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Monday, June 16
Advice for SharePoint customers
by
Toby Ward
on Mon 16 Jun 2008 04:53 PM PDT
SharePoint (MOSS 2007) is robust solution, but its not for every organization. Here's some practical advice from Prescient and the authors of The SharePoint Report 2008 from CMS Watch.
“What began as a simple collaboration utility in 2001, and morphed in a portal product in 2003, has become – at least in Redmond’s eyes (home of Microsoft) – a full-blown information management platform,” write the authors of CMS Watch’s The SharePoint Report 2008, which included Shawn Shell of Consejo Inc., and a cadre of CMS Watch analysts (including founder Tony Byrne and Janus Boye).
“However, what remains less clear more than a year after the launch of SharePoint 2007 (MOSS), is where the product actually fits into the enterprise,” adds the report.
As intranet consultants we are continually confronted by or with Microsoft SharePoint – be it the 'full on' MOSS or its less sophisticated little brother, Windows SharePoint Services (WSS). Sometimes SharePoint is mandated as an option on an RFP. Sometimes the ‘free' WSS is already in use and so MOSS is an automatic no-brainer combined with Microsoft’s aggressive licensing 'deals' for upgrades from SharePoint Portal Server 2003 (or the use of SharePoint Client Access Licences as a part of other arrangements).
More often than not, however, most companies that have selected SharePoint have done so because they are already Microsoft users and it simply makes sense to them. So, these organizations are often ‘sold’ SharePoint by Microsoft, rather than ‘choosing’ it as a solution to address specific requirements.
Whether you think it’s the best thing since the invention of sliced bread, the spawn of the devil, or simply have not made your mind up yet, one thing is for sure: you certainly cannot ignore SharePoint.
The Sharepoint Report 2008 (TSR) is perhaps the most thorough analysis of the solution to date and is based on real-world use of the product within numerous organizations and it is "designed to assist both Business and Technology Managers figure out where, why and how to apply SharePoint."
The Good
MOSS is a powerful and complex solution, which according to Bill Gates, has more than 100 million licensed users. So, the technology is popular and will not disappear anytime soon.
For those that have adopted .NET and other MS products as a standard, MOSS makes a lot of integration sense. As well, it is a very good collaboration tool with a lot of light-weight, easy-to-use bells and whistles for small to medium sized organizations (or departments in larger organizations).
Other strengths:
- Blogs are built into every My Site
- Wikis are out of the box
Read the full article Advice for SharePoint customers
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Thursday, June 12
Beehive builds buzz at IBM
by
Toby Ward
on Thu 12 Jun 2008 09:26 PM PDT
“You cannot create a culture of innovation without creating a culture of collaboration – and at its core is creating a culture of trust with people you may never have met,” says Liam Cleaver, Program Director, IBM Jam Program Office (Office of the CIO). “And Web 2.0 tools help create trust.”
Innovation and collaboration takes many forms at ‘Big Blue’ including countless Intranet 2.0 tools such as thousands of wikis, blogs and the increasing popular Beehive. Beehive is akin to Facebook, but slightly different, and perhaps more viral employee social networking site.
Like Facebook, Beehive users (appropriately called bees) can:
- create a profile
- post pictures
- updates
- comments
- organize events
- tag others’ photos
Bees can also create top 5 lists (e.g. favorite books) called High5s. According to IBM, bees can “add a “hive five” list that outlines their ideas about their project, and then invite their team members to “reuse” the list and voice their opinions. Hive fives cover a lot of territory, from clearly work-related subjects to the kinds of personal exchanges that might only happen among collocated team members at the water cooler.”
Bees can also host events and create an event page that invites others to attend (think Evite.com). “The page can be a place to spread the buzz about the event and get people talking about it through the comments feature,” says the IBM website. “It's also a handy place to keep track of who is invited and who's RSVPed, and to share photos and reminisce about the event afterward.”
Beehive enables IBMers to track friends and share social activities. When an IBMer becomes a bee they get a profile page and at any time can update their status. New users are called ‘new bees’ and accumulate points for activity including posts, comments, and photos. As you accumulate points IBMers grow from a new bee into a working bee, to busy bee, and finally a super bee.
“One of our goals is to create a ‘smaller’ company in spite of our size,” said Cleaver during the Communitelligence.com Intranet Insider Word Tour. “Beehive has done more than anything than create a sense of community at IBM.”
Over 30,000 people have opted-in, sharing over 40,000 photos in less than a year since Beehive issued its first honey. And it’s still being enhanced.
To learn more about the IBM intranet and to see the Intranet Insider case study webinar, purchase the CD online.
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Tuesday, June 10
World’s best intranet: IBM (webinar)
by
Toby Ward
on Tue 10 Jun 2008 05:49 PM PDT
I’ve had the pleasure to work on or help create dozens of intranets in the past few years, and seen and learned about many dozens of others. I can say with some confidence that IBM has the best intranet in the world. Some like Cisco and Microsoft come close, but not close enough (although the latter two are still fairly secretive about all the workings of their respective intranets, and IBM is quick to show it all).
Two years ago, Intranet Insider World Tour made a stop at IBM's w3. That was before Web 2.0 tools started changing the way organizations communicate and collaborate. Now see the new Web 2.0 IBM intranet with 30,000 bloggers, podcasts (audio & video), wikis, and Beehive, an internal version of Facebook. This highly informative webinar with a look at the IBM intranet and its tools is hosted by myself and Liam Cleaver, Program Director, Collaborative Innovation at IBM.
IBM's employee social networking site (alla Facebook), Beehive
This insider’s look at the IBM intranet is this Thursday, June 12 (see Intranet Insider World Tour Webinar: IBM's w3 - Transforming The Total Workplace Experience or register or purchase the CD here). This is a must attend for any intranet manager or consultant.
"We see the future workplace as ubiquitous; totally integrated; and senses work activity and responds with resources," says Cleaver. The goal of the IBM intranet is to increase productivity, collaboration and innovation of its 380,000 employees worldwide, 45% of whom work remotely in all global time zones.
Here is a sneak preview:
- Blue Pages: One universal employee directory, 50+ applications access & use the directory data, More than 1.5 million hits per day, 65% of employees use BluePages once a day.
- Beehive: Opt-in social networking site from IBM Research, Create a personal page to share interests, thoughts, photos and/or what you do in IBM, over 33,000+ registered members and 41,000+ photos uploaded
- Fringe: Experimental directory and networking site from IBM Research, Find colleagues based on skills, interests or other shared connections,
see what's going on with the news in your social network through aggregated feeds
- BlogCentral: Opens up collaboration and creates connections across IBM through use of Web 2.0 technologies, 50,000+ users, 1,600+ active blogs
- WikiCentral: Provides easy and effective ways of collaboration in any size group. In April 2008, 3M+ page views, 1.3M+ total visitors
- Jams and ThinkPlace: Open, collaborative and on-going global forum, surfaces solutions to specific challenges, 16,000 ideas submitted since launch, 350+ ideas adopted, facilitates exchange of smaller ideas
- TAP @ work: SmallBlue: within intranet search retrieves experts based on tags and employee profiles recommending best path to connect, gives analysis of social network visually depicts people networks and geographic clusters.
"Google is often portrayed as the technology hipster, rolling out Web applications almost at whim. But unseen to the public, IBM is rolling out Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs, wikis, mashups and virtual reality technologies to help its employees be more productive. Inside its firewall, Big Blue looks pretty hip." Clint Boulton, eWeek.
Register now for the Intranet Insider World Tour Webinar: IBM's w3 - Transforming The Total Workplace Experience
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