Archive for April, 2010
by Bill Ives
April 28, 2010 at 3:03 am · Filed under
Web 2.0
I have been following to the evolution of RightNow for some time (see Barack Obama’s Answer Center – Campaign CRM from RightNow and RightNow Introduces RightNow CX, the Customer Experience Suite). I recently spoke with Andrew Hull and Jen Page about their latest release. It features more features for the CX platform that continue to expand it social capabilities. RightNow CX addresses three primary customer engagement points—the Web Experience, the Social Experience, and the Contact Center Experience — to enable an integrated way to maintain customer relations and understand what is happening in the market in relation to your brand.
The Social Experience has two major components: the ability to listen and respond and the ability to build and maintain communities around your brand. We cover the enhancements to each of these components.
First, the listening ability through Cloud Monitor has been expanded with the introduction of the ability to monitor any RSS feed. In the first release the targets were Twitter and YouTube, now the RSS feed bring sin blogs, web sites and any other RSS enabled content. Later this year they will add the ability to monitor Facebook communities and MySpace. The latter is a RightNow client. Here is a look at the Cloud Monitor sources selection screen.
With Cloud Monitor you also can now create incident reports on what you find with open click and filter search by language. Here is the Cloud Monitor response box with the incident report set up box.
On the community side a moderation workflow has been added to enhance community management. For example, you can route messages to the appropriate person for response and track that activity. You can also see more of a community member’s profile on an company agent’s desktop to enable more informed conversations with that customer. You can also add elements of the brand’s knowledge base and add them into the community. In addition, you can add discussion threads from the community into a brand’s portal. Here is a screen and diagram how you can move information between the knowledgebase and the community.
Other enhancements include the ability to provide comments to formal answers in their knowledge base, as well as rate answers. This was the knowledge base application used by the Obama campaign (see post above). It would have been interesting to have that feature engaged then. This certainly provides for more engagement opportunities but requires a organization that is open to listening to its customers or followers.
We also discussed the RightNow Cloud Challenge. Andrew said that it is part of their commitment to making it easy for customers to business with them. Some cloud providers have keep aspects of the old enterprise license model as the moved in tot eh cloud. RightNow has specified six components of what should be inciuded in a SaaS model to take full advantage of the flexibility it offers and they have committed to working with clients under these assumptions. These six aspects are by RightNow as follows:
No Shelfware – clients should be able to buy only what they need and still get long-term pricing certainty
Minimum 5-Year Pricing Certainty – clients should get long-term fixed and transparent pricing without long-term lock-ins
No Long-Term Contract Lock Ins – clients should be able to walk away from contracts if vendors aren’t delivering value
No-Haggle Flex Up / Down – clients should be able to easily adjust seats, capacity or even product modules up – or down – to meet their changing business requirements
“Roll-Over” Usage – clients should be able to adjust for seasonality without having to purchase capacity for peak usage that then sits idle most of the year
Cash Service Credits – clients should receive a cash reimbursement if a vendor fails to meet its service commitments
I think these assumptions all make sense to me. The SaaS market has seen growth is a down market because of principles like these so a vender will be smart to adhere to all of them. RigthNow worked with Ray Wang, partner, Altimeter Group to make sure that all the important bases were covered.
by Bill Ives
April 21, 2010 at 3:25 pm · Filed under
Web 2.0
JackBe provides a comprehensive enterprise mashup solution and I have covered them before on this blog (see JackBe is Refining its Enterprise Mashup Offering and more recently, JackBe Leads Formation of Open Mashup Alliance to Advance Adoption of Enterprise Mashup Solutions). Mashups continue to be one of the major building blocks of enterprise 2.0 and JackBe reported a 355 percent growth in revenue for 2009. I recently spoke with John Crupi, CTO, and Chris Warner, VP of Marketing, on their latest moves.
We started with their new cloud offering. In the past companies could install Presto, JackBe’s mashup product, on their own private cloud. Now JackBe has expanded this option by offering a cloud services for its customers through Amazon. Each client gets their own instance and this helps with administration and security. The on-premise option is still available and in the future, they may move to a hybrid option.
The Presto cloud offering is also available at no cost to all members of the JackBe Mashup Developer Community (www.jackbe.com/dev). This allows mashup developers to connect Internet-based data sources in their own secure workspace and easily share their mashups with fellow community members. It promotes greater collaboration. With Presto Cloud (Community Edition), users can also take advantage of a public mashup catalog consisting of hundreds of mashable data sources from JackBe Preferred Partners as well as shared mashup applications created by other community members.
Two changes were made as part of this move to the cloud. There are some new collaboration features and enhanced APIs that further encourage the sharing of mashups. John said that the cloud option has increased their appreciation of collaboration possibilities with mashups. This appreciation has influenced their next general release, Presto 3.0, which is planned in a few months.
We next moved to a discussion of Presto 3.0 which JackBe plans to release in June 2010. One of the lead concepts is proving an App Store for the enterprise. This builds off the Apple concept to provide a place to share mashups and find the components for new ones. This is yet another of the recent examples of the consumer market driving innovation in the enterprise market. The Presto mashups can have widget interfaces that can be embedded in other apps increasing their flexibility and the range of applications. The Enterprise App Store is targeted to help both users and developers.
JackBe has built social capabilities into Presto 3.0 through what they term the Hub. This allows for users and developers to find, share, rate, and comment on mashups and Apps. It acts like a combination of a Facebook Wall and Apple’s App Store with added security and governance to meet enterprise needs. Below is a sample screen shot of a Hub.
Wires (see below) is where mashups are assembled through a visual modeling interface.
The Mashboard (see below) is where users can organize, run and share mashup Apps. Users can also “connect” Apps together in Mashboard.
Chris and John mentioned that all of these screens will likely get more tweaks and improvements as they move closer to Presto 3.0″s June 2010 production date.
Chris gave me an example of one of their popular mashups and how it can be customized. Book publishers have become avid users of mashups. In one case they can take the latest tagged content from sources such as Yahoo News and Google News or even CNN and cross reference this to the tagged content in their catalogs to promote books which relate to what is hot in the news. Users can vary the sources. This allows book publishers to dynamically reshuffle their offerings to meet the latest demands within their target populations. I think this is a great example of the type of flexibility that mashups offer.
JackBe is also increasing their integration with SharePoint. This move is being done by a number of suppliers as SharePoint continues to dominate the enterprise market but, at the same time, continues to have gaps in its functionality. With Presto 3.0 you will be able to push content out of SharePoint through mashups into other applications. You will also be able to do the reverse and bring content from other sources into SharePoint. You will also be able to cross-connect content from one SharePoint instance to another. John said that some of their clients have as many as hundreds of thousands of instances of SharePoint. Presto 3.0 will be able to harness data from SharePoint and bring disparate data into SharePoint. You see a sample screen below.
I like all these new moves and the terms JackBe has picked to label them. Mashups and Apps are the glue that enable you to do what portals promised and never really delivered. I look forward to seeing the release of Presto 3.0 and I would not be surprised to see similar growth for them in 2010.
by Bill Ives
April 15, 2010 at 3:58 am · Filed under
Web 2.0
According to Mainsoft, a provider of cross-platform interoperability software, currently 39% of business e-mail users use Microsoft Outlook but they have been unable to connect through Outlook to Google docs. I have recently been using Google Docs as we put together the Pistachio enterprise microsharing survey. It is very useful.
Mainsoft plans to attack this cross-platform need head-on. Through its free Harmony product it offers full-featured access to Google Docs documents directly from Microsoft Outlook. They believe “e-mail and document collaboration sites need to work together seamlessly – so end users can be more productive – regardless of who is at war with whom.’ I would agree.
Harmony also offers full-featured access to SharePoint document libraries, within Microsoft Outlook. These are certainly productivity improvements for Outlook users. Currently, most Outlook users store documents on their local hard drives and share them as e-mail attachments. This is not limited to Outlook users but services like Google docs make collaboration much easier as I recently discovered.
According to Andy McAffee people spend an estimated 26 hours per week on average using enterprise email. Mainsoft quotes Matt Cain, research vice president and Gartner’s lead e-mail analyst, states, “we believe the ultimate role of the e-mail client is to aggregate communication and collaboration streams from many modalities into one common interface. In this way, the e-mail client becomes the communication and collaboration master console — a universal queue, so to speak.”
This will certainly be an improvement as email needs to adapt to the more collaborative world of enterprise 2.0
by Bill Ives
April 13, 2010 at 10:26 am · Filed under
Web 2.0
I recently had the pleasure of doing a video interview with Attivio CTO Sid Probstein. The link will take you to the 26 minute conversation. Our discussion centered around the deluge of content created by social media on the web and what companies are doing to try to combine that public opinion and sentiment with their own internal, enterprise content and data.
We focused primarily on the impact within the enterprise. I started by asking Sid about the opportunity within enterprise 2.0 to take advantage of looking at the unstructured data to determine the pulse of the enterprise and what conversations are going on. In 2008 more content was produced on the Web that in the history of content production, largely because of the vast increase in social media use. Now that social media is entering the enterprise what will this deluge bring? Will we be able to harvest this content or be overwhelmed by it. This is an issue that Attivio addresses and Sid responded to this question and other related ones during our conversation
Included in this interview is a preview of a new demonstration that Attivio developed in conjuction with Accenture that shows how the Attivio Active Intelligence Engine™ can be used to power a SocialCRM application that pulls in content from the web (review sites) and seamlessly indexes that content along with structured data pulled from a SalesforceCRM system.
by Bill Ives
April 8, 2010 at 10:12 pm · Filed under
Web 2.0
Socialcast was one of the first enterprise microblogging providers (see 2008 post: Socialcast Brings Twitter Style Functionality into the Enterprise) and I have covered them several times since that first post (e.g., Socialcast Adds Broadcasting Capability to Enterprise Microsharing). Recently, I spoke with CEO Tim Young on the latest developments, which turned out to be quite a list.
We started at a high level. Tim sees a major shift in enterprise collaboration happening every twenty years: the business telephone exchange was introduced in the 1950s, the FAX in the1970s, email in the1990s and now activity streams – through tools like Socialcast – are starting to play a major role right on time, in 2010. I think there is certainly a movement beyond siloed email to the more transparent enterprise 2.0. Activity streams may be the tool that carries this transparency throughout the enterprise to reap the opportunity for increased awareness that enterprise 2.0 brings.
Socialcast is focusing its efforts on helping large enterprises, in particular those of 10,000 or more employees, increase their collaboration capabilities. I think this is a smart move given their capabilities and the market. To support this strategy they have made a number of moves, including enhanced features that we will look at: Outlook and SharePoint integration, and increased support for mobile devices. BlackBerry support has been added to their existing iPhone support, with an interface geared to align with BlackBerry features. All of these should appeal to the large enterprise user. They now refer to their role in the large enterprise as providing the enterprise activity stream engine or EASE. This capability can be deployed as a SaaS, a private cloud, or on-premises.
New features include the addition of automated updates to the stream based on user actions. Through their REST API they can mine these automated updates from almost any enterprise applications such as a CRM, data warehouse, or logistics system. Users operating within these systems can also submit manual updates in the traditional Twitter style without having to go into the Socliacast application itself. When someone replies to an update the reply is called a comment and it starts a threaded discussion on the topic.
In addition to the traditional microblogging follow/unfollow capability, there is the option for a universal update stream that users within a particular group can automatically follow using the enterprise’s LDAP. Socialcast can play in the foreground as the common interface to what is happening across many applications. Or it can operate in the background allowing users to stay within those applications. Email is one example of this. You can have Socialcast updates go into the email system, or you can use the email system to update Socialcast.
To further support this email integration, Socialcast has integrated with Outlook. Now Socialcast messages can be part of your Outlook folder and you never have to leave Outlook to use Socialcast. Currently, there is full support for Outlook 2003 and 2007, and 2010 will be supported soon. In the sample screenshot below, you can see Socialcast as part of the Outlook folder scheme and see Socialcast in operation with Outlook.
Tim said that the Outlook integration has proven to be a useful way to get late adopters within enterprise organizations participating in microblogging; people start within Outlook and many migrate to using Socialcast directly to access additional features. The SharePoint integration brings comprehensive microblogging capability to SharePoint and should provide a similar adoption path. There is support for SharePoint 2003, 2007, and 2010.
One of the major new areas is the addition of enhanced analytics that the company refers to as Social Business Intelligence. Some of its many features include organizational network analysis tools to identify the informal connections between individuals and groups. Socialcast reports on posting, commenting, and “liking” activity over time, offering insight into conversation initiation and response behaviors. There is also lurking and listening activity analysis. The interactivity patterns between users are identified, showing proactive and reactive relationships with others in their social graph.
Moments of transition from passive to active usage are also recognized, allowing you to find people and topics that start conversations. There is interactive visualization of all community discussions, surfacing the most active messages based on user interaction, popular posting times and dates. Here is an example of an activity analysis screen that shows a glimpse of overall network activity and top contributors, active teams and groups.
Here is an example of a deep dive into a user’s activity, showing where he or she fits into the social graph.
Here is an example of the measurement of trending topics, important conversations, and influential members.
User roles are identified and defined as follows: broker: spurs conversations that include input from a wide variety of users form different business units and departments, central connector: spurs diverse discussions from within their business unit or department, and peripheral player: engages infrequently and primarily with people from their business unit or department. User activity levels are also reported on.
I was impressed with the depth and variety of analytics that Socialcast has conceived. I think it represents a strong step in the right direction of realizing the transparency that Enterprise 2.0 can provide.
by Bill Ives
April 5, 2010 at 8:26 am · Filed under
Web 2.0
Inmagic provides a comprehensive knowledge management and collaboration application called Social Knowledge Networks. It began in the corporate library management space in 1983 and grew up with knowledge management and now Enterprise 2.0. I wrote about them before on this blog (see Inmagic Presto 3.0 Adds Social Components to Knowledge Management Platform). Recently, I spoke with Phil Green, CTO, and Mike Cassettari, VP of Marketing, about their latest moves with the release of Presto 3.3.
Mike began with some background on their corporate strategy. Inmagic originally targeted the corporate research and library functions with a knowledge management offering. Now they are moving into the broader enterprise market. They felt that many of the information management applications focused more on the content producer and left the content user without robust information access and collaboration capabilities. This gap also applied to accessing the right content experts. Presto provides “People” as a searchable content type. Additional profile customization and personalization capabilities have been added to make finding subject matter experts easy. Here is sample of the user interface.
To address this issue, Inmagic has built its information and expertise access capabilities to support specific business efforts such as proposal development or focused research efforts. To meet these needs Presto 3.3 is designed to better enable non-technical business users to create and manage Social Knowledge Networks. These networks can “span enterprise silos to merge relevant content, search, and community to address high-value business processes or topics.” Here is an example eof their federated search.
They also recognized that SharePoint is becoming widely used in the enterprise collaboration space and have enhanced their SharePoint integration to bring their bidirectional query and access capabilities to this user group. These capabilities can be organized to address specific issues. Below is a screen shot displaying the Sharepoint integration.
Phil gave a customer example. An online university has created a system to enable its professors to quickly build curriculum through content sharing. This content sharing can be aggregated from multiple sources. You can bring content directly into Presto. You can access content across other enterprise repositories, or you can access related content on the Web. Users can create federated search adapters to access external content such as subscriptions, journals, and external research information. The people who configure that system can target specific types of content, but then Presto takes over to automate much of the content acquisition process.
I asked Phil that since SharePoint developers say they can build almost anything with this tool, why not just use it instead of adding Presto. He segmented SharePoint users into two groups to respond to the question. First, there are the low-end users who use SharePoint’s out-of-the-box capabilities to proliferate sites, but these can quickly become more siloed than what they replaced. Presto can address this issue with minimum development expense to unlock the silos.
On the high end, many people start with SharePoint and create complex implementations that require a lot of systems integration time and costs. Presto can greatly shorten the effort here and reduce the amount of custom work that can be expensive to maintain over time. It is the classic “build versus buy” issue, and Presto is designed to bring down the total cost of ownership through the use of their existing capabilities. You can get up and running quicker to realize the benefits of the implementation much faster. This makes sense and I have used this approach to ROI many times in the past.
The capabilities of Presto takes much of the effort out of the IT developers hands and puts it into the control of content strategists. This latter group needs to be involved anyway. However, they are sometimes neglected when there are heavy IT development requirements. I like their enhancements, as Presto 3.3 should bring the transparency benefits of Enterprise 2.0 to more people at a greater speed.
