This week in links - week 37, 2008

"Microblogging In The Enterprise" by Mike Gotta:

It was inevitable that Twitter-like services would emerge targeting a business audience. While the term “microblogging” is frequently used to describe these platforms, they could also be considered as a derivative of group chat and instant messaging platforms as well. Within the enterprise, it is highly probable that IT organizations will classify these tools as messaging platforms (I would BTW). As a messaging platform, these tools would have to support security, logging, audit and archival functions to satisfy regulatory, compliance and records management demands.

These requirements might “ruin the party” about how people foresee microblogging taking off within the enterprise – but better to plan for such features now, and push vendors to deliver those functions, than ignore some basic blocking-and-tackling issues that inhibited rollout of enterprise instant messaging.

Microsoft acquired Parlano some time ago which could be extended to be a “Twitter for the enterprise”. IBM’s Sametime already has large-scale broadcast and group chat capabilities as well.

"Achieving effective Enterprise 2.0" by Martin White:

Try this test developed by Morten Hansen, Professor of Entrepreneurship at
the INSEAD Business School. How many of the statements reflect the situation
throughout your business?

1. Employees are willing to seek help from outside of their organisational unit, even if this might suggest that they are not performing well.
2. Employees are able to locate colleagues with information and expertise with the minimum of effort.
3. Employees feel that they have a duty and a freedom to help others even if there is no immediate benefit, and indeed even a short-term impact on their own work performance.
4. Employees promptly acknowledge telephone calls and e-mails requesting information.
5. Employees willingly work together with colleagues from other units to solve specific problems.
6. The organisation has clearly stated principles related to the value of teamwork and cooperation.
7. An important element of induction programmes is to give new staff experience of working together in teams from different units, and with staff who have a range of expertise.
8. Recruitment, development and evaluation procedures provide an opportunity to review and reward collaborative working and knowledge exchange.
9. Examples of good practice and success in knowledge exchange are given wide publicity and recognition.
10. Managers who do not support and participate in collaborative working do not gain promotion to senior management positions.

Unless you can score at least six then your business is going to have to work very hard to get the best out of Enterprise 2.0 applications.

"Why and How to SaaS – Jeff Kaplan at Serena Tag" by Bill Ives:

Jeff [Kaplan of THINKstrategies] asked, why SaaS?...//...People have now been exposed to simple and effective SaaS experiences through the consumer web with Amazon, Google, etc. At the same time there is a record of failure of large scale on-premise applications with cost over-runs and high maintenance costs, as well as delayed schedules that make the apps obsolete when they come out.

Jeff said his research shows that about a third of companies are using SaaS, and a third are considering it. The early adopters moved in 2006. Now the mainstream buyers are moving in. The move is not simply for cost reduction but also about adding new functionality that cannot occur in an on-premise application. One new function is benchmarking, another is anytime, anywhere access, and a third is the ability to easily move up and down in service
levels.

This SaaS trend is creating headaches for traditional companies. They have to restructure architecture, business models, sales models, etc. The resellers and implementers are troubled also as their role is changing.