I didn't attend the Enterprise 2.0 Conference this year, but judging by Jeff Whatcott's commentary, I'm not sure I missed much.
It would appear that the Enterprise 2.0 world is still recycling the same froth in an attempt to stand out. Here's what Whatcott had to say:
I spent some time checking out the competition to benchmark our messaging and functionality. I was struck by how thoroughly undifferentiated the pitches were. Everyone was giving essentially the same demo, talking about the same functionality and use cases.
Internally, I heard from Jean Barmash on the Alfresco consulting team who echoed Jeff's comments:
Walking around the exhibition floor, it looked like everybody was offering very similar stuff--big focus on "communities"--creating them, managing them, etc.
It feels like we're in the early stages of Enterprise 2.0. Let's call it Enterprise 1.8 where everyone is showing the right slideware and demos, but few, if any, really know how to put it all to productive business use.
Until the money steps in, I think we're going to remain in a curious limbo where "shiny baubles" (a colleague's favorite term) get rolled out widely but for which few pay because no one on the enterprise side has really connected the dots between community, user-generated content, and enterprise productivity/business value.
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Stuart Cohen at Grand Central Station in New York.
(Credit: Matt Asay)Most of the software in the world is written by enterprises that never intend to sell it. They write it for internal use.
Think of all the good that would come by sharing that code between enterprises with similar needs. Think long enough and you'll come up with Stuart Cohen's Collaborative Software Initiative (CSI).
CSI hit the news this week for some intriguing work with the state of Utah, which promises to deliver the world's first open-source infectious disease management system and break down the walls between enterprises to introduce a new era of sharing code.
At least, that's the promise. It starts with one state. Where it goes next is what CSI (and open source) is all about. According to CSI's statement:
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Remember the movie The Game, with Michael Douglas and Sean Penn as unlikely brothers, shot before the backdrop of vertiginous San Francisco?
Well, here's a new interface for the city by the Bay: SFZero is "a new representation for the data that's already there. Your mind is full of inaccurate representations that are affecting the way you use the San Francisco data flow, steering you away from interaction and collaboration and toward unproductive reflexive data loops.
SFZero designers are working double shifts to engineer this next-generation interface that will bring you together with your cohabitants to experience the freedom that is hard-coded into San Francisco's protocol."
Sounds enigmatic, looks enigmatic, and is enigmatic. I am therefore not sure if I fully get it, but in any case, SFZero seems to be a new kind of ARG (alternate-reality game)--a "Collaborative Production Game," as they call it.
"Let Someone Else Plan Your Day!" SFZero says. "Release total control of your life to an anonymous source that supplies you with instructions and directions!"
How can you not sign up for that?
Hat tip to Chelsea Holden Baker.
Are people fed up enough with traditional collaboration software that they'll try this "Web 2.0 in business" idea? Jive Software is betting they are.
The company on Monday is expected to announce the availability of Clearspace 2.0, a set of tools for sharing information and making connections within a business or between a company and outside partners.
Jive Software's Clearspace 2.0 uses Web 2.0 technologies for collaboration in enterprises.
(Credit: Jive Software)Employees create a space to share documents, see what colleagues are online, or have ongoing discussions.
The product was first launched last year, a departure from Jive's software for hosting Web forums. The company raised $15 million from Sequoia Capital last year to build out the product and market it.
How is it different from Microsoft's SharePoint? CEO Dave Hersh says that the software is designed around people, rather than files, which makes it a good complement, or even a replacement for SharePoint.
Version 2.0 has a feature that lets employees create their own pages, where they list projects they are working on and where others can find who they work with. It also allows people to get an organizational view, like an org chart.
I spent Wednesday afternoon getting to know Microsoft's new Office Live Workspace, a free service that lets you store Office files online for easy access and sharing.
Once I got used to what the service isn't--it isn't a way to actually work on the files in a browser--I came to appreciate how easy the service makes it to save Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files on the Web, and open them in their original app on any PC with an Internet link.
The biggest downside is how difficult it is to get the service working on a Vista machine running Office 2007. I was uploading and downloading Office 2003 documents on my XP machine in just a few minutes, but I had to jump through a series of hoops to do the same in their Office 2007 equivalents on my newer Vista PC.
I decided to start from scratch by creating a new Windows Live account rather than using my existing Hotmail account. Signing up for the account was a breeze, though I opted out of most of the options the installer presented. For example, I had no interest in downloading Messenger, the Windows Live Toolbar (my browser's cluttered enough already), or anything having to do with OneCare, which single-handedly destroyed my home network when I tried out the beta last summer. Be sure to uncheck the option to make MSN your home page, and you may want to avoid sending Microsoft any more data than the company already helps itself to.
Uncheck options in the Windows Live installer to avoid downloading programs you don't want or need.
(Credit: Microsoft)Once the Windows Live installation completed, it took just a few more clicks to get started with Office Live Workspace. You're prompted to give the generic workspace a name and description, which you can change later simply by mousing over the name in the left pane and choosing one of the options that appears.
Adjust your workspace by mousing over its name in the left pane and choosing an option from the popup menu.
(Credit: Microsoft)Of course, there's not much you can do with the service until you get some files uploaded. You can add files from inside the workspace one at a time or in batches, though the batch approach uses an ActiveX control, and thus requires Internet Explorer 6 or higher. Since I normally use Firefox (and had used that browser to create the workspace), switching to IE just to upload a bunch of files at once would have been a major inconvenience. Still, I never intended to use this method to add files to the workspace. Instead, I downloaded the Office Live Add-in, which lets you upload files to and download them from the workspace directly inside Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
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Regular readers of this blog know that I don't believe that Google Apps is a viable alternative to Microsoft's Office.
While Microsoft is not releasing a completely online version of its Office on Tuesday, it is releasing Office Live Workspace, an online-collaboration tool for Office that works in cooperation with the desktop application suite.
Workspace enables users to view documents online, even if their computer doesn't have Office installed. However, if they want to make edits, they have to download it and make changes in the appropriate Office application.
For users who have Office installed on their PC, this is not as bad as you would think. It may be a little bit annoying, but the benefit is that they get to work on these documents and collaborate within the fully functional desktop application. The online application will track revisions and comments made on the document.
Microsoft has also made a plug-in available for Office that makes accessing a workspace a bit smoother. It also enables users to edit things such as notes, lists, calendars, tasks, and contacts in the Web application.
(Credit:
Microsoft)
A lot of Web 2.0 purists are going to be very quick to dismiss the notion that Office Live Workspace is a legitimate Web application, simply because of its dependence on the desktop version of Office. I would have to disagree with those people.
While it may not be completely Web-based, Workspace offers a lot of value for collaboration on group projects, and it is not limited by online versions of the Office applications. People get to work in an environment that is familiar to them and do not sacrifice any functionality in exchange for collaboration.
Until someone can build a full-feature online-productivity suite, this is certainly a viable option.
Via LiveSide.
(Credit:
Google)
Google Sites was just launched and its target is clear: Microsoft SharePoint. While it has an uphill battle--security and a lack of the complex features that SharePoint has, for example--its biggest problem is that it doesn't connect with the content production tools that most people spend their (enterprise) content-producing lives in:
Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Office.
Of course, Google Sites is free, which will cover a multitude of other problems, especially since Microsoft SharePoint turns out to be amazingly overpriced for a Microsoft product. Microsoft has, according to CMS Wire's analysis, completely priced the SME market out of SharePoint.
... Read moreI fell in love with Zimbra's Ajax-style interface the first time I saw it.
Slick, powerful, and much more extensible than Microsoft Outlook ever dreamed of being. There was just one thing I hated about the Zimbra experience: the browser artifacts around the application that made me feel like I was stuck in a Web site, rather than living in an application that just happened to leverage the power of the Web.
No more. For the past few weeks I've been using Zimbra's new Prism-based Desktop. Verdict? It rocks. Take a look at the UI below:
... Read moreAt Zimbra, the game plan remains largely the same, even after consumer Web giant Yahoo acquired the company last year for $350 million. But what happens if Microsoft succeeds in its acquisition of Yahoo?
Zimbra on Tuesday will release a new version of its e-mail and collaboration software, with features for reading mail and creating documents offline from a Web browser.
Zimbra Documents lets people create and share documents and mashups from a browser.
(Credit: Zimbra)Zimbra Collaboration Suite 5.0 also adds support for BlackBerry clients and Java 2 mobile-equipped phones and now has integrated instant messaging.
The features were part of Zimbra's product plans before Yahoo acquired it and its business plan remains largely the same, according to Satish Dharmaraj, Zimbra co-founder and now Yahoo vice president.
While Yahoo Mail is aimed primarily at consumers, Zimbra sells its server software to universities, businesses, and Internet service providers. Not counting a deal with Comcast last year, it has 11 million people using its software, said Dharmaraj.
"My charter and business objective inside Yahoo is to spread as wide a net as possible for Zimbra in ISPs, .edu's (educational organizations), and the business space worldwide," Dharmaraj said.
The company was founded on the notion that there should be better Web-based, cross-platform alternatives to Microsoft Office. So its sales to universities and businesses compete directly with Microsoft. (Dharmaraj and I spoke before the proposed Microsoft-Yahoo merger was made public.)
In the consumer Web market, engineers are starting to improve Yahoo Mail with some of Zimbra's technology, he added. For instance, Zimbra's calendar application will find its way into Yahoo Mail.
Zimbra's technology is based entirely on Ajax, the Web-programming model that allows people to use sophisticated features like mashups from a Web browser.
Its Desktop application in the new version lets people from a browser create and share text documents and embed spreadsheets within them.
The offline capability of Desktop will allow someone to access different e-mail accounts, such as Gmail and corporate mail. In the Tuesday release, that feature is in beta and is expected to be generally available later in the first quarter. Zimbra provides an open-source version of its server software and charges for a higher-end commercial edition.
Update: Dharmaraj on Saturday posted a response to a question about Microsoft's proposed merger on a product forum, saying that "nothing has changed."
I spent some time on the phone Wednesday with Mike Herrick of the Collaborative Software Initiative. I knew Mike back when he was at Liberty Mutual, building out its open-source team. When Mike left to join CSI, I wondered what would cause someone with a great job in a Fortune 100 enterprise to join a start-up.
Today, things became a bit clearer.
Remember Avalanche? It was an open-source co-op formed by several major enterprises (Best Buy, Wells Fargo, etc.) to share code in areas of common need (call centers, for example) but little to no competitive overlap. The idea was to share code and thereby improve innovation while lowering costs.
CSI is similar in its aims, but I think it's a better approach to the problem because it should do a better job of coordinating collaboration. CSI's mission is to:
build communities of like-minded IT leaders to reduce software development costs, accelerate compliance and consolidate project timelines.
CSI does this by helping to bring different companies to collaborate on IT projects that each individually needs, but that can be done more cost effectively as a collective. So, for example, perhaps CSI found that Credit Suisse needed to develop a trading platform. As it turns out, this is a common need for Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and other financial services companies. So, CSI would then approach these other companies to gauge interest and then to coordinate the development.
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