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I was given a tour of Social Text's enterprise wiki software yesterday. Social Text has "optimized" open source wiki software for the enterprise by bringing more structure and ease of use to wikis. For example, it is far easier to upload and view a document in Social Text than it is in Mediawiki an open source alternative.
But what really caught my interest was not the upload functionality but rather the weblog functionality which displays groups of wiki pages belonging to a specific category in a weblog format organized by date. This is a great way to get a meta view of all the content pertaining to a specific subject Two other interesting features, you can post to the wiki by emailing content to an email address and you can instant message members by clicking on their im screen names handles within social text. Their im handles are faded out if they are offline. View the other functionality included.
In a keynote address at Convergence, an annual conference for users of Microsoft Corp.'s business software, Bill Gates discussed how Microsoft is working on a "missing piece of software" - one that would use rules to determine how to respond to people trying to contact an individual. The software would use the caller's identity to determine how best to answer the call or email. He also talked about the coming together of the structured worlds of financial and human resources applications with elements of the internet world, such as mashups.
Here at Avenue A | Razorfish, we're excited about these trends and have already started developing solutions for our clients that merge the structured applications world with that of the web and improve employee productivity.
Delta Airlines found the perfect killer application to fuel adoption of their enterprise wide intranet DeltaNet - the itineray bidding system according to Line56 magazine. Delta Airlines move the bidding system which allows pilots and flight attendees to custom design their iteneray to the intranet. And by making it accessible via mobile devices, they not only saved costs but also built trust with their employees. To quote a Delta executive, the intranet became "a targeted, effective, and reliable communication experience" for all Delta employees.
Delta Airlines made the intranet the most reliable source for workplace information but by also developing the communal aspects of the intranet they captured their employees' attention. Employee message boards that relate both to workplace issues (such as the airlines efforts to improve turn time for employees) and casual information sharing (vacation experiences and recommendations) have made the Delta work environment better.
Even though Delta airlines was going through bankruptcy they saw that investing in their intranet would be a worthwhile endeveavor. Demonstrating ROI by saving CMS licenses and streamlining communcation processes, managers were able to make a case for the redesign quite easily. Over the long term, the intranet team expects to demonstrate ROI via knowledge management, employee productivity and employee morale.
An Enterprise Portals Report by CMS Watch finds enterprise portal technology buyers struggling with adoption, as diverse portal products target different use-cases, and customers grapple with immature tools, persistent performance bottlenecks, implementation delays, cost overruns, and poor usability. 13 enterprise portal products were evaluated and over 60 interviews were conducted for the report.
The report also found that several portal products will be ugraded this year resulting in new opportunities and new costs for customers. Interestingly, the report also touched on open source and how it is increasingly been seen as an alternative to mainstream commercial portal solutions.
James Surowiecki, the author of the wisdom of crowds, spoke at our client summit last week. If you haven't had the opportunity to read his book I highly recommend it. Ironically enough, Chris Sun, one of our technology architects, just launched CrowdIQ. It's a great way to create your own prediction market online, quickly and easily.
One of the sessions at the mix.06 conference covered web services and the multitude of options available. Everything from REST, POX, RSS, SOAP, and WS-* is available through the windows communication framework (WCF). This provides a wide set of choices when building applications. From REST - WS-*, each approach has increasing overhead. Building a REST call is a lot less work than building a SOAP call. SOAP allows the addition of great metadata to your service, but if you aren't using it, why incur the overhead. Go here for the overview of the session From HTML to Services.
At MIX.06 Microsoft was encouraging folks to download and start using their new AJAX framework. Leveraging the XMLHTTP call that Microsoft invented they are taking AJAX to the next level. Microsoft also took this opportunity to remind us that their first AJAX implementation, Web Outlook, was available years before Google Maps! Check it out here Microsofts Atlas.
The Intranet Review Toolkit provides a comprehensive set of guidelines for assessing the strengths and weaknesses of corporate intranets. It contains a substantial set of heuristics, allowing a detailed intranet review to be conducted that focuses on a wide range of functionality, design and strategy. Download a free copy. It was produced by James Robertson and supported by the Information Architecture Institute.
Linux on the server side continues to grow. "Gartner Inc. forecasts server shipments to reach 2.4 million units in 2010, up from 1.4 million units in 2005, boosting revenue from $6.5 billion to $11.5 billion." We have seen it be much faster to get a box running fedora up and running than a box where we need to get a license. Network Computing has the story on the linux growth.
Avenue A | Razorfish offically announced its Google Enterprise partnership today. Avenue A | Razorfish has joined the Google Enterprise Professional program, which helps customers get more value out of their Google enterprise search deployments. The partnership further enhances Avenue A | Razorfish’s Enterprise Solutions practice dedicated to the design and development of user-centric enterprise intranets, extranets and partner portal solutions.
" The Web is evolving. There's a little bit more maturity now, in terms of business models with advertising coming in, with some of the late-'90s mistakes understood. But we're probably, as an industry, making some of those same mistakes. And that's OK. The ferment, the creativity, is incredible to see," says Bill Gates at MIX06 Read his exclusive News.com interview where he talks about Web 2.0, Microsoft, Office Online and Ray Ozzie.
Visual thinking is fast becoming an important skill in the workplace. Employees that can visualize solutions, imagine business scenarios and depict processes in an easily understandable manner, invariably get ahead of others who cannot communicate as dynamically. Dan Roam, a former Avenue A | Razorfish employee is publishing a book this fall titled, "The Back of a Napkin" which illustrates how visual thinking drives success using examples from the worlds of media, manufacturing, golf and politics. Take a look at the book when it hits the stores this fall, you may find it interesting. In the meantime, visit Dan's Digital Blog.
Read Martin White's article for Econtent Magazine on how you can benchmark your intranet. To quote, "Very few organizations can answer that question with anything more than an emphatic "It's fine!" If the question is instead, "How good is your intranet compared to other organizations like yours?" then the answer involves usually a more sheepish "We have no idea." Also visit his Intranet Focus Blog.
In another example of how podcasting is catching on, MBA students at the Ross School of Business will soon be able to get news and events information on their ipods. The school has joined forces with Apple Computer to provide the business school community with free events seminars and news content that they can listen to at any time and anywhere. The podcasts are available using the same login information required to access the school's intranet. They are housed on Apple's iTunes U Website, which uses the same technology as the iTunes Music Store
Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft spoke at the Avenue A | Razorfish client summit today. He was asked to do a repeat performance of his developer, developer, developer battle cry. He surprised the audience by responding that the new battle cry is advertising, advertising, advertising. Microsoft believes that the rich experiences of Live.com and their other media properties like MSN present incredible advertising opportunities in the future. We hope to be getting a copy of the video soon.
Some of his other comments addressed how the professional and personal lives of people were merging with people doing more personal activities at work and professional ones at home. He felt that technology needs to support these mixed needs and allow people to engage with their own media in ways that suit their lifestyles. He referred to this new world as the "My Lifestyle."
In talking about online media and my lifestyle, Ballmer also mentioned that he didn't realize how special Origami was until his customers, business partners and personal friends kept asking him questions about it. Without any budget, two Microsoft employees had discussed it on their blogs and the word about the product spread like wildfire through the internet.
James Surowiecki of The Wisdom of the Crowds fame addressed the Avenue A | Razorfish Client Summit yesterday. Making a strong case for why organizations and groups should depend upon crowds to make better decisions, Surowiecki said that cognitive diversity is extremely important in the groups. He also stressed that random groups will always make better decisions that the smartest person in the room acting alone. When asked how large these groups should be, Surowiecki said that groups as small as ten or even twenty people will make better decisions. He also emphasized that building consensus is different to collective intelligence because when everyone is trying to compromise you get the worst decisions. Rather, creative conflict with people being able to express their individual opinion are most important for the best thinking to develop.
In a crisp, insightful and practical report that's brimming with useful tips, James Robertson takes the reader into the world of intranet search. His recommendations, which include focusing on simplicity, prioritizing search by audience, and doing the hard work as an intranet manager (instead of the user having to do it) are all important thoughts that we're not reminded of enough.
Each year, Avenue A | Razorfish hosts an invitation only client summit that brings together Fortune 1000 marketing and technology executives from the company’s client base for 2-1/2 days of fun and knowledge sharing. The theme of this year’s event is “The Art and Science of Digital Marketing.” Steve Ballmer, president of Microsoft, and James Surowiecki, New Yorker writer and “Wisdom of Crowds” author are keynoting the event. Watch the blog for updates from the event.
Yahoo Search is hoping to redefine the way we search in the future. They believe that most people are more interested in search results that are validated by their peer group. So for example, if you search for apples you'll probably get a million results. However, if you specify that you'd like to first search just the sites visited/bookmarked by your peer group, you'll get fewer and hopefully more useful results. That's what social search is about.
Interestingly, no major search vendor is talking about social search behind the firewall. Arguably, the benefits of social search are much greater for employees. On most intranets it is hard to know what page tied to a specific topic is most useful. But if the employee knew that everyone else in his department had bookmarked a specific page, he or should would know that's the best result among the hundreds returned to him. That's the power of social search.
According to a Ziff Davis article, mission critical applications behind the corporate firewall with an AJAX-oriented GUIs and SOA empowered middleware offers new ROI. Why? Because it simplifies and shortens development by taking complex plugin driven technologies (think Active X controls and Java applets) out of the equation. Another factor not considered in the article is that AJAX interfaces are generally the more usable and immersive ones...resulting in higher employee adoption rates as well.
If you're not familiar with O'Reilly Radar, run to that blog now. The blog is written by Tim O'Reilly and other thought leaders at O'Reilly. It is filled with very interesting technology news, thoughts and perspectives. This week, the blog is even more valuable as it discusses some of the presentations made at the Emerging Technologies Conference in Las Vegas.
Imagine looking at an executive dashboard of your key performance indicators on your desktop. And then imagine, reaching out to your computer screens with both hands and extending a graph so that is shows data for the full year rather than just a quarter by dragging fingers around the screen. That's the power of multi touch and it'll be coming to a laptop near you in the next decade.
The user experience paradigm that drives computer interactions has hardly changed over the last fifteen years. We still think in terms of folders, documents, pages, monitors and keyboards. But with multi-touch that can change and when it does it will dramatically change how we engage with information. Watch the multi-touch demos to understand this future better.
This time it is Fortune Magazine's turn to talk about information technology in the workplace. While their March cover story is titled, "How I work" it could have been titled, "Let me tell you how much technology I have to deal with." The article shows how different people communicate and collaborate with their fellow employees during a regular work day.
It discusses how we do not have technology problems anymore, we have communication ones. With communicating having become so easy and effortless, we now over-communicate and need email "marathon" sessions just to clear our inboxes. Is their a solution? Yes, use each workplace solution for its purpose. For example, don't use email for group conversations and redesign your intranet so that it maps to the communication patterns within your company.
But the most insightful comment in the article comes from A.G Lafley, chairman, president and CEO of Procter & Gamble who says, "A key to staying calm is minimizing the information onslaught." In other words, only ask for the information that you really need, don't get involved in more than you can manage. You will have to deal with more information than you can handle.
Bill Gates recently kicked of the era of "Live software" which would enable consumers, businesses and developers to gain access to Microsoft services over the web. Microsoft hopes to ride the web services wave and compete with likes of Google, Yahoo and Salesforce.com all at once. We can't wait to see how www.live.com integrates with Microsoft's enterprise search strategy (currently just Windows Desktop Search) and Vista. We came across this while on Slashdot.org
With the NPT lawsuit finally behind it, Research in Motion moved to acquire Ascendent last week. San Jose based Ascendent makes software that extends the features from a traditional corporate desktop phone to mobile devices. The software will allow blackberry phones to easily host conference calls, transfer calls, tap into intranet applications and access corporate telephone directories. This seemingly small acquisition will be another important step towards bringing to life the vision of a truly integrated workplace environment.
According to a recent survey with 77 US senior IT executives, IT budgets are estimated to grow by 3% in 2006. However, this modest increase masks significant reductions in overall IT operating costs from process improvements, offshore outsourcing and new technologies. These savings will allow capital expenses to increase by 13 percent.
Among the items on CIO shopping lists are business intelligence tools and applications extract data from ERP systems allowing users to analyze customer or market trends in fine detail. Another item on the shopping list is infrastructure investments in VOIP.
Patrick Moorehead of Avenue A | Razorfish has written a white paper titled, "A Podcasting Primer" (PDF). It serves as a 101 guide to podcasting and discuss consumer and enterprise applications. Some of the enterprise applications discussed include audio white papers, meeting recaps, product demos and virtual conferences. Needless to say, we believe that podcasting has a bright future in the enterprise especially if the podcasts are accessible via the company intranet.
Ajay Lodha and Ram Sarma have written an Avenue A | Razorfish white paper on Single Sign On (PDF).The paper simplifies the very complex issue of enabling users to access multiple systems by just entering their username and password once. For example, imagine if you have a suite of applications integrated into your enterprise portal. How would your employees feel if they had to enter their username and passwords each time they clicked on an application link? Those users would probably be complaining to you a lot! Single Sign On solves that problem and as a result is a critical issue in most large companies.
Shiv Singh was quoted in an article about The Future of Portals by blogger Toby Ward recently. Also, the Avenue A | Razorfish Intranet Maturity Framework was discussed by another intranet blogger, Jane McConnell at Globally Local.
According to a report on BenefitNews.com highlighting the research of Forrester (EBN/Forrester Research 2005 Benefits Strategy and Technology Study), nearly one-quarter of companies in a recent survey plan on implementing a benefits portal in the next two years. Why does this matter? Because they also conclude that for every two-percent increase in employee satisfaction, there is a one-percent increase in employee retention. This means that you can reduce employment replacement costs by investing in your benefits portal.
“Portals are entities that employees first become accustomed to, and then dependent upon,” says Greg Fittinghoff, vice president of business systems development at Time Warner Inc. Read the article, "Unifying Your Enterprise" where he is quoted. We came across this article via Toby Ward and the Intranet Blog. Avenue A | Razorfish redesigned Time Warner Cable's intranet in 2005.
"I won’t speculate on the way this is heading. Basically, we are looking to take what Google did for consumers to the workplace," said product marketing manager Arvind Desikan of Google when admitting that integrating different Google enterprise-class search technologies together, such as the Enterprise Desktop Search and Google Enterprise Toolbar, would benefit business customers. Read the full article at Ziff Davis.
Having closely watched Google's enterprise efforts over the last eight months, we believe that Mr. Desikan is being a little coy. As a company whose mission is to organization all the information in the world, there is no reason why they would ignore the workplace. Watch Google threaten the entrenched knowledge vendors like Autonomy, FAST, Endeca, IBM and Microsoft even more over the next six months.
Read Online Testimonial Videos for Health Products (PDF) by Patrick Moorehead of Avenue A | Razorfish to understand how to design and use video testimonials on the web. While his white paper focuses on consumer testimonials, the insights are equally applicable to pharmaceuticals designing online testimonials for doctors, thought leaders or even employees.
37 Signal's new book Getting Real is all about applying agile techniques to web application development. The book explains how seven people have launched five incredibly successful web-based applications in two years with no outside funding or debt. Their applications reach 400,000 odd people around the world.
Some of the more provocative recommendations include getting rid of wireframes and functional specifications and building screens immediately. 37 Signals was recently named to the "Next Net 25" list by Business 2.0. I first came across the book at Victor Lombardi's Noise Between Stations blog.
Sure, we've all thought that there are too many enterprise search vendors in the market. Just visit Avi Rappaport's listing to see them. Oracle disagrees. They're entering the enterprise search market with Oracle Secure Enterprise Search 10g, a standalone engine that can search databases, file systems, enterprise content management systems, portals, e-mail systems and enterprise applications for internal corporate use. Oracle hopes to differentiate itself with its emphasis on security - not letting employees search and access documents that they aren't supposed to be seeing. We wish them luck as Autonomy, Endeca, FAST and Google already crowd the space.
Europe is catching up to the US when it comes to convergence. According to The Yankee Group, large enterprises in Europe now view convergence as a commonplace migration activity. The largest IP telephony deployments are in France, as 54% of the companies surveyed plan to place orders in excess of 600 handsets in 2006. More broadly speaking, 93% of European enterprises surveyed have IP telephony activities underway or planned; 16% of enterprises are fully deployed. IP telephony is an important ingredient for the future of the workplace.
For a while it seemed like the workplace was going to suddenly lose its heartbeat. But fortunately that's not to be the case anymore. Research In Motion and NTP have agreed to settle the patent dispute over the BlackBerry device for $612.5 million, the companies announced in a press release on Friday. We can all breathe a little easier now.
The online journal, which publishes articles discussing the relationship between design and business strategy was relaunched last week. Through case studies, interviews, and essays, the journal shows how design can be used to solve business problems, foster innovation, build meaningful customer relationships and differentiate products from competitors.
Some of the first articles cover how to reach to your customer's customer, why it is hard to make products that people love and Peers, the social network at Avenue A | Razorfish. Gain is edited by Karen McGrane of Avenue A | Razorfish.
Intranet message boards have been known to spread rumors within companies. But this is the first time we've heard about a deputy chief prosecutor being refused a promotion on the basis of rumors published on an intranet. The intranet in question belongs to the Korean Justice Ministry. Learn more at JoongAng Daily.
Australia's Adweb Agency has introduced a new version of their Intranet Dashboard product. This tool is useful for small and medium sized businesses looking to launch a basic intranet without many applications integrated into it. New features include language localisation, which allows multiple language settings and customisation of system messages to suit an audience, and contact manager which assists the management, maintenance and sharing of contacts, including adding new contacts and details via SMS.
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