Intranet Blog

Social software that power Intranet 2.0

Toby Ward — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 00:53:45 -0700

“Looking for greater flexibility and support for more ad hoc processes, employees have responded with a more bottom-up approach, in some cases circumventing official information systems,” say CMS Watch Founder Tony Byrne and contributing analyst Jarod Gingras, the principal authors of The Enterprise Social Software Report 2008.

CMS Watch's social media vendors matrix.

In other words, if your organization hasn’t embraced and standardized social software, your employees will begin installing it and using it without your permission. I know of what client that only found out recently that 15% of their employee base had voluntarily joined a dedicated company Facebook site. At BT, 4,000 employees formed their own “BT Facebook” site. BT took note and in response built their own social networking site called MyBT (see The power of Intranet 2.0).

If your organization hasn’t already developed an Intranet 2.0 plan (social media plan), you would do well to develop one before employees develop their own. This plan ideally contains the business case for moving to Intranet 2.0. Byrne and Gingras cite a number of business benefits to implementing enterprise social software:

Hard benefits:

Reduce expenses
Increase productivity
Increase customer retention

Soft benefits:

Improve internal communication
Improve internal collaboration
Improve employee morale and retention

I cited a number of positive ROI examples, or link to others, in Intranet 2.0: A must-have.

While a plan is a must, an even more difficult task may be the selection of the actual software that will power your Intranet 2.0 – there are now hundreds of solutions on the market. The Enterprise Social Software Report dissects the capabilities of 20 different social software (social media) solutions for Intranet 2.0 (or Web 2.0) including those from:

IBM (Lotus Connections)
SharePoint
Connectbeam
Facebook
Google (Blogger)
MediaWiki
Socialtext
and others

Each of these solutions are reviewed for their business service uses including:

Blog
Wiki
Social Ranking
Project Tracking & Participation
Multimedia
Info Filtering
File Sharing
Web Conferencing
Discussion Forums
Presence / Instant Messaging (IM)
People Finding (e.g. social networking)

All of this is rated according to various Administration & System Services (e.g. security, analytics, etc.) and various corporate scenarios (e.g. Enterprise Collaboration, Project Collaboration, etc.).

Some interesting notes regarding the two big solutions, SharePoint and Lotus Connections / Quickr:

Lotus Connections / Quickr: strong social networking, strong presence and IM tools, excellent integration with Notes and emerging Outlook connectors, and an innovative Blackberry application; “underwhelming blog/wiki” and requires WebSphere Portal for roles and group modules – best for Enterprise Networking; poor for Project Collaboration.
Microsoft SharePoint (MOSS 2007): broad range of third-party plug-ins, lightweight portal services including bundled applications and lightweight document and records management services into social applications, search works well in an all-SharePoint environment; almost all native services are weak compared to competitors, near complete absence of social networking, social tagging & Bookmarking, and surprisingly weak integration with Outlook – best for Project Collaboration (e.g. team sites); poor for Enterprise deployments.

In short, Lotus is a better enterprise solution; SharePoint is a better project or team solution.

Regardless, 20 different products are reviewed in detail (from 10 – 25 pages per product review) and it’s a worthwhile read if you are looking at implementing social media or Intranet 2.0 software. Buy CMS Watch’s Enterprise Social Media Report 2008 (they offer a 30-day, 100% money-back guarantee).

If you’re looking to move to Intranet 2.0, but don’t exactly know how, then have a look at our Intranet 2.0 Blueprint service, or call me at 416.986.2226.

ADDITIONAL READING:

Intranet 2.0: A must-have

Enterprise 2.0 vs. Intranet 2.0

Embracing Enterprise 2.0

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Advice for SharePoint customers

Toby Ward — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 16:53:45 -0700

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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Another portal bites the dust

Toby Ward — Mon, 26 May 2008 14:27:43 -0700

In recent weeks, both Oracle and Serena took the first steps to axing intranet solutions (see Intranet portal solutions die, evolve & move to Web 2.0 ). Not to be outdone by the trend, Sun Microsystems is saying good-bye to Sun Portal.

Janus Boye, Contributing Analyst for CMS Watch reports that Sun will soon abandon its current portal product, Sun Portal, to focus on its new partnership with Liferay, and its open source portal solution, Liferay Portal.

“This is pretty big news because Sun already has a portal offering, which now will go away,” writes Boye on the CMSWatch.com site (Sun Portal Server rides into the sunset in favor of Liferay). “The current release of Sun Portal is 7.2 and customers should not expect a Sun Portal Server 8.”

Sun will continue to sell Sun Portal, and support it (for the time being), but Sun customers should make other long-term plans.

Intranet 2.0 focus

Sun will now invest its portal energies into the Liferay Portal which includes built-in Web 2.0 / Intranet 2.0 tools including a secure interface to Facebook, and support for Google Gadgets. “Sun's participation in Liferay's community will result in enhanced development of enterprise Web 2.0 features and optimized performance for Liferay Portal in combination with Sun's family of products,” says the joint release from Sun and Liferay.

“It indicates that Sun is taking a serious, pragmatic approach to open-source software,” says Garter (Sun and Liferay Plan to Brighten Open-Source Enterprise Portals). “Despite having an offering that competes with Liferay, Sun has identified an emerging trend and has acted on its assessment of the company's growth, value to Sun's ecosystem, speed of enhancements and track record.”

“Really what will happen is that Sun will take a snapshot of the Liferay Portal code and use this to create a Sun-branded portal with added functionality (expected later this year)”, says Boye, author of the CMS Watch Enterprise Portals Report.

The focus though is clear: Intranet 2.0. Liferay Portal is more advanced in its intranet 2.0 tools than many portal solutions, and this is a big selling feature for many intranet consultants and managers.

Though both Sun and Liferay deny this is the first step towards a Sun acquisition of the latter, that is a standard refrain in an announcement such as this; it’s also the standard boilerplate comment in the first step of an acquisition that is still being considered, but not yet formalized.

“The partnership is not without challenges, some of which could be resolved by an outright acquisition,” adds Garter. “Currently, there are two products with different code bases and licensing models. These are being merged at the technology level (the JSR 286 portlet container from Sun, for example, and the social networking features from Liferay), but each will, for the moment, maintain its distinct market identity.”

Did you notice the use of language? “...each will, for the moment, maintain its distinct market identity.”

Why should you be interested?

If you’ve been thinking about Sun Portal, I strongly suggest you reconsider. If you’re a Java (J2EE) shop (instead of .NET) and looking to redesign your intranet home or move to a true portal environment, the new Sun-Liferay portal solution should be intriguing for those not willing to entertain the more expensive alternatives from IBM and Oracle/BEA.

If you want an outside hand with your portal initiative then feel free to call me at 416.986.2226 and definitely buy the CMS Watch Enterprise Portals Report.

Pros and cons for enterprise intranet portals

Intranet portal solutions die, evolve & move to Web 2.0

The big deal about portals.

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Analyzing Enterprise 2.0 software

Toby Ward — Tue, 20 May 2008 11:42:31 -0700

There are small start-ups, emerging vendors, and the big enterprise portal and CMS vendors – all are developing and flaunting enterprise 2.0 software (social software). And none of these solutions are perfect.

In fact, even the big guns (e.g. BEA and Microsoft) haven’t figured it out yet. “Your WCM, Collaboration, Portal or ECM system may provide many (but not all) social software services, but some of them may suck,” says CMS Watch founder Tony Byrne.

Though not as broad and deep as the more mature CMS market, the emerging Enterprise 2.0 software market is rapidly growing with hundreds of vendors. Understanding those vendors and all of the emerging solutions is extraordinarily difficult, and would probably require a full-time team just to understand the leading vendors and solutions.

Byrne is an expert on evaluating software solutions (and of course has made a name for himself and a business from his CMS expertise demonstrated at www.CMSWatch.com). Tony provided a summary overview of the current marketplace in a presentation to the Enterprise 3 conference in San Diego, and offered some insights on the bigger enterprise infrastructure software vendors (which would include BEA, IBM, Microsoft, and other biggies).

Though Tony’s analysis and scoring of a solution feature is often done on a 4-point scale across many different categories, here’s my dimmed-down interpretation listed as either a general strength or weaknesses of the big gun vendor’s social software solutions (often bundled with their portal and/or CMS solution):

Strengths:

Most of the tools are good at spam and naughty word filtering (though missing in the BEA products)
Personalization
Specialized handheld delivery (particularly important in Europe)
Vocabulary, tagging and cloud services

Weaknesses:

Multi-installation management (“Almost always the answer is “no!” … SharePoint is a perfect example)
Repository versioning, version control, and search
Composite application development
Workflow and process management
Configuration management – version control of the system and platform (as opposed to the content)
Internationalization & localization
Standards compliance

Without question, however, the big guns generally have very shallow solutions that do not compare to the feature-rich and robust solutions of the new start-ups and emerging enterprise 2.0 vendors. But of course, the risks of purchasing a solution from a start-up is inherent – you trade long-term solution viability (i.e. financial strength of the vendor) for less cost and more leading-edge (i.e. bleeding edge).

Tony also provided an introductory analysis of one emerging solution vendor, cited by Gartner as a “Cool Vendor” last year, ConnectBeam. Connectbeam is a turnkey appliance with “an integrated set of social software applications for information sharing and team collaboration”. In short, ConnectBeam is a solution that allows employees to create rich profiles and to tag and share (social bookmark) content.

Specifially, ConnectBeam lists amongst its product features:

Social Bookmarking & Tagging
Social Networking
Project communities
Expert location
Collective Intelligence (search toolbar)

Users can import their browser bookmarks and their Deli.co.us bookmarks and share those with other employees as tagged content or via their own profiles (it comes with plug-ins for IE and Firefox (not all vendors have a FireFox vendor).

In a very cursory review (he did an admirable job in a short, one-hour presentation), Tony summed-up ConnectBeam as being good at information filtering, security and access control; but weak for group discussion, creating content, and people finding – and does not come with any RSS feeds. It also has low visibility and therefore its long-term future is not yet known.

Some of Tony’s other recommendations and cautions:

Socializing software is good, but its is not the same as social software (i.e. just because it’s a good portal solution doesn’t mean it’s a good social software platform)
The concept of social software is old, but many of the dominant technologies are immature
Don’t lose site of proper software evaluation techniques

“There is a notion that the tool itself will engender informal ways of working and that you can be similarly casual when introducing a new tool (i.e. social software such as a wiki)…” adds Byrne. “But you shouldn’t leave behind every thing you know about performance, security, and the long-term viability of the vendor.”

In short, due diligence is necessary when evaluating any technology solution.

You can view Tony’s research and summaries of some of his and his analyst’s now famous reports at www.CMSWatch.com.

SharePoint requires proper architecture & governance

Toby Ward — Mon, 19 May 2008 16:34:06 -0700

“Without proper architecture and governance, I can guarantee you that SharePoint will fail,” says Bob Mixon, President of Mixon Consulting, addressing the annual Enterprise 3 conference in San Diego this week.

“40-60% of SharePoint implementations fail (citing Gartner) – usually because it’s been improperly architected. If it balloons to several hundred or thousands of SharePoint sites then people will begin to complain that they cannot find anything.”

In fact, without proper governance, SharePoint can become the worst nightmare for intranet spawl police and those desperately trying to avoid the “wild, wild west.” One of Mixon’s clients complained to him, “We have 18,000 SharePoint sites and no one we can find anything!” (a complaint cited by one of Bob’s clients).

Microsoft's visual representation of the SharePoint Platform

The risks of intranet sprawl – and letting anyone to create a Team Site with no rules, guidance or governance – substantially undermine the value of an intranet:

· Information is not aggregated by type or channel

· Users will not be able to obtain relevant search results

· Users will not know where to store or classify information

· Users will not be able to find information through navigation

Mixon quickly points out that even Microsoft failed in their first iteration of SharePoint for their own intranet. “After one year, they had 60,000 intranet sites! They had to completely re-architect the entire intranet (MS Web).”

“The amount of information in your portal will grow over time and you will soon forget where information resides.”

To avoid intranet spawl and information overload, Mixon recommends proper architecture, taxonomy creation, and governance. The other approach is to simply forgo these steps and dump all your documents into SharePoint

But Mixon says that not all information in an organization has to be classified. On average 40% should be classified according to the taxonomy. He also cautions publishers to not overuse met data: no more than 3 to 5 required metadata types. However, SharePoint does not allow users to tag content as of yet (not unlike how content is tagged on Flick, YouTube or using Deli.co.us), but its coming in the next release (expected in 2010).

Search will also not always relieve the challenges posed by information overload. Without proper context, your standard search engine can’t rate one document veruss another. Even the great Google can’t save you from the deleterious affects of Intranet Spawl. “Google Applicance will not work well with Sharepoint, Webshpere, PeopleSoft, etc. because it doesn’t know anything about context or security,” says Mixon. “I have clients that have spent $300,000 or $400,000 on a Google Applicance and then they end up unplugging it.”

To improve navigation and search, Mixon recommends a strong taxonomy, meta tagging and classification. “Content classification is the only means of providing us with:

Context
Relevant search results, reducing the amount of information searched using search scopes
Aggregation of specific types of information

One of the most significant shortcomings of SharePoint is the ability to build a true taxonomy. Mixon points to the many benefits of a taxonomy and classification system:

Holistic view of documents and related artifacts
Document management services
Activity audit trail
Promotes consistent PM methodologies
Promotes consistent use of templates
Virtual collaboration amongst disparate groups
Aggregation across multiple projects

Bob has made this presentation and others available for download on his blog:

http://www.bobmixon.com/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=61