Ross Mayfield has great news today. SocialText released a new version of the SocialText enterprise wiki today. It is new because it now runs on Microsoft’s Sharepoint.

Microsoft’s Sharepoint tool has some amazing features. But, just like other platforms, it doesn’t do everything. While Sharepoint 2007 has some blog and wiki tools, Sharepoint 2007 is not a dedicated Enterprise Class blog or wiki platform.

So, instead of Sharepoint Vs Enterprise Class Wiki, we Sharepoint + Enterprise Class Wiki. I think the same goes for enterprise class blogging systems, such as iUpload and Blogtronix.

In the recent entry, I talked about a A Platform for IT Innovation within the Enterprise. You realize that you want to build a platform that supports constant server side innovation within the enterprise when you realize that there is a network effect associated with using a diverse range of specialized server software.

Instead of building one system that tries to do everything, build a system that is capable of integrating with everything. From an IT perspective, Enterprise 2.0 is about gaining network effects from various systems, rather than choosing one limited strategy that is supposed to be all things to all people.

To me, this development highlights the problem with IBM’s LotusNotes strategy. While Microsoft is providing Sharepoint blogging and wiki tools, Microsoft is also happy to integrate with 3rd party vendors, such as SocialText.

With Lotus Notes, in my opinion, IBM advocates take the opposite approach. In other words, if you use a Microsoft, you can use best of breed new tools, such as SocialText. But if you use Lotus Notes / Domino, you are basically stuck with IBM only solutions. So far, I am not aware of a single 3rd party enterprise blogging or wiki system, such as SocialText, that is designed to integrate with Lotus Notes / Domino.

Technorati Tags: Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise+Irregulars, wiki

There’s always one….

At the Office 2.0 Conference, I had an opportunity to watch an incredible demonstration by a company called 3Tera.

3Tera claim to be “ the first grid operating system that runs and scales existing web applications”.   On their platform, you can draw something that looks like visio diagram that shows firewalls, load balancers, web servers and databases.   Then, press a button and your diagram is turned into a running virtual deployment.   The 3tera grid is used to run the system.

Here’s a quick snap shot.  

However, I recommend that you check out the 3tera screencast on their site.

3tera’s grid, or something like it, can become the beginning of an IT platform that can support heterogeneity and thus, can support constant innovation.   If you want to install Atlassian, and I want to install SocialText, there is no reason why both tools can’t be run on the same platform.

In a 3tera type grid server environment, IT does need to work out what kinds of standards they want to have in place.   The standards, however, more like communication standards.   Use Active Directory for authentication and access control.   List your system in this directory, so people can find it.   Use the hCard or hCalendar mircoformat.

But… CIO’s will not look at small new vendors

Fueled by a question from Jeff Nolan on partner ecosystems, the Enterprise Irregulars have been discussing the likelihood that any given CIO will look at a solution from a start-up.

The general consensus is that CIOs are not interested in any solution from a new start-up because they want accountability from the vendor.   CIOs believe, though I am not sure this is 100% correct, that they will get better support from a large vendor.

This fear of the unknown mimics the 9X Email Problem that Andre McAfee wrote about recently.

The Business Problem

This site is dedicated to a fairly simple 3 step notion:

1. Constant innovation is required to succeed into today’s hyper competitive environment.
2. Successful innovation is not about the ideas or inventions; it’s about the people.
3. If you want innovation, you have to enable your innovation creators

The problem in most Enterprise IT environments today is that innovation is only accepted when it comes from entrenched vendors.   The problem is that the entrenchment prevents innovation.  For example, it took Microsoft 4 years to update Internet Explorer.   It wasn’t until they face competitive threats from Firefox that Microsoft decided to get their act in gear.

Types of Solutions

One type of solution is the partner ecosystems that Jeff Nolan asked about.

Charles Zedlewski provided the Enterprise Irregulars with one possible set of solutions:

Ken Berryman (runs McKinsey’s software practice) throws out 3 analogies:

• Software industry becomes like the automotive industry with 5-9 tier 1 OEM’s, then tier 2 and tier 3 suppliers tied together in long term contacts
• Software industry becomes like the pharma industry with 20-30 big pharma companies and a kajillion small innovative companies that rely on the the big guys for risk capital and access to the sales force of several thousand detailers
• Software industry becomes like the construction industry with little industry concentration and constantly re-aligning coalitions of contractors, laborers, suppliers and sub-contractors coming together on a case by case basis to build each skyscraper

The Goal for Enterprise IT

An IT platform that supports constant change, and thus constant innovation.

Maybe We Need to Outsource Some of IT

Presenting a strawman of a company - GenericEnterpriseIT.com  (GEIT)

Built on a grid, such as 3tera, you can deploy any virtual prepackaged stack.   For example, SocialText on LAMP with firewalls, load balancers, multiple virtual Apache instances.
GEIT will have many of these pre-build.   GEIT will maintain the relationships with all the vendors.   Your people can go to an internal website, press a button, and add SugarCRM to their deployment.

For SaaS vendors, GEIT will pull an Oracle, and give you blanket service contract.
The benefit for CIOs is that they have one GEIT neck to choke when something goes wrong. GEIT sets up all sorts of standards for how systems talk together, keeping everything truly SOA.

Maybe GEIT partners with Teqlo to deliver secure process mashups.

Before GEIT turns on your system, they buy you a copy of the 37 signals book, and then they make you write “Convention over configuration” 30 times on a chalkboard.

GenericEnterpriseIT.com does not exist…. yet.

Example #1 - Utilityserve

3tera’s partner Utilityserve.   Here’s how they describe themselves:

UtilityServe offers superior efficiency, scalability, reliability, flexibility, and ease-of-use. Automatically deploy an unlimited number of Web servers, database servers, application servers, load balancers, network interfaces, backup servers, mail servers, log servers, using a convenient drag-and-drop graphical interface. Easily back-up and restore your entire computing environment

Example #2 - EI Solutions

This isn’t outsourced IT, but it is outsourced vendor relations.

Joe Nocera has an interesting article in the NY Times entitled Fewer Eggs, More Baskets in the Incubator.   The article talks about Bill Gross and IdeaLab.

It focuses on a Solar Energy company called EI Solutions.

EI Solutions installed a 1.6 MW solar array on the roof of the Goolge headquarters in Mountain View.   The energy output is 2,611,719 kWh per year.   Google expects to save $393,000 + annually, and they expect to pay off the system within 7.5 years.

EI Solutions has a pretty interesting process for getting the right solar arrays to their clients.

The part that interested me was the Source Stage.   EI doesn’t have everything.   Instead, they deal with the vendor relations.   Here’s what is says on their web site:

What Happens at This Stage?

When it comes to solar power systems, all components are definitely not created equal. There are a host of suppliers offering a wide variety of photovoltaic (PV) panels including monocrystalline, polycrystalline, thin-film, and others. Each of these solar technologies comes with its own characteristics, efficiencies, and costs.

What to Expect

EI Solutions will recommend specific components — including panels, inverters, mounting systems, and more — based on the particular needs of your project and its location. For example, we pay particular attention to the weather patterns at your site in order to recommend the type of solar panel technology that will provide the most energy over the course of the year at the most effective price.

The EI Solutions Difference: Wide Selection from Many Trusted Suppliers

EI Solutions has long-term relationships with many different suppliers and an intimate understanding of the specifications of each component. We work hard to build a system that’s optimized for your company, your needs, and your site.

Bottom line advice for CIOs.  

Today’s globally competitive market place means that your company will need to constantly innovate if they want to generate above average profits.

McKinsey has determined that 41% of business represents tacit interactions - ie knowledge work.   Knowledge work is completed using the tools on your Intranet and on your desk tops.   Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 mean that new productivity tools such as blogs and wikis are coming out all the time.   Enterprise 2.0 tools not only make you more productive, but they also increase the pace of innovation within an organization.   Big old vendors are often not the original source of the most innovative solutions (although there are always some exceptions).   Or, their solutions are half baked attempts to imitate the innovation being done in smaller, more agile companies.

If you do not want to deal with all these little vendors, copy the way that Google solved their solar energy problems, and out source the vendor relations to vendor that can take care of the vendor relationships and provide you with a grid platform that can support dynamically changing IT environment.

Folks complained that the last post did not include an apples to apples comparison. Here’s a second cut.

Google Trends shows that more people are searching on WordPress than are searching on Lotus Notes.

In a related note, even IBM employees are going Web 2.0. Susan Scrupski has an interesting article out today on Atlassian.

[Mike] Cannon-Brookes told me the firm has well over a hundred thousand users on the product, and they’re prepping to announce a “scalable” solution (Confluence Massive) that will boost the company’s capacity to handle large accounts. Even today, he said, “IBM has over 15,000 users on the product.”

Maybe that explains the Alexholic results which show that Wordpress.com and Typepad.com both have more traffic than all of IBM, including the #1 Google ranked Lotus Notes site.

Does search mind share and web traffic indicate who has the best product? I’m not sure. Perhaps it is an indication of the “wisdom of the crowd”. Traffic and search results indicate interest.

People searching for “WordPress” are clearly search for the blogging platform.

Today, people are searching for “blog” and “wiki” on Google than they are searching for “email”, IM” and “Excel”.

In other words, Web 2.0 technology is more popular than Office 1.0 communication technology.

The comparison against Lotus Notes is even more dramatic.

Trovix gave a really cool blitz demo at the Office 2.0 conference
They are a powerful semantic search engine wedded to a slick tool to support recruiting and candidate tracking. The system is sold as a software as a service.

David Tebbutt kicked off a debate within the Enterprise Irregulars as to the definition of an Office 2.0 product.

Thinking about Trovix, I said this:

Is SalesForce.com an Office 2.0 product? Tovix is SalesForce.dom for recruiting.

BTW, I am not sure of the answer to the question about SalesForce. If you go with the definition that Enterprise 2.0 = Emergence Software, then the answer is no.

Jason Wood called me on it:

I completely disagree on this one. If you use the emergent software definition, SfDC is the poster boy (or one of them). How many CIOs do you know that even like the idea of SfDC? Not many, but it hasn’t stopped them from “emerging” in large and small companies to the tune of $500mm in profitable, high growth recurring revenue. SfDC is the best example (economically) of USERS generating a market despite traditional hurdles.

After thinking about it for a few minutes, I realized Jason Wood was absolutely right.

I think Jason has helped me to better understand the E2.0 = Emergence Software definition.

I was thinking of it narrowly in terms of super users. As in software is only emergent if end users build their own solutions. Examples would include folksonomy tagging, blogging when blogs are seen as a tools to support information distribution or to facilitate open conversations. And Teqlo is likely to be the best example, where people literally roll their own applications.

But, to Jason’s point, emergence also happens when non technical end users change the way work gets done by simply selecting a SaaS solution.

I am not sure how many other people buy this E2.0 = Emergence Software definition. However, I really like the idea that enterprise IT should be a platform that supports constant change and evolution propelled by simple end user demand, end user creativity and end user innovation. After reading Steven Johnson’s book: Emergence, I think that concept is the fastest way to summarize that pietri dish of constant change and innovation.

Isabel Wang has some really interesting comments on the topic in her article entitled Imposed versus Emergent Collaboration.

Talking about highly used SaaS solutions, such as EchoSign, Isabel asks

Don’t these seem like more “emergent” solutions than rarely updated blogs and sparsely populated wikis to which officially designated participants can’t find time outside of their accustomed workflow to contribute - despite the CIO-imposed responsibilities?

I think she has a really good point there. Emergence requires participation. Enterprise 2.0 is as much about bottom up behavior as it is about the tools that can facilitate that behavior.

Technorati Tags: Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise+Irregulars, innovation

Katherine Heires writes about interesting stuff.  You can find her list of articles here: http://www.mediakat.com/   The very web site is a kind of hybrid of Web 2.0 and traditional professional freelance reporting.  

Her two most recent reports are very interesting.   The first is about GlobeOp, which is a full service mid and back office out-sourcing solution for fund managers, including hedge funds.   GlobeOp is service plus customized versions of vendor software run as SaaS.   Last year, I had a chance to sit down with one of the founders, and to this day, I can’t tell you how impressed I was with their business model.   It will be interesting to watch other companies follow suit in other areas.   GlobeOp is a vertical play.   What about a horizontal play like sourcing the whole “Knowledge Management” and IT department?

IBM using Eclipse for their next generation clients

Kartherine’s most recent article is about IBM’s new version of their IM system, Sametime.   The new system is based on top of the Eclipse Rich Client Platform.   I use Eclipse to develop code.   Check out RadRails.   Eclipse is a “Open Client”, meaning that it is both open source and has a plug-in architecture.   Jabber offered the open plug-ins years ago.   And if you are looking for a truly flexible client, that accepts plug-ins, and is capable of dealing with the largest number of content and application providers, there is always Mozilla.  

The Future is on the Web

My take is that if IBM really wanted to make an impressive open client platform, they would buy Flock.   Flock is a browser, built on top of Mozilla.

And, please be sure to note that I have no idea if the brilliant Flock team are even willing to sell the company at the moment. It is a great platform, and clearly has a bright future ahead of it.

That being said, if IBM used something like Flock as their Hanover Client, IBM would truly be setting a level open playing field.   They could add features to the browser that would integrate security with the Domino platform, and even allow extra windows with Java applications.   And, they could do all this while allowing other vendors both inside and outside the firewall to cleanly integrate into the IBM client experience without having to change a single thing.   End users would be able to switch seamlessly between legacy Notes client applications and open Internet SaaS applications like Joyent, iUpload and Teqlo.

But, that would threaten IBM’s cherished Lotus Notes lock-in.   The dreaded Lotus Notes Asbestos effect.

Google Has No Lock-In

This line of thinking brought me to a realization.   Google doesn’t have any lock-in.   At least, they do not have any lock-in, other than force of habit.   Yahoo! used to have that force of habit lock-in.   It isn’t that strong.   People switched to Google as their search engine of choice pretty quickly.

Instead of trying to deceive its users into a lock-in, Google competes for your business ever single day.   If all those Splogs out there suddenly started showing up at the top of Google results, you would switch pretty quickly.

To me, that is an honest and open approach to business.   And it is very different from the “We can’t ever move off of Lotus Notes because we wrote 100,000 lines of code and our sunk costs are too big” way of thinking that IBM is following.

Where are the elephant hunters?

In a great article from October 8, Vinnie Mirchandani asks Where are the elephant hunters?

Vinnie talks about hearing a person in Oracle’s Analyst Relations department brag that “she punishes industry analysts who don’t toe the line.”    Vinnie follows up with “I guess punishment means lack of access to executives and lowered fees.”

Vinnie finishes up by saying

What’s my point? Our industry has been lobbied, bullied, pretexted by the bigger vendors. If you think the products and services of these vendors are innovative, by all means support them. If you think the top 10 global tech/telco vendors deserve to make $ 500 billion a year while Office 2.0, VoIP, open source and other start up vendors scratch for $ 10,000 budgets, keep your peace.

If not, speak up with your blogs, your budgets, letters to Congress - because few industry gurus and watchers appear to be doing that for you.

Leading an Elephant to Greener Pastures

My comments above are the most constructive way I can think of to not hunt the elephant that is IBM’s Lotus Notes / Domino, but instead to try and lead it to greener pastures.  

Why should IBM reconsider using Eclipse for Hanover and instead go with a Flock strategy?   Because with Eclipse, IBM is locked into their own sandbox, while every single other Enterprise Web 2.0 start-up, big players like SalesForce.com and huge players like Microsoft and Google are all competing and co-operating to provide interoperable next generation collaboration solutions on the web.

If you want something that is web based, you have 10,000 vendors to choose from.   If you want something on Lotus Notes, well, you have a far smaller pool of vendors.  

There are over 1 Billion people who are “online” today.   IBM claims to have 120 million Lotus Notes seats.   So, IBM only has 12% of the market.   If you are a new vendor, which platform would you choose?

Inevitably, for example, some Domino fan, is going to say “but we can do the Web to”.   They are right.   So why is IBM forcing their developers to build everything for two clients: Eclipse first, and a browser second?

The Threat to that Domino Fan Base

JouniPeikko is a fan of Lotus Notes.   He thinks I’m nuts.   I think his pictures of MoominWorld rock.   MoominWorld was recently elected as Finland’s domestic travel destination of the year.

After taking exception to one of my earlier posts about Notes, he makes a really interesting point:

Like or dislike Notes, it has to be admitted that IBM has found an best marketing strategy ever on Notes. They can forget marketing for years. Passionate Notes “doers” keep the sales figures stable.

The doers are the Domino developers.   Most Domino developers have a wide range of skills, and they can use those skills on a wide range of platforms.   That being said, right now, the job market does not look great for people with only Domino skills.   Last Sunday, I decided to take a look on Dice.com, and see how many jobs there were out there for Lotus Notes admins and Domino developers. Here’s what I got: 

Some people are going to say that Lotus Notes /Domino does Java, so the job listings are skewed. But, if you were going to hire someone to do Java development on Domino, wouldn’t you also include the word “Domino” in your job ad?  One of the things I found interesting is that there were more jobs that mentioned the word “Ruby” than mentioned the word “Domino”.

IBM is Listening

On Friday of last week, I received a call from IBM, wanting to talk to me about this blog and some of my recent posts. I am impressed that they reached out to me, although I am still not sure how they got my phone number.   I am also looking forward to being able to speak with the internal team directly.

IBM is doing some very cool stuff

IBM is certainly doing some very interesting Web 2.0 things. I wrote about two of them back in July: The Next Xerox PARC … Maybe. The things that impressed me included Dogear and the Activity Project.

Maybe the cool Web 2.0 kids at IBM can have a word with the Lotus Notes / Domino / Eclipse folks.   Tell them about Flock.

Thomas Pequet sent me an email about a site he has been working on called MemoToo.com.

It’s a kind of all in one online storage tool for managing contacts, bookmarks, etc.

The unique thing about his approach is that he intends to make this information useful and available to you in the context of other Web 2.0 style applications. In other words, Thomas doesn’t have to be your destination site. MemeToo is a service that is layered on top of whatever else you are working on.

This is what I mean by “playing nice”. Instead of forcing the world to change their behavior and come to your site, you can bring your service to them.

Within the Enterprise, CIOs and CTOs can follow this strategy to deliver highly flexible tools in a truly modular fashion. Tactically this means do not build a loan pricing web site, build a loan pricing widget that can be easily integrated into both a destination site , into emails and into customized landing page.

Here’s some screenshots of what MemoToo is capable of:

I got an email today from Marcel de Ruiter, who writes an interesting blog called Shaping Thoughts.   Marcel asked me if I thought that old-school Discussion Forums belonged in the list of technologies that power Enterprise 2.0.   Specifically, he asked if discussion forums produced emergent behavior.

Marcel has an interesting post entitled Are discussion forums the ultimate Enterprise 2.0 killer-app?

If Enterprise 2.0 is Emergence software, then individuals within the system have to be self motivated.   When I have a technical question on some piece of technology, usually one of the best places to start looking for an answer is on the discussion fourms.   That shows self motivation from the perspective of the person asking the questions.   What about the people answering the questions?   I think people answer questions on forums because they like to help, and because they like to be seen to be helping.   That last part is an example of reciprocal alturism.

I think this means that a discussion forum becomes more successful as it works to support better reputation management.   Put bluntly, you have to see a photo of the person answering the question, and each entry has to link back to the commentor’s personal blog (or in a business setting to their People Page).

David Berlind has an interesting article on ZD/Net about a new service called su.pport.us.   The idea is to create a centralized wiki with quick technical solutions to common problems.

In a way, the su.pport.us model is a wiki that turns into a discussion forum with the attached comments.

I think that su.pport.us will be successful if they integrate with open Internet by giving posters credit and links back to their own blogs.   This has the potential for abuse, but it shouldn’t be too difficult to monitor.   Do a “human or robot” test on people before they post.

Hybrid Model

There was a lot of talk at the Office 2.0 conference about the hybrid model, meaning both legacy productivity tools and new tools such as blogs and wikis.   People generally concluded that you needed both.

To Marcel’s point, I think that companies should not throw the baby out with the bath water when it comes to existing web based collaboration tools.

The key successful criteria here, however, is a willingness to be open. 

Dharmesh Shah has got a very encouraging article at onstartups entitled Six Interesting Stats About Startup Success.

Here is my favorite stat:

Failure Increases Chances Of Success: Entrepreneurs who succeeded in a prior venture have a 30% chance of succeeding in their next venture. First-time entrepreneurs only have an 18% chance of succeeding. Interestingly, those have previously failed have a 20% chance of succeeding. So, it seems that you’re better off having started a company and having failed — then not having started one at all.

The article is based on a paper by Paul Gompers, Anna Kovner, Josh Lerner, and David Scharfstein, entitled Skill vs. Luck in Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital:Evidence from Serial Entrepreneurs