HP has been an innovator for decades. With 150,000 employees in 170 countries supporting thousands of different projects, the intranet has to be solid and a unifying force in such a diverse and disparate company.

@hp is the unifying center of the employee intranet experience – the portal for all employees – with one-stop access to 1,850 intranet applications.

Please see the complete article on the Intranet Insider on Communitelligence.com: Intranet case study: HP.

Also note the next Intranet Insider World Tour stop is British Airways on February 21st... please see Intranet Insider World Tour: British Airways.

I’m not a big fan of predictions and soothsaying, but I still read those that are well thought.

Tony Byrne has developed his Predictions for 2007 which include:

• Google de-googles its appliance
• AJAX UI backlash
• Web managers embracing the delete key
• Falling seat prices
• Rediscovery of workflow
• Portal platforms will diversify

I agree with most of Tony’s predictions, but I think there are bigger ones at play. I know I said I don’t do these predictions but since my company is called ‘Prescient’ I feel compelled to become a hypocrite.

The year 2007 will see:

• Microsoft crank-up the marketing of Sharepoint leading to more and more customers buying without seriously examining alternative solutions
• Standalone portal products will continue to be considerably out-done by CMS solutions
• More vendors delivering a complete all-in-one solution that includes robust content management, search and portal functionality
• Continued market consolidation with many more CMS vendors being bought, merged or disappearing
• Dramatic growth in open source implementation and increased profile and functionality for bigger name solutions such as Zope, Alfresco, OpenCMS, and Plone
• More and more organizations will convert PDF and MS-Word forms to online submission forms with a mixture of in-house and outsourced solutions
• The search engine market will experience less growth than previous years as more organizations realize their current engine suffices and instead focus on content tagging, categorizing, process and policies
• Discussion and focus on Knowledge Management (KM) will continue to decline as more organizations instead narrow their attention to specific tools such as Web 2.0 applications
• More organizations will implement blogs and wikis, but they will still be part of a minority group; social bookmarking and podcasting will still remain little more than a fad on the intranet

Agree? Disagree? What other predictions will come true? Post your comment or question below.

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For more intranet news visit www.IntranetReport.com

I receive many, many questions about different content management systems and portal products and asked for my opinions on one product or vendor versus another. My response, in short, is: who cares!!

Okay usually I’m a little more polite than that, and I try not to foam at the mouth or have a hissy fit (hey, I’m only a product of my environment and I have two young daughters). My long response is a little more intelligent: it doesn’t matter what a product has or can do, what is more important is what it can do for you. More specifically, how does it meet your organization’s specific user, business and functional requirements?

Sharepoint promotional slide (Microsoft.com) with the requisite

stock photo to make me want to buy... she's cute but...

The number one vendor I’m questioned about is Microsoft, particularly Sharepoint. I know some friends and colleagues at Microsoft will give me a tough time on this, but I am completely technology neutral. Neither my company Prescient nor I have any technology partnerships or reseller (VAR) agreements with any vendor. That makes me and Prescient a very rare breed. The vast majority of even the small web design shops have partnerships with one or several vendors like Microsoft; making those firms bias. I am not and have no axe to grind with MS. In fact, I like Microsoft, I admire the Sharepoint team, and I like Microsoft’s own corporate portal (MSWeb).

However… I am not yet intimately familiar with the latest version of Sharepoint. But I am not a fan of the previous version, and I do not like the Microsoft CMS. The previous version of Sharepoint and CMS were very simplistic and limited; fine for very simple document management, but in my opinion, not very good for an enterprise intranet. Sharepoint is a fine product for some organizations, but wouldn’t be a good fit for many others.

Here’s the crux of my point: what works for one organization is sure not to work for yours. Everyone organization is unique with unique needs. This is not just true for Microsoft, but for ALL vendors and products. We’re working with a client that uses Plumtree. And frankly, this implementation, like most of the Plumtree implementations that I’ve seen, is brutal. However, I’ve also seen a very good Plumtree implementation for GlaxoSmithKline (I’ll be doing a case study article in the coming weeks).

But forget about what I have to say about Sharepoint, or what IT says, or any other company (including Microsoft). Best spend your time determining what you need to do, and then match those needs to the available solutions.

If you’re planning a new intranet – or extranet or website – take a few weeks to really thoroughly document your user, business and functional requirements for a CMS or intranet platform and then match them to several different vendor offerings. There are thousands of potential solutions to power your intranet. Take the time to thoroughly understand and document your needs and a few of these vendors.

The best way to find the best solution for your organization’s needs is through a *detailed* RFP. Get the vendors working for your business… don’t just look at the product offerings of a couple and make a decision. It might be that Sharepoint or Plumtree works for you in the end, but why not make certain. It’s just too expensive and complex a decision not to spend a few weeks gathering requirements and evaluating a few vendors accordingly.

NOTE TO VENDORS: Please don’t spam me with your sales pitches on why Sharepoint or your solution is the cat’s meow. This is not a critique of Sharepoint, Plumtree or any other solution. It’s a recommendation for following a *process* to choose Sharepoint, Plumtree or another solution. I’m not above being bribed thoug; but I’ll still remain technology neutral  Good case studies are always welcome though and frequently featured here.

About the author: Toby Ward is an intranet consultant (Internet consultant too) and the founder of Prescient Digital Media. He has worked with and improved many, many company intranets including Amgen, HSBC, Mastercard, Manulife, PepsiCo, Royal Bank, etc. Toby and his company are consultants for hire and can help improve your intranet… if given the right amount of time and motivation J Toby is also available to watch or play just about any sport – including the culinary sports J You may contact this intranet consultant directly.

Not a lot of organizations are choosing open source software for their enterprise intranet. It has been seen as risky. But open source is changing and evolving – for the better.

Goodwill stores is an exception and they highlight their experience in an excellent case study that talks about the pros and cons of their open source selection and implementation in Enterprise Open Source Magazine (see Bringing Thousands of Workers Together with an Open Source Intranet Solution).

"While the selection process was no different or faster compared to selecting a proprietary project, implementation was dramatically quicker. Because there is no licensing involved in open source solutions we simply went to the vendor's Web site, downloaded the software and dropped it into our data center. Within a couple of hours it was up and running, although it did require some significant integration to get the portal customized to our needs, and that work continues today. Even so, the first beta release of MyGoodwill was made just eight weeks after the software was initially downloaded, which is extremely fast for an enterprise application."

If it's a proven solution, I see open source as less risky then many propietary solutions. I'd like to see more examples and case studies.

Read Bringing Thousands of Workers Together with an Open Source Intranet Solution.

Have a good story or case study? Post a comment or e-mail me at toby{at}prescientdigital{dot com}

Personalization is a feature set on an intranet or portal (customer, partner or employee) that allows the user the pick and choose the types of information or applications (portlets) that will appear on his or her home page.

Based on my experience and exposure to many intranets, I estimate the following have personalized portals:

• less than 25% of Fortune 500 companies
• less than 5% of other medium to large size organizations
• less than a fraction of 1% of small to medium size organizations

Keep in mind the Fortune 500 makes up a very small percentage of the total number of business in the Western World (less than 2%). So the total number is very small, well less than 1%. However, of those companies that actually do have an intranet, the total percentage of personalized portals would be higher perhaps in the 1-5% range (though I really suspect it is closer to 1%).

Nonetheless, the number of companies attempting personalization is growing (albeit slowly), but it’s time we put some official numbers to this.

Please take 60 seconds (I completed mine in 30 seconds) to take this important survey on personalization. Even if you don’t have a personalized portal, it’s important that you complete it.

The full results of this survey will be shared publicly, and the aim is to quickly gather valuable figures that can be used by intranet and portal teams when planning product selection and implementation.

Please complete the survey here and then pass this along to other colleagues (the more participants, the better the information).

(This survey is supported by Step Two Designs, the Intranet Leadership Forum, CMSWatch, Boye IT and CM Forum.)

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