Jan 18th, 2009 |
The more time I spend toying with social computing applications and services such as Twitter, and Facebook, the more I wonder when we can expect to see Enterprise 2.0 dashboards.
Archive for the 'RSS' Category
Steve’s comments below got me thinking about why we don’t just accept information overload, but actually ask for it.
There was plenty of chatter in the blogs this weekend over the decision by the Obama campaign to text its supporters news of the VP pick as soon as it happened (well, as soon as the campaign was ready to release it). Most of it seemed centered around (1) the timing of the text’s release (another 3am brouhaha), (2) the “next-gen Internet outreach” approach, and (3) the pick himself. Mainly lost in the discussion was whether anyone really needed to know the information in real time, on their cells and PDAs.
I love the flexibility Enterprise 2.0 tools provide and have made it somewhat of a personal quest to find new ways to use these tools to make my job easier. But as I and my employer adopt new applications to help manage information, I find the number of tools and all the little pockets of information they generate to be a little unmanageable. Here’s why:
The iPhone3G hit stores today, but of course you knew that already. iPhone3G is the device Apple touts as “The best phone for business. Ever” boasting a few new features that business users will need. The iPhone3G is, of course, a “3G” phone meaning it can access higher speed data networks from the wireless carriers. The new iPhone also supports Microsoft Exchange putting push email, calendar and contact information at your fingertips. The iPhone3G has a VPN client, WPA2 Enterprise and 802.1X authentication for business-grade security.
Of course the other big news from Apple is the opening of the App Store and the many 3rd-party apps being made available there. I did a scan of the applications surfacing for iPhone3G paying specific attention to apps that support the Enterprise 2.0 vision. Here’s what I found:
It’s Wednesday night, the big two days of the Enterprise 2.0 conference are coming to an end. I’ve blogged a ton and shot a lot of video at the conference. The overall sentiment I’m getting from all the attendees and from all the sessions I’ve attended is that enterprise 2.0 is not there yet, but it’s going to happen, it’s inevitable. Here’s a summary of the top learnings from the conference:
- Young people entering the workforce communicate with Web 2.0 tools. They want more than just email.
- Cloud computing is an easy way to launch a service and scale, but it’s far from being a true utility like electricity.
- To innovate, you need to harness the wisdom of your network. First start with your staff and then move to partners and your audience.
- When you create a collaborate Enterprise 2.0 space, TRUST your audience. Release the desire to control. Don’t control. Even the CIA recommends this.
- Change management. Adoption requires evangelism and constant reminders and associating Web 2.0 tools with everything you’re doing.
- Don’t just deploy social media for the sake of deploying social media. Develop a strategic business rationale.
- There are tons of companies that offer business social networking solutions. Some are trying to offer everything, and some are just trying to solve a single problem.
- Allow people to engage with your company outside of your .com business address. Let them engage with your brand where they already like to go, like Facebook, MySpace, etc.
And here’s a summary of all my coverage from the event. It’s a total of 23 posts of which seven include video. Enjoy. :)
- Introducing Social Networking into your Enterprise
- Social Network Shoot Out
- VIDEO: Karen Appleton on why social networking is critical for business
- VIDEO: Peter Biddle, encryption will be like air bags
- Mashups: Best practices and best examples
- Successful enterprise-level wiki implementations
- Developing business rationales for an enterprise 2.0 strategy
- Drive business growth from the bottom up community development
- Creating a socialization plan for deploying social media in the Enterprise
- VIDEO: If the CIA can collaborate with Web 2.0 tools, so can you
- Making sense of the endless options for enterprise social networking
- Stowe Boyds post everything economy
- What blogging brings to business
- Innovation will be driven by the adoption of cloud computing
- Age doesnt matter and other realizations for enterprise 2.0 culture
- FedEx makes its services accessible outside of FedEx.com
- From the bottom up: Building the 21st Century Intelligence Community
- VIDEO: Selipsky on the flexibility of Amazon Web Services (AWS)
- VIDEO: Richard Soley of OMG is waiting for more cloud computing standards
- VIDEO: Schmoozing on the eve of Enterprise 2.0
- Move all your IT to the cloud: Cloud computing providers try to convince CXOs to take the plunge
- VIDEO: Enterprise 2.0 inspired CoreMedia to reignite communications and write a book
Thanks to Alex Dunne for supplying all the photos for many of the posts. Make sure you check out his entire Flickr feed.
The value of mashups is at its core the value of the API (application programming interface). Nobody has to say that it’s OK to launch an API. While you have to get approval to launch an operating system, you don’t with an API. And APIs are very powerful. Entire applications can be built upon them.
Such was the introductory explanation from David Berlind who moderated a panel on mashups and their value in the enterprise. The discussion trended between best practices and examples of really cool mashups. So here’s a summary of some of the items brought up.
Best practices:
- Let people stay within the environment their comfortable with. So let sales people stay in Salesforce.com.
- Make sure your data is accessible and remixable. Unlock it and wrap it in ATOM feeds.
- Not all mashups are mission critical. Some are good enough. You can put one together in a day. Sometimes you need to do that so you can see the value quickly.
- Make sure your IT and business goals are aligned. Don’t get into a situation where there’s conflict. If business doesn’t get satisfaction from IT, they’ll take matters in their own hands. Sometimes they may just use a simple tool like Yahoo! Pipes or Popfly from Microsoft and create a tool to expose corporate content without approval from IT.
- Make it portable and reusable. Make sure they can be shipped off to other services, that they can move around the organization.
- To actually secure the mashups, you need to create a mashup platform.
- Heavy industry users of mashups are anyone that’s heavily involved with spreadsheets. Such example industries include insurance, financial services, and retail.
- You have to make these tools addictive so people will keep putting their information in to keep the mashup valuable.
- Build fault tolerance. The components are out of your control. Need to monitor. You can create a rules based system. For example, if this goes down then switch to this data source.
- Not all mashups include a map. :)
Some cool examples of mashups mentioned:
(Sorry I don’t have links, the panel just mentioned that they had seen these mashups before.)
- Registration mashup for conference: Pull in content from a variety of sources that have personal content like YouTube.
- Emergency response: Send information in real time when there are tragedies. This information could be even more powerful if it were sent to mobile devices. Great for mission critical use cases.
- Situation awareness: Homeland security can do constant level of monitoring across many variables. They have a constant holistic cross-referenced view as to what’s going on.
- Assembling a customer visit: Salesforce.com mashup per customer that shows the weather for that date of visit, the golf courses, happenings on Eventful, and restaurants in the area.
- FaceForce: Puts the Facebook interface directly into Salesforce.
- Human resources matchup: When you interview someone, this matchup goes out and scans all social networks and sees tons of information about their personal life.
Make sure you check out the summary of all coverage from the Enterprise 2.0 Conference 2008 in Boston.
Forrester just released a report predicting enterprise spending on Web 2.0 will reach $4.6 Billion by 2013. The report was led by Analyst Oliver Young who spoke at our Enterprise 2.0 Conference last year. $4.6 billion is a big number and a bit of a surprise. But if you think about it, it actually makes a lot of sense. Enterprise 2.0 is a pretty small market today based on the types of vendors that have comprised it. These are the smaller players making standalone wikis, RSS tools or web-based competitors to Microsoft’s Office. But the software giants are now all vying for a piece of the Enterprise 2.0 market and incorporating much of the same functionality as the purely “2.0″ alternatives. When you start counting big software’s role in Enterprise 2.0 it’s easier to see how we’ll reach such a big number so quickly. We’re a reflection of this trend at our Enterprise 2.0 Conference where this year Microsoft, Oracle and IBM are all signed up as major sponsors. The Forrester report is further proof that while Enterprise 2.0 is something many companies are evaluating today, the concepts and technologies that comprise Enterprise 2.0 today will commonplace to business in the future.
I’m a big fan of RSS and truly believe it has a lot of potential within the enterprise. Last year I moderated a panel discussion at Interop New York that included the topic of RSS in business. One of the panelists described the use of RSS well beyond subscribing to your favorite blog feed. He talked about RSS as a common link between disparate applications that would otherwise require custom development and integration expertise. He described RSS as a common, simple language that would allow us to tap into, integrate and share application data - whether that’s between a person and an application or between two applications. So when I saw that Facebook friend Doug Cornelius had joined a new group called “Enterprise RSS Day of Action” I thought - now this is a Facebook cause I can get behind!
The United States Intelligence Community consists of 16 government agencies, each involved with distinct aspects of U.S. intelligence. The agencies are organized under the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), a position created to facilitate better cross-agency collaboration as recommended by the 2004 9/11 Report.
I had the pleasure of speaking with Don Burke and Sean Dennehy from the CIA about the Intelligence Community’s use of technology to embrace greater openness and collaboration and was surprised to learn how much is already underway at the CIA and other agencies.
Last week I had the pleasure of speaking with Chris Kearns who is Architecture Programs Manager at multinational aerospace company, Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin employs around 140,000 people and is the largest defense contractor worldwide. The company has big plans around enterprise 2.0 and has already rolled out new services to their IS&GS (information services and global services) division of nearly 40,000 people.
