Archive for July, 2010
by Bill Ives
July 26, 2010 at 3:02 am · Filed under
Web 2.0
I have covered Jackbe before including a preview of this release (see JackBe Provides Enterprise Mashup Platform on the Cloud and Previews Presto 3.0). I spoke with John Crupi, CTO and Chris Warner, VP of Marketing about their new 3.0 release. Two of the main additions are a platform for creating internal Enterprise App Stores, as well as a robust visual toolset for creating secure Enterprise Apps.
We first discussed the Enterprise App Store. This is modeled after the very successful and well-known iTunes store but it takes the functionality inside the enterprise as a means of governance more that a commercial distribution channel. I like the use of the App Store concept, as people are very familiar with it. The platform allows enterprise consumers of apps a single source that is well organized and searchable. It also offers the creators of apps a central place to share their efforts within the enterprise. Here is a sample App Store screen.
There is an App Store Manager responsible for ensuring the Apps have function, documentation and work as advertised. The review and approval process provides central governance that can be very useful given the ease in which apps can be powered by mashups. This is a way to avoid the potential chaos of too many apps and redundant apps. You can better get the right apps to the right users with some degree of vetting along the way. The apps can be out-of-the-box creations, as well as templates requiring further customization. Here is a App Store Manager screen.
The App Store has an area called ‘My Apps’ where users can place and organize the Apps they want and use. They can provide comments; tag and share the Apps. This information accelerates the ability for other users to find and use the Apps they want. Here is a sample My Apps screen
JackBe has also upgraded their development tools with this release. Their new visual tools make it easier for non-developers to create enterprise apps and deploy them to enterprise destination like portals, SharePoint, iGoogle, and mobile devices. Presto 3.0 includes enhancement to Wires, their visual mashup-making tool, Mashboard, a new App assembly and wiring tool, and Mashup Sites for SharePoint, an advanced SharePoint add-on that mashes SharePoint Lists and publishes Apps as SharePoint WebParts.
They showed me some apps created with these new tools. One set were developed by a non-technical marketing person and covered the World Cup. There was an amusing comparison of goals per capita and goals vs. GDP for the competing countries. These applications took minutes to create without programming using publically available data.
I especially liked the new Mashhboard that allows users to group or link apps along a workflow. The creations can run on any browser, on the iPad, or even within Excel. The approach is to make everything simple: creation, distribution selection, and implementation. Mashups are one of the key building blocks of enterprise 2.0 and it is nice to see these new features to streamline the process. Here is a Mashboard screen.
JackBe will also be making a cloud-based Developer Edition of Presto 3.0 available to all members of its Mashup Developer Community. Registration in the Community is free and includes tutorials, samples, and support forums.
by Bill Ives
July 20, 2010 at 3:28 am · Filed under
Web 2.0
SkillSoft recently announced the launch of inGenius, a social learning platform layer that enables customers to securely enable their employees to find, create and share knowledge assets and expertise with their colleagues as they leverage the extensive SkillSoft library of on-demand learning assets. I have covered SkillSoft before as they were moving in this direction (see SkillSoft Introduces More Web 2.0 Features with SkillPort® 7.0 Learning Management System) and was very interested in this new move so I spoke with Pam Boiros of SkillSoft about their offering.
Pam first went through several trends that helped to prompt them to make this move. Learning has become more social and the interest in peer learning has increased. I certainly agree with these observations. I have always been a proponent of social and peer learning through such methods as simulation-based learning going back to the 80s. It is great to see the rise of social computing providing a much richer platform for this approach.
There is also the move from learning as an event to learning as a continuous process. This was one of the reasons I first got involved in knowledge management in the 90s and now the line between learning and KM is becoming even more blurred for good reasons.
To address these trends and take advantage of the new capabilities that social computing and social networks can bring to learning, SkillSoft’s Books24×7 division introduced inGenius. It enables social learning by extending the value of expert information and infusing it with the knowledge and expertise of an organization’s own employees. Unlike many stand-alone social networking applications, inGenius is built on SkillSoft’s Books24×7 on demand content collections containing more than 25,000 titles — digital books from leading publishers, analyst research reports, and white papers — as well as 1,300 videos of thought leaders and practitioners. Below you can see a inGenius home page.
inGenius enhances SkillSoft’s core learning assets with a feature set that enables learners to leverage content assets as seeds of discussion and to add community content (“co-content”) including notes, comments and ratings that add a unique layer of context and relevance, specific to their organization. It further enhances the social learning experience with opportunities to build connections and allow sharing between learners. inGenius also enables learners to discover knowledgeable colleagues by searching social profiles. Here is sample profile page.
inGenius is a free add-on to the Books24×7 offering. People can set up their own profile with recommended titles and comments on works. They also have implemented the following model used by Twitter so people can see the activities of those they respect. The activity stream contains auto-generated updates based on activities such as adding comments, rather than manually created tweets. You can click on a link in the update to see the actual comment in the context of the relevant learning material. I think this is a good approach for their content focused approach. Here is a sample activity stream.
When you do searches for content you now get additional returns on the people who have commented on this content or recommended it, putting a great social context to search, another good move. The addition of social networking capabilities to a learning library makes great sense and SkillSoft has done a great job with this release.
by Bill Ives
July 15, 2010 at 4:41 am · Filed under
Web 2.0
Central Desktop is a SaaS collaboration platform primarily aimed at the small to mid-size business market. I have covered them a number of times including these posts (Central Desktop Releases its 2.0 Version and Central Desktop Using Twitter for Sales, Service, and Brand Monitoring Conversations). I saw them at the Boston Enterprise 2.0 conference and then spoke with CEO Isaac Garcia afterwards.
Isaac said that 65% of the documents stored on Central Desktop are Microsoft Office (Word, Excel and PowerPoint) files and they decided to more directly address these users. They recently announced details about Central Desktop for Office, a new cloud-enabled document collaboration tool for Microsoft Office users that will be available later this summer. Central Desktop for Office allows users to simultaneously co-author Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents in real time, as well as open and save files directly into the cloud.
I asked Isaac how the simultaneous co-authoring works. Central Desktop’s co-authoring feature enables multiple users to edit Office files simultaneously, by conveniently tracking and syncing all changes made by collaborators and merging them correctly into one updated version. It is not exact real time like Google Wave but rather a back and forth capability that operates like chat. I like this better as control is swapped rather than inviting the potential chaos of simultaneous real time edits. Below you can see a Word document opened with the tool bar at the top and the editing participants in the left column.
What I especially liked was the ability to have a comment dialogue occur around the document editing. It makes the Office docs social. Each participant can see the comments and others can be alerted to them if they request to see such updates. Central Desktop for Office leverages technology from OffiSync and is compatible with any version of Microsoft Office including 2003, 2007 and 2010. So you can make older versions of Office more social, as well as Office 2010. Below you can see the commenting feature in the lower left column.
Once installed, Central Desktop for Office adds a new toolbar in Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint that enables users to open, save, edit and co-author files stored in the cloud – directly from within Office. The new tool also brings additional collaboration capabilities into Office including the ability to comment on files, manage subscribers and track version history.
Isaac said they are considering more features for the toolbar such as the ability for Skype calls and micro-blogging. Central Desktop already supports micro-blogging but they may add the capability directly into the new Office toolbar.
Central Desktop for Office’s co-authoring capabilities are very useful for business teams that need to create and collaborate on documents such as project plans, budget forecasts and sales presentations. Rather than waiting for each person to edit the document in a sequence, Central Desktop for Office allows users to simultaneously make changes and each version is automatically merged. This eliminates review cycles and can drive faster, more efficient document collaboration.
by Bill Ives
July 9, 2010 at 3:22 am · Filed under
Web 2.0
I have written about MarkLogic before (see MarkLogic Extends its XML Server) on this blog. Recently, I connected with them again and discussed their launch of a cloud-based information infrastructure to help users make sense of structured and unstructured data. They offer MarkLogic Server on virtualized platforms to enable both private cloud deployments using VMware, for example, as well as public cloud through Amazon EC2.
With search-engine capabilities built, customers can run queries on metadata, as well as documents. They gave me an example of this dual capability through a medical journal publisher. You can look for articles on topics, as well as by title and author. You can narrow down the search to cover a certain drug used in a certain location to address a certain issue that has been cited by five or more other journals and/or prompted five or more letters to the journal editor. This is an impressive ability to create specific search efforts.
MarkLogic initially focused on the media and publishing market beginning in 2004. They added government in 2007 and are now expanding into financial services. One of the interesting sites they support is the Warrior Gateway that supports returning veterans. This is a great cause and it provides much needed and well deserved support. The site provides a directory, job search information, offers a blog and Twitter updates, along with other services. Returning vets can register and join the community. They can find service providers such as medical professionals and comment and rate these service providers. Below is a subset of the Warrior Gateway home page
MarkLogic has five common uses cases. First, there is providing a common repository such as the medical journal publishing firm mentioned above. Second, it is used as a metadata catalog. The National Archives and the Library of Congress are examples here. Third, it can be used for digital content delivery. In this instance it can separate storage from delivery to accommodate a variety of devices. Fourth, it can provide intelligence about the content. In this case it can combine heterogeneous content and look at trends. A fifth case is social applications such as the Warrior Gateway.
Here is another example. The Springer database is a growing collection of unusual content including drawings, photos, tables, charts, histograms, and figures. MarkLogic Server enables users to search many parameters such as captions, references to the images, and user-generated keywords. Springer Images leverages the full-text search, content enrichment, and faceted navigation capabilities of MarkLogic Server, providing a new way to access hard-to-find scientific content of the utmost value to researchers. Here is a sample screen for the Springer application.
MarkLogic is continuing to invest in its product offerings with a focus on lowering the cost of adoption/operation for customers, adding additional enterprise data management capabilities and provide more refinement capabilities around search results. The firm is expanding and recently received a CODiE award for best database management system for the second year in a row. Their CEO, Dave Kellogg, writes the Kellblog, “covering next-generation database management, enterprise search, and content management technologies along with commentary on Silicon Valley, venture capital, and the business of software” I like their use cases and look forward to hearing more.
by Bill Ives
July 6, 2010 at 3:19 am · Filed under
Web 2.0
Here is a software innovation that is potentially transformational. I have long been interested in providing support to knowledge intense business processes. This was my first exposure to what became knowledge management in the early 90s and the concept behind many useful enterprise 2.0 implementations. Now OpenSpan is going beyond mashups to provide quick to create interconnections between applications to automate many aspects of business processes. As a result users have more time to focus on the decisions within these processes. These automations can also create substantial time savings to drive significant ROI.
I recently spoke with Rick Marquardt and Francis Carden of OpenSpan about their offering. OpenSpan’s User Process Management software provides an intuitive visual design environment for automating user processes within and across applications without requiring APIs or changes to the application’s code. They have figured out a way to get inside the application even if it does not contain an API for this task. Developers have the ability to integrate Windows, cloud/SaaS and custom legacy applications, which enables organizations to improve user efficiency while extending the ROI of existing applications.
With OpenSpan organizations can go inside any application a user accesses, monitor user interactions to understand how power users operate and then automate processes to streamline these actions. Building these automations to connect applications is a drag and drop process as Rick and Francis demonstrated to me. Below you can see an example of making connections between a CRM application and an Order Entry system. This can eliminate the current out dated practice of cut and paste between apps to automate fill-ins.
Open Span can also monitor user activity to help determine which processes to automate and what applications to connect. In addition to reducing steps, this can also reduce the number of windows on a user’s desktop. Using the OpenSpan Events desktop monitoring technology, you can record every step in every user’s workflow, 24×7x365. It is no longer necessary to conduct sample time and motion studies or view screen recordings to try and guess what’s happening. You can get the user’s detailed desktop interactions in real time for accurate monitoring. This can both help target where to automate and then track the ROI from these efforts. I have been involved in a number of call center monitoring efforts so I have first hand appreciation of the value of this capability. Below is a sample screen.
OpenSpan is now offering a free download of their IDE, OpenSpan Studio or the Plug-In for Visual Studio. Built on an embedded version of the Microsoft Visual Studio Framework, the plug-in can be used with Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and makes OpenSpan functionality available for the first time via a .NET API. This means that developers can now access all of OpenSpan’s runtime capabilities directly from code and mix and match .NET and OpenSpan projects in a single executable. OpenSpan has decided to make the tools available free and focus their commercial fees on providing the run time to support automations the developers create. I think this is a smart move. It reduces any financial risk until a solution is created that demonstrates value.
To further support developers OpenSpan has created the OpenSpan Developer Community. It offers extensive resources, including a code gallery, knowledge base and forum for collaborating with other developers. This is another smart move as the objective is to empower developers with increased capability to create applications that use the OpenSpan runtime. The OpenSpan Developer Community is seen below.
I asked how this goes beyond mashups as they have a similar objective. Mashups generally only draw data from multiple sources. While this is certainly an improvement in application development, OpenSpan also can perform transactions within these applications by getting completely inside the applications. This can even work with third party applications. I watched OpenSpan connect a FedEx tracking system with an internal order processing application with only the requirement of gaining user access to the FedEx Web app, not developer access. Rick said that their clients have seen dramatic improvements in business process execution. I can believe this. As I said at the beginning this could be transformational.
by Bill Ives
July 1, 2010 at 3:41 am · Filed under
Web 2.0
I have written about CubeTree several times on this blog. The most recent was Cubetree Moves Forward with New Features and Funding, earlier this year. I also met a number of their executives at the last year’s Enterprise 2.0 conference so I was interested to learn that they have recently been acquired by SuccessFactors, another firm I have covered here (see SuccessFactors: Bringing Web 2.0 to Talent Management). SuccessFactors is one of the world’s most widely deployed cloud-based business solutions. It is used by more than 8 million people within over 3,000 companies.
Recently, I spoke with Carlin Wiegner, the CubeTree CEO, about the impact of this acquisition and how CubeTree will fit within SuccessFactors. First, he said that this move is opening a many more doors for them given the large installed base, new use cases in areas such as learning, and a larger sales force that SuccessFactors offers. There is also great synergy between the two offerings. SuccessFactors has recently broadened their offering with the BizX performance management system that offers more robust support for knowledge workers.
The addition of Cubetree can take this BizX support to the next level with its many collaboration features. Individuals can quickly create rich profiles and begin engaging with others in their organization to get work done, find co-workers who can help, and share insights as they happen. Teams can make use of workspaces that enable groups to immediately gather around a project, collaborate, share documents and perform work tasks. Ciubetree also provides executive dashboards that offer insights into how a company is executing on a day-to-day basis.
CubeTree will remain a separate brand as SucessFactors wanted CubeTree’s capabilities to both extend its own offerings and as an independent, but well aligned, offering. For example, the SuccessFactor employee profile will now have CubeTree’s related communication and collaboration activities embedded within it. Other aspects of CubeTree will findtheir way into the appropriate SuccessFactors offerings. The CubeTree micro-blogging feature will be embedded within SuccessFactors but also remain a separate free offering.
Below is a sample screen from the micro-blogging feature. In this case you see a status update “in progress” where an employee is letting his co-workers know that he has wrapped up his current project and where he will be if they need him for the rest of the day. The CubeTree micro-blogging capability also integrates with Twitter. Below we see the same employee sending a notice about the release notes post to a customer who had a question about new features in this weeks release. By adding a custom hash tag (#cubetree) to his Twitter update it is posted to his CubeTree feed. He then adds a comment back that he is pushing it live on the blog.
CubeTree provides micro-blogging as a free feature and the other capabilities comes in a commercial package. I think this is a smart move as micro-blogging is the perfect way to introduce your offerings within an enterprise. It is easy to install and does not require integration with business process to obtain initial benefits. It can then be spread virally throughout an enterprise to quickly demonstrate value.
I also asked Carlin about what new features that CubeTree has introduced since our last conversation. They do frequent releases for continuous improvement but one of the main areas they have focused on is more robust email integration. CubeTree can work with any email client as it is not a plug in. Instead it sends messages that appear to the email client like any other message. This allows users to stay within email for many CubeTree activities. You can also have very robust email alert settings that can be easily turned on and off. Below you can see some of the robust email settings.
To complement the email integration there is also very robust mobile capabilities. Below you can see a message on a mobile device. The user is replying to an instant notification and posting it back to CubeTree
I like this combination as SuccessFactors and CubeTree nicely complement each other without bring redundancies to sort out. Carlin said they sorted through several possible mergers. I do not know the other possibilities but I think they made a good choice.
Thought...
