October 30, 2009 at 3:04 am · Filed under
Web 2.0
Tomoye is a community platform based in Ottawa Canada, that provides Sharepoint integration as I wrote about on this blog. They recently announced a new community and social networking platform for use on SharePoint, Tomoye Community Software. It is available for WSS and MOSS enabling large organizations to leverage existing SharePoint infrastructure and data. Tomoye`s approach to community and social networking is based on their experiences and industry best practices from the consumer market. They have been developing and deploying communities in the consumer market for nearly ten years.
Communities and social networking are one of the fastest growing market segments in the enterprise software market, as organizations recognize the powerful benefits of these applications including collaboration, informal learning and more. The new offering includes crowdsourced content management, real-time expertise rosters and a social view of the enterprise. Here is a sample community screen.
The platform is installed as a SharePoint layout application, deployed via SharePoint central administration, and utilizes SharePoint search and authentication provider. This means there no additional costs to organizations as it is deployed on existing SharePoint servers. Integrated search and authentication gives access to security trimmed SharePoint data.
The crowdsourced content management reduces the need for top down content management since Tomoye crowdsources this function. As users explore and mark-up content, the software tracks implicit behavior and aggregates explicit user actions to present data to community members by what their peers are using and liking. This is taking the Web 2.0 user generated content concept and applying it to managing the user generated content.
There are more enterprise 2.0 features. Tomoye also tracks and reveals experts by their online activities and by the votes of others. Changing on a daily basis, expertise rosters become real-time. In addition, Tomoye tracks user behaviour and explicit user endorsements to aggregate the most valuable and relevant content across communities and SharePoint data so users can now identify the best information assets from across the enterprise, in a single place. This announcements covers a nice ste of features to make Sharepoint more aligned with the enterprise 2.0
by Bill Ives
October 26, 2009 at 3:04 pm · Filed under
Web 2.0
Tealeaf provides online customer experience management (CEM). Their CEM solutions include both a customer behavior analysis suite and customer service optimization suite. I have written about them before on this blog (see: Tealeaf Brings Visibility to Online Customer Experiences). They also sponsor an annual Online Consumer Survey. The 2009 survey has some interesting results.
What struck me most is that consumers are increasingly likely to share their experiences and opinions about companies, rather than with them. They are using social media to do this. The rise of twitter is one vehicle but there are many others that have been around for a while such as blogs and forums.
Here is the data: 26% of online adults who experience problems conducting online transactions posted complaints on a company’s Website in 2009, down from 32% in 2008. At the same time 38% of all online adults contacted a company’s call center after encountering problems using the Website in 2009, down from 47% in 2008. In contrast 12% of online adults who encountered issues said they shared those experiences via blogs or social networks, twice as many as in 2008.
This 12% may seem like a small number but the survey also reveals that these shared experiences are highly influential and should therefore be a real business concern. More than half (54%) of all online adults said social media content has influenced their online transactions, with 82% of respondents said social media has influenced their choice of vendor.
The survey goes on to say that online adults whose transactions have been influenced by social media content actually respond to positive reviews (26%) more so than negative ones (21%). So it pays to create good reviews and opinions about your products online.
This all has a major business impact since in it is estimated that in 2009, $47.6 billion will potentially be impacted by online transaction problems, on U.S. shopping websites alone. This impact comes in various forms. For example, 51% of consumers would not buy from the same brand if they had a problem online with them. Most of us experience some problem although this is slightly improving. The 2009 survey reported 80% of adults have had a problem shopping or getting services online but this is down from 87% the year before.
The Web may be the new frontier of business but results like these reminds u of both the current impact, the potential, the long way we have to go to reach a more mature market, and the need for companies to participate to survive and prosper.
by Bill Ives
October 22, 2009 at 12:14 pm · Filed under
Reviews
SaaS applications are becoming more pervasive as enterprises realize the speed, flexibility and cost reductions they bring. However, the spread of multiple SaaS apps in an enterprise raises the issue of siloed management. The Conformity platform provides a centralized point of management for all cloud applications and users, and includes user provisioning, role management, workflow approvals, directory integration, compliance reporting, usage analytics and change management capabilities. They announced their initial general reIease on September 30. I spoke with Scott Bils, co-founder and CMO, about their offering.
Scott said that they recognized that SaaS would be the way of the future. However, as enterprises implement multiple SaaS applications they will need a means to manage them. Conformity is designed to offer the centralized management platform to go across silos. For example, a salesperson might use a CRM app, a collaboration app, an incentive app, and an expense management app. They would have to provisioned with all these apps and their usage monitored. Then, if they leave, they would have to be checked out of each app. Frequently, these apps might be administered by four different people. Firms need to be able to both monitor usage for expense control but also for compliance issues. With Conformity, the management of all four apps could be combined in one central function with automatic provisioning.
Here is a sample administration screen shot. The applications being managed are on the left. The usage data is shown in the bar chart and the workflows tasks are shown on the right. In the central space under the usage charts, you can see the events occurring within the system.
Scott mentioned that many SaaS applications provide open APIs to facilitate the automation of provisioning and monitoring. Others require some manual effort but Conformity can generate a notification email to the right person to make management more efficient. The Conformity solution is designed to provide the same level of visibility and control over on-demand applications that IT organizations expect with traditional packaged apps. This will ease some of the concern that IT has over bringing new cloud applications into their business environments as they know there will not be compromises made in the areas of management processes, insight and control. Here is a sample user access screen.
Specific capabilities of the Conformity solution include user provisioning with centralized point of provisioning and deprovisioning of users accounts within cloud applications, and ongoing management of user permissions and authorizations. There is also role and profile management to enable organizations to centrally manage cloud application roles, profiles and permissions through normalized permission models, and maps policies to users and roles. Conformity also supports directory integration for Microsoft Active Directory, and is compatible with industry standards such as SPML, SAML and WS-Federation.
Approval workflows provide auditable cross-functional approval processes for users requiring new or amended access permissions, or role and profile changes. Directory integration enables organizations to seamlessly synchronize Conformity’s user repository with on-premise directory services. Compliance reporting provides reports required for effective preparation for audits for SOX, HIPAA, PCI and other regulatory mandates and standards. Usage analytics provides visibility, analytics and reporting on cloud application and license utilization and change management enables archiving, management and recovery of application configurations and role models.
There two types of reports. First, for public companies there are the compliance reports required by SOX including user access (shown below), user change, and the segregation of duties report that goes across applications. There is also usage tracking for financial monitoring purposes.
Conformity has also led the creation of an Enterprise SaaS Working Group, which it conceptualized and organized. This group of SaaS and cloud experts will share their perspectives on how enterprises can best leverage, and manage these new on-demand applications in their business environments. They will discuss issues and corresponding best practices in the areas of: management and governance, security and compliance, and APIs and management access, Here is a recording of their first meeting.
I think that Conformity provides a much needed service to accelerate the adoption of SaaS applications. It should make IT organizations more comfortable moving to SaaS and enables organizations to better realize the savings and flexibility that SaaS offers.
by Celine Roque
October 22, 2009 at 10:44 am · Filed under
Notable + Quotable
Ten Useful Examples of the Real-Time Web in Action
Highlighting their utility, Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb gives several examples of how real-time web is helping companies and services. “The real-time web isn’t just about immediacy, it also offers things like presence information, syncing, efficiency and responsiveness.”
Make social media a business tool, not a distraction
In the Miami Herald, Cindy Krischer Goodman present tactics by different people on maximizing social media while minimizing wasted time. “Niala Boodhoo, who co-writes the Poked blog for MiamiHerald.com, offers another approach for those who intend to take a peek at Twitter and end up spending hours clicking on links or forwarding tweets. She suggests monitoring how much time you spends on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter with a Mozilla Firefox plug-in called Leechblock. “It’s the perfect way to police yourself,” she says. You can specify which sites you want to block, you can set a time limit for a site or block access for a set period of time (9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday).”
Done: Reduce Task Friction to Get to Task Completion
Leo Babauta gives advice on keeping task simple in order to finish them faster on Zen Habits. “Small is better when it comes to getting to completion. It’s easier, which is less friction. It’s less intimidating. But more than that, small tasks and projects are victories. You can quickly get to completion and feel great about it. And that compels you to keep going.”
Coming Soon: Internet Apps that Heal Themselves
In ReadWriteWeb, Sarah Perez features a European research called the SELFMAN project – an effort to make web apps that are self-configuring, self-tuning, self-healing, and self-protecting. “Already the team has had promising results. For example, Scalaris, an open-source scalable transactional storage for Web 2.0 services won first prize in the IEEE International Scalable Computing Challenge 2008. Peer-to-peer video streaming application PeerTV uses SELFMAN to quickly test an evaluate new P2P components. There’s also a demo of a distributed Wikipedia that can handle more queries than the current version and a graphics program that lets multiple users collaborate on a design. Van Roy believes that SELFMAN represents the first step towards an internet filled with “unbreakable” applications. “Right now we’re just scratching the surface,” he says.”
10 Ways to Get Your Staff to Love – And Respect – You
Humor, empathy, honesty and leadership – these are the qualities that makes for a well-respected boss, says Jim Taggart on Brazen Careerist. “Encourage a learning culture within your team. Show leadership by starting with yourself. Lifelong learning is not a 9 to 5 proposition; it’s about how you absorb new experiences at work and through community service, training courses, assignments, reading, travel, etc. It’s a reciprocal process: employers provide opportunities to learn and grow, but employees also need to engage in activities outside of work.”
“Network neutrality” or “network neutering”?
An editorial by Nate Anderson of Ars Technica that answers the accusations of net neutrality opponents. “Net neutrality actually encourages the sort of innovation that we want in our networks—higher speeds, open access to innovative new applications and uses—the FiOS model. And everyone can profit from it, including the ISPs. Removing even the threat of such action encourages not innovation but modest speeds, high prices, and discriminatory throttling of user connections.”
How to Handle the Pessimist on Your Team
On Harvard Businness, Amy Gallo cites a study that says being proactive is the best way to counter employee negativity, including some case studies on how to deal with it. “Roderick Kramer, William R. Kimball Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford Graduate School of Business, says that it is the role of the leader to understand the underlying cause of the pessimism before acting. Some people are dispositional pessimists whose knee-jerk reaction is to see the negative in everything, while others may be expressing a pessimistic point of viewbased upon informed logic,” Kramer says.”
A Little Privacy, Please
Scientific American’ Chip Walter features computer scientist Latanya of Sweeney Carnegie Mellon University, director of the Laboratory for International Data Privacy. “Several years ago Scott McNealy, chairman of Sun Microsystems, famously quipped, “Privacy is dead. Get over it.” Sweeney couldn’t disagree more. “Privacy is definitely not dead,” she counters; those who believe it is “haven’t actually thought the problem through, or they aren’t willing to accept the solution.”
A Week in the Clouds Without a Notebook
Frequent business traveler Steve Rubel blogs about his teleworking experiment using only a smartphone and cloud-based apps. “The reason is simple: all of these devices are pocketable. A laptop isn’t. I don’t want to carry a laptop because it’s mental baggage. I don’t want to be thinking about where it is. Smartphones and USB keys are like appendages. I always know where they are. Plus, I know that one day soon we won’t need to carry laptops on business trips because these phones – which are really pocket computers – will be able to do it all, including hook up to hotel TVs. I am trying to experience this future now.”
by Celine Roque
October 22, 2009 at 10:09 am · Filed under
Web 2.0, productivity
The pressure to boost productivity in order to keep afloat, a lack of patience in understanding social networks, or just a general distrust of these tools – whatever the reasons, 54% of CIOs said their companies completely prohibit the use of social networks. This is according to a survey commissioned by Robert Half Technology of over 1,400 large US companies.
Almost a fifth (19%) allowed it but solely for business purposes – it’s unclear how compliance was monitored. A shade less (16%) did not mind granting permission for limited personal use, while a tenth of the respondents had even more relaxed rules, permitting personal social network usage inside the office without restrictions.
“Using social networking sites may divert employees’ attention away from more pressing priorities, so it’s understandable that some companies limit access,” said Dave Willmer, executive director of Robert Half Technology. “For some professions, however, these sites can be leveraged as effective business tools, which may be why about one in five companies allows their use for work-related purposes.”
With this prevailing corporate mindset, employees were advised to keep themselves informed about company policies, get familiar with privacy settings of frequented sites, be aware of time spent networking while at the office (if allowed), avoid negative remarks about the company and maintain a “clean” profile. You never know who could be watching.
I wonder how effective these regulations are, though. For one, there are lots of mobile Facebook and Twitter clients. If these sites are blocked via the office network, employees can always use their phones to access them. Laptops with 3G capability are also becoming popular. In addition, the study was silent on whether blocking applied to all employees or if certain departments or upper managers were given some level of access. Breaking down the responses per industry might’ve yielded interesting results.
Social networks can be a boon for business if employees are trained on how to use them properly. Without access to social networks, undisciplined workers will still probably find other ways to waste their time and avoid actual work.
by Celine Roque
October 22, 2009 at 10:06 am · Filed under
Tips for Tough Times
How Small Businesses Win Big in Tough Economies
On Harvard Business, Jeff Stibel lists strategies of successful small businesses. “Action. This is an entrepreneur’s best weapon. Things happen fast these days and fluidity favors small businesses — you don’t need to sort through the layers of bureaucracy that can slow down, or even cripple, larger companies. Small businesses can adapt to any circumstance quickly. As every thriving entrepreneur knows, speed breeds success.”
One Year Later: Lessons Learned From the Downturn
Diana Ransom of SmartMoney compiles several tactics of companies who have survived the downturn. “Not every company can play the low-cost leader. For instance, luxury-oriented companies and brands might see a sales gain by providing stellar customer service. Switching focus or recognizing expansion opportunities can also boost business. “The key is, you should put a lot of thought into which strategy to exploit ahead of time,” Cohan says. “Have acquisition, partnerships and product expansion ideas already in mind so that you are ready when the cycle changes.”
Motivation in the downturn – what’s working now
Carol Katarsky shares a few tips on how to boost morale without being overbearing and at little to no cost on Business Brief. “If business is slower, employees may pad the amount of time it takes to do a task simply to make themselves look busier. It’s a basic ploy to make them feel their job is more secure. Taking a little extra time to ensure work is top-notch is one thing. But some employees may fall victim to do-just-enough-itis. Be sure to set specific deadlines for each task or project — and always have a future or stretch goal for them to shoot for.”
Doing More With Less: Using the Down Economy as a Design Brief
For the design industry, Dan Harden argues that the slow economy can be a catalyst for creativity in his article on Fast Company. “It’s harder to design simple inexpensive products than complex expensive ones. One needs to focus more on the essential user needs and less on the endless feature possibilities or extraneous embellishments. It requires more purity, so that no matter how much they take away from it, it’s more likely to survive intact through its development. Simple inexpensive products are also better for the environment. They consume less material, have fewer parts, and use less energy to manufacture and ship.”
Snapshots From Global Economy
From Britain to China, Wall Street Journal reporters give us a glimpse of the worldwide challenges and recovery. “Still, China’s stimulus now seems to be more than strong enough to meet the official target of an 8% expansion for 2009. Officials are still publicly cautious about the world economy, with exports still down 22% from last year, and have repeatedly said the policy to support growth hasn’t changed. But government statements in recent weeks have focused more on longer-term issues like funding for small businesses and controlling excess capacity. That’s where economists are looking for new measures that would help keep the recovery going into 2010.”
Google Economist Sees Good Signs in Searches
Washington Post’s Cecilia Kang writes about the economic assessments of Google’s Hal Varian. “In March, the number of Google users searching for information about unemployment benefits or employment centers began to drop, Varian said. Overall unemployment has continued to climb, of course, but new jobless claims have declined since peaking earlier this year.”
David Hoover’s Top 5 Tips for Apprentices
On O’Reilly Radar, James Turner features a book on apprenticeship, telling new college grads that finding a good mentor is key. “For Hoover, one strategy that pays off is to not try and be the most experienced person in a group, but the least. “For me, I didn’t really get good solid mentorship until I was able to leave that company and get to another company where I could basically try to be the worst. I wanted to get onto a team where I wasn’t the three-year programmer who was suddenly senior application developer. I wanted to be on a team where as a three-year programmer, I was junior. And then I got to pair with people that had written books about test-driven development and people that were authors of successful open source projects.”
Should Entrepreneurs Sell in Today’s Economy?
Reed Phillips and Jessica Luterman Naeve say that selling your business could be profitable even in a recession, provided you don’t make certain costly mistakes on Harvard Business. “Mistake 3: Not realizing it may be in your best interest to sell now — even if you don’t have to. A popular misconception is that no one would sell their company during a downturn if they did not have to. Exit multiples (the ratio of a company’s value to its earnings) are lower now and there are fewer buyers willing to be aggressive with their bidding. But, that doesn’t mean that your company will sell for more next year or two years from now. Many companies and some industries are still winning premium pricing, including technological innovators and strong cash-flow performers.”
by Bill Ives
October 20, 2009 at 2:27 pm · Filed under
Web 2.0
I have written about both Exalead and Documentum before on this blog (see: Exalead’s CloudView Offers Integrated Search Capabilities and EMC Documentum Makes a Series of Moves into Enterprise 2.0). Now the tow software system moved closer together as Exalead announced that its CloudView information access platform has received the “designed for EMC Documentum” accreditation.
This designation means that Exalead CloudView can be integrated with Documentum to provide indexing and searching services for Documentum databases. It extends the Documentum enterprise content management platform by automatically collecting, structuring, contextualizing and delivering in real time high volumes of data from any source, helping customers better deal with information search, discovery, management, security and storage.
Exalead CloudView™ uses semantic technologies to bring structure, meaning and accessibility to unused or under-utilized data within the disparate and often heterogeneous enterprise information cloud. The system collects data from almost any source, in any format, and transforms it into structured, contextualized building blocks of business information that can be directly searched and queried, or used as the foundation for search-based business applications.
Exalead’s CloudView offering received design accreditation through participation in the Designed for EMC process, which helps ISVs, VSPs and SIs design, develop and go-to-market with successful offerings based on the EMC Documentum platform. As a member, Exalead received specialized consultation and guidance, along with access to dedicated content management technical resources. Partners can submit their offerings to be considered for the “Designed for EMC Documentum” accreditation – which if achieved, signifies to customers that the offering meets the standards for architectural compliance with Documentum practices and will provide a reliable integration with less uncertainty for joint customers.
Content management systems generate a large amount of useful information and the addition of more enterprise 2.0 features within Documentum only increases the value of this content. Now more of the social side of business transactions are captured. The key is then gaining access to this content and a tool such as Exalead is designed wit this goal in mind. I think this is a great move by both parties. Exalead receives a great “playground” of its capabilities and Documentum receives a better to mind the content it generates.
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