CMS Watch Enterprise Social Software Feed

Let's meet at AIIM Expo 2009

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 11:55:00 -0500

You can now review the schedule for the late March AIIM Expo 2009, to be held in Philadelphia, PA, USA.

As always, CMS Watch will be leading a track. I'd like to point you in particular to the now-famous "Stump the Consultant" session, where you'll have a chance to win a free iPhone if you pose the toughest question to our panel of expert consultants.

We organize the "stump" session because we believe that when you go to conferences you should get your specific questions answered. This year the Expo program offers a slew of answers in a very broad curriculum. And if you don't find all the information you need, feel free to drop by our couch on the exhibit floor for a "content management therapy session."

Finally, please consider our post-conference tutorial, "SharePoint for the Enterprise: The Real Story on Strengths & Weaknesses." I'll be teaching the workshop, and guarantee you'll come away significantly smarter about where and how and why to use (or not use) SharePoint in your enterprise. Tutorial space is limited, so register early...

In Defense of Blogging

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 21:26:00 -0400

Recent months have seen -- perhaps inevitably -- something of a backlash against blogging. Earlier this week, Wired told you to "pull the plug" on your blog. Others have even speculated that the economic downturn will reduce gratuitous blogging.

One argument is as old as the first blog post: that you should stop blogging and get a real life. Balance in life can certainly become more elusive in a networked world, but surely you can blog and still find time to go hiking with your family.

The newer and headier case against blogging argues that you should follow a sexier alternative -- micro-blogging -- via Twitter, or Facebook status messages, or various other similar services.

Micro-blogging is more spontaneous, the argument goes, and its length limits keep you more disciplined. So you should put your energy there. Besides, Twittersphere remains much less commercialized than the public blogosphere.

I don't subscribe to this argument. Twitter and Facebook give you the opportunity to push trivia, personal status updates, brief opinions, and ephemera -- all in a venue more suitable for those types of information. We've certainly enjoyed some good internal debates on the internal CMS Watch micro-blog service.

But what if you want to seriously develop an idea rather than share what your pet cat just did or pass along a single hyperlink? This requires a narrative. What if you want your argument to be searchable? To grow over time? Edward Tufte went overboard in his criticism of PowerPoint bullets, but surely his collateral defense of the narrative argument form merits renewed attention today.

In any case, it's surely ironic that -- after people feared that blogging would "dumb-down" the Web (see here or here) -- now we hear that blogging has become too rich an environment.

This may speak more to narcissism than substance. People tend to micro-blog about themselves (my Facebook status box, like yours, defaults to a leading "Tony is..."). Whereas the best public blogs are about issues and topics in the wider world. If your blog constitutes a personal diary about your life, then sure, switch to Twitter. Just remember that Twitter et. al. are also getting found by corporations, and you'll see as much drivel through those channels as any other.

If you are trying to discuss something bigger than yourself, don't give up on blogging so quickly. In fact, I think blogging in the business context has more relevance than ever, in a world where customers want to be able to understand and connect with the firms they patronize. People complain about marketing shill-blogs, and I hate those blogs, too. But yours doesn't have to work that way.

And remember, you have choices among blogging tools; if you want to read our assessment of their strengths and weaknesses, check out our Enterprise Social Software Report.

What's your experience using Google's enterprise tools?

info@jboye.dk(Janus Boye) — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0400

I've just started new research on how Google's many enterprise tools are being used, for a new evaluation report called Google in the Enterprise.

I would be really interested in hearing from any readers that might have some experience as customers.

Today Google offers many relevant enterprise tools, and I'm not even sure that Google has the full grasp on what they offer themselves.

I plan to focus on:

Google as an e-mail vendor
Google as a web development helper
Google as an enterprise search vendor
Google as a desktop suite vendor (Docs)
Google as an app. dev platform (Apps)

If you're interested in sharing, our discussion would be entirely "on background," which means I would apply your experiences to my knowledgebase, but never indicate your name nor mention your institution in any publication.

Please contact me directly at jb@jboye.dk. Look forward to hearing from you.

When the project honeymoon ends

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 15:39:00 -0400

I've been advising a large enterprise in the midst of a somewhat complex Web CMS and Component Content Management implementation, and recently participated in a mid-project check-point where the lead systems integrator laid out progress to date. It was interesting how the atmospherics of the project had changed over the course of the year. After an earlier phase that featured a mutual exploration of creative solutions by all the various parties (client, SI, vendor, consultants, etc.), the project now appears to have evolved into an effort by the SI to tightly control their obligations and, at some level, reduce expectations.

Of course, it's the job of the SI to keep scope under control, if they are going to finish on time and under budget. But the tenor of the project has changed. To continue the marriage metaphor that I frequently roll out to describe vendor selection best practices, the honeymoon is long over, baby.

I leave it to real experts (like Graham Oakes) to explain the various ways to keep projects running smoothly and meeting business objectives. It's been my experience, though, that even with the best project controls (and there are some good ones in place here), there comes a time in a systems project where the conversation turns subtlely but fatefully towards what the software package can and can't do, rather than what the business needs to accomplish. It usually starts with the implementation team and soon carries over to everyone else. Some of that attitude is really just being practical, and doubtless some of it reflects exhaustion with the process. A savvy project leader on the customer side recognizes this as a marathon, and keeps reserves of energy to advocate on behalf of original objectives.

To me, this also reinforces the primacy of due diligence and broad testing before you sign on to a solution. In a large project, you are going to encounter surprises and disappointments. The question is, how big...and how often?

Hope to see you in Denmark

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 16:04:00 -0400

We're looking forward very much to the annual J. Boye conference in Aarhus, Denmark during the first week in November, because it consistently provides a meaty experience for delegates and speakers alike. Several CMS Watch analysts and contributing analysts will be teaching and presenting on the various topics we cover, including Web CMS, Portals, SharePoint, Social Software, Search, Web Analytics, and more.

Aarhus is actually quite easy to get to, from pretty much anywhere in Europe. I hope you can make it.

In praise of user group meetings

aps@cmswatch.com(Alan Pelz-Sharpe) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 07:58:00 -0400

I have decided that I love user group meetings, and I want to go to more, so please invite me to yours...

Last week Dave Giordano of TSG invited me to attend and speak at the Documentum Mid West User Group meeting in Chicago, and a fine time was had by all. In fact I have been to quite a few user group meetings over the years both here in the US and in Europe -- and they are quite simply invaluable. For those of you using or contemplating using software from one of the larger vendors out there I would advise you to check these local groups out. If you are on a limited budget, make sure you prioritize such groups over the yearly vendor fests that are typically held (at great expense) in warm and glamorous locations.

At user group meetings you get the Real Story, you talk to your peers. Whereas at the vendor's own annual event, you endure hours of sales pitches, and ecstatic announcements of new bells and whistles to come in the next release. Of course few people really care that much about the next release; they care about getting value from the release they currently use, typically some version well behind the latest.

In this regard the meeting last Friday in Chicago was typical - the talk was mainly about EDMS, DQL and WebTop, with nary a mention of Web 2.0 and REST. Sobering and valuable stuff. And where else than a User Group meeting would you get a quote like this one? "We are mainly paper-based, except for the Word files the users have to create the paper with"... a classic!

Jive's layoffs don't portend doom and gloom for social computing

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 17:43:00 -0400

I'm hearing a lot of chatter among social software cognoscenti about how the looming recession will impact the social computing industry. You can even take a survey and contribute your opinion.

There's clearly a fear that social networking and collaboration feel like a frilly extra, rather than a core enterprise requirement, and therefore first in line on the cost-chopping block. When noted social software suite vendor Jive laid off a third of its staff this week, it seemed to confirm those fears.

I'm not so sure. Future-gazing is perilous, but I don't foresee a decline in the social software space that's any steeper than we'll see in other software categories.

First, social computing is just happening in the world regardless; the only real question is whether your enterprise is electing to get out in front of it or not.

Second, I suspect that Jive's layoffs are not a canary in the coal mine for social software vendors, but rather, an indication of likely contraction across the board in IT. Recall that Jive is VC-backed and grew quickly. Lesson from the last boom and bust: grow quickly, contract quickly. Grow slowly, survive the down times. Note that Jive competitor Telligent -- having just landed its own timely VC funding -- managed to lure Lawrence Liu (SharePoint point man on social computing) from Redmond. This industry is far from moribund.

Third, I'll argue that the comprehensive suite vendors -- not just Jive, but also IBM and Oracle, each with pricey collections of social tools -- may get dinged a bit more than the point solutions suppliers focusing on the basics, like blogs and wikis. If the coming economic downturn causes enterprises to build social communities one application at a time, that could actually be A Good Thing for everyone, but especially you the customer.

Friends, Romans, Countrymen...

tregli@cmswatch.com(Theresa Regli) — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 18:33:00 -0400

At CMS Watch we love Italy and many things Italian. Our Founder Tony Byrne spent time in Italy as a student, my maternal grandparents were born in Italy and I keep my pasta machine at the ready in my kitchen, Kas Thomas is married to a fellow Italian-American, and Alan Pelz-Sharpe fell in love with his Italian wife of 20+ years in London, when he was but a young lad. Adriaan Bloem has been known to drive from his home in the Netherlands to speed through the rolling hills of Tuscany, and earlier this week, upon the release of our Web CMS Report 2009, we were called The Lamborghini of Web CMS Researchers. Bene...molto bene!

And if you don't love Italy, well, make a lasagne or a pizza and think again. Better yet, join us in Rome this fall for two seminar-style conferences we're doing with our wonderful partners in Italy, Technology Transfer. Our hosts, Giovanni and Francesca, have brought technology experts from around the world to Rome for over 20 years to share their knowledge, and we're excited to be a part of that.

In early December, Tony will teach about social software technologies as part of the Enterprise 2.0 Conference. Tony will discuss much of the recent research we conducted for the Enterprise Social Software Report. Three weeks prior, on November 6 & 7, I'll teach a 2-day seminar on enterprise search technology, sharing much of the research we're currently conducting for The Enterprise Search Report.

We hope you'll join us as we share our most recent findings, and perhaps for a bit of la dolce vita.

When pornographers hit AARP

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Mon, 6 Oct 2008 16:25:00 -0400

Some big news happened a couple of weeks ago that seems to have gone by without much notice: the "online community" area of the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) was hacked by pornographers and malware purveyors.

You can read about it here, with some additional analysis here. Note that the main enterprise AARP.org site -- which is driven by Day Software's Communiqué Web CMS -- was not compromised.

An ex-AARP developer tells me that this community application was custom code developed by a (now defunct) consulting firm. In retrospect, that choice appears a mistake. There are numerous established "white label" suppliers of these services, as well as social software "suites" that you can extend for external scenarios. As Enterprise Social Software Report readers know, none of these solutions are ideal, but all of them have had to emplace and update some fairly tough protection schemes.

Still, don't harp on AARP. They fixed the problem quickly, and their community site continues to function and attract new members. This could happen to any of us; AARP's site was a big target because of the Google link-juice it confers. Just remember that when you want to extend social computing services beyond the firewall, you have to prepare to encounter the three horsemen of any website apocalypse: performance, cost, and ...security.

Talking web content management on DM Radio

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 00:05:00 -0400

Yesterday I had the opportunity to participate in "DM Radio" -- an hour-long chat organized by DM Review magazine that in this episode also included reps from Web CMS vendors Fatwire and Day, as well as "social search" vendor Baynote.

The discussion ranged widely from Social Software, hosted content management, process integration (which unfortunately got short shrift), and whether Google really captures the "wisdom of the crowds." You can listen to and download the archive here (registration required).

There's much more to say about the topic of Web CMS. For more structured education, you might want to check out our Fundamentals of Web Content Management Technology online course.

Survey of key Enterprise Social Software technology issues

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Thu, 4 Sep 2008 12:08:00 -0400

KMWorld Magazine recently challenged me to summarize enterprise social software technology in under 1600 words. Here's the resulting article.

Reading it again on the screen, I feel the article meanders a bit, but I also believe the ground it covers is important: what "social" means; the relationship between networking and collaboration and the attendant split in the marketplace; the difference between social software and socialized software; the primacy of scenario-based analysis; and how to categorize vendors. To quote:

At the same time, it does truly matter which technologies you deploy and which vendors you select as partners. Social software may engender a kind of healthy informality of communication and information exchange, but enterprises looking for long-term success should take a very methodical approach to selecting the right tools.

For more depth on these concepts and detailed evaluations of 20 social software vendors, consult our Enterprise Social Software Report 2008.

Socialtext, SaaS, and upgrading enterprise wikis

info@jboye.dk(Janus Boye) — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 18:11:00 -0400

Noted wiki vendor Socialtext has been busy appearing at high-profile conferences to promote their concept of business social software. However, recent experience suggests the still-young company may remain a little too fascinated by exciting new features rather than supporting and maintaining their customer base.

As we mentioned in the Socialtext review in the Enterprise Social Software Report 2008, customers were concerned earlier this year over quite a few upgrade problems with the hosted Socialtext service. Recent reports from customers suggest that the popular service remains quite a bumpy ride. Here's a few of the issues that Socialtext customers have reported over the past few month:

The one and only reporting feature in Socialtext -- weekly usage reports -- stopped working back in May
The search feature was suddenly substantially changed. Now search results no longer sort by default according to last edited date, but by relevance. This may seem an improvement, but try a search on a public Socialtext wiki and you'll find that it still takes some time getting used to.
In another incremental upgrade, international characters were transformed to garbage, e.g., the Danish "æ" became an "Ål" and "å" became "Å¥."

It is also worth adding that while Socialtext formally announced version 3 back in April, the hosted service is today still running version 2.22, almost 5 months later.

The larger issue here is that as a SaaS customer you remain very much in the hands of the vendor. Often that's a good thing ("our upgrades happen automatically"); sometimes it's a bad thing ("we can't chose to postpone an upgrade"). How well your SaaS vendor prepares you and performs proper regression testing may seriously impact your project. Enterprises don't like surprises, but it appears like Socialtext still has some way to go here

Stop the Presses: the Word is out

bloem@radagio.com(Adriaan Bloem) — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 10:51:00 -0400

Not quite hot off the wire, but WordPress version 2.6 was released two weeks ago. Given I reviewed version 2.5 for the Enterprise Social Software Report 2008, I was eager to find the answers to three questions and took my time to run it through its paces. First of all, did they finally manage to make the upgrade a painless process? And secondly, would it affirm the sense I got that blog software keeps moving toward fully-fledged WCM software?

As for that upgrade: I'm happy to report that when testing this, it was pretty flawless. In the past, it has often been a painful process, usually because of incompatibilities in either plugins or templates. Of course, this upgrade was relatively minor, but all of my plugins still worked and my templates weren't broken (though there are some possible issues, especially with the changed configuration files). I still haven't managed to get the automatic upgrading of plugins through the interface to work, though.

The second question: is blog software becoming more like "regular" WCM software? Well, WordPress has certainly come a long way since the original b2 that got the project started. As with other pure-play blog software, such as Movable Type, an increasing number of the features we tend to see in WCM software are creeping into these products. Both, for instance, now contain some rudimentary DAM functionality (enough to upload, resize, and reuse images, at least). And in 2.6, WordPress now outdoes both Movable Type and Blogger: it's the first to offer versioning. It's still pretty basic stuff, but at least you can now revert to an older version of your post or page if need be, and they've managed to keep it as easy to use as most other features in the product. I think that using WordPress as a real WCMS is still a bit too clunky, though, probably as much using a WCMS (or SharePoint) to blog. There's a serious risk WordPress might evolve into a mediocre WCMS in the future, instead of the purposeful blog software it is now.

Oh, and yes, I said three questions in that first paragraph, not just two: is Blogger ever going to catch up? In our social software report, I mentioned development of Google's blogging service has been slow. As I check the Blogger Buzz, I can't help but notice its most recent improvement has been adding Malay to the supported languages. That's nice, but if Google isn't careful, the main reason for users to stick around will be that they are stuck to their blogspot.com URL...

Beware the social networking news feed

tregli@cmswatch.com(Theresa Regli) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 16:18:00 -0400

A few weeks ago, I was having drinks with a friend of mine who'd recently separated from her husband. She hadn't told many people the news as of a week before we met up, but then she changed her relationship status on Facebook. A broken heart icon declaring that she was no longer married appeared on her profile, and immediately she was bombarded with phone calls and emails from concerned friends. She was mortified, as she didn't realize that changing this piece of information in her profile would go out via her news feed.

I saw this as an isolated incident, until it happened again today to another friend of mine who's apparently separating from his wife. In fact, unlike the previous occasion, I found out from Facebook. It was a lousy way to find out that a couple may be on the road to divorce -- as it would have been a lousy way to find out any other piece of "serious" or "sensitive" information. But there it was in my Facebook friends news feed. I learned from a mutual friend that the dissemination of the news was unintentional.

And what about enterprises that use Facebook as a corporate intranet? Could it be that employees are also unaware of such automatic information distribution? As readers of The Enterprise Social Software Report know, it's difficult to separate professional from personal information on Facebook, which has also had a history of privacy and security breaches. Though you can now categorize friends and decide who gets to see what information, I admit, I find it crazy that in this day and age, people still think that things published on a social networking site will go unnoticed, or not be disseminated. Unless you specify otherwise, you should assume it will not only appear on your page but distributed to every close, personal Facebook friend you have. All 347.

If you mix work and play on Facebook, don't be naive. If you're going to sip wine while naked in a hot tub in California, don't write about it on your wall unless you're comfortable with everyone knowing, including your boss, your ex, your clients, and anyone else you may have thought it was a good idea to "friend."

In this blog, I once linked to a colleague's Facebook page, and then was contacted by his company's PR firm, insisting I switch the link to the person's profile on LinkedIn. I accommodated, but was also perplexed. What I'd said about the person was nothing but complimentary. It was clearly an issue of not wishing to mix work and personal information. But really, it's too late. We're already there, thanks to Facebook, thanks to the legions of social networking sites on the web. Social software doesn't let you control the dissemination of every piece of information about you out there -- yet. If you don't want people to know, just don't publish it. Anywhere.

A new (and wearable) Content Technologies Subway Map

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:55:00 -0400

A new season brings an updated vendor map:

We added a Yellow Line -- for XML & Component Content Management vendors, and reflected some other station changes.

And now, if you like what you see, you and your wall can wear it. Our new store at Cafe Press offers t-shirt and posters of various sizes, along with other CMS Watch tchotchkes.

Regarding the latter, perhaps you already own your fill of mugs and mousepads, but can you ever have enough beer steins? Bring it to the next event where we're speaking and we'll fill it up with the closest available brew. ;-)

Oracle doesn't eat its own blog food

apoorvdurga@gmail.com(Apoorv Durga) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:52:00 -0400

Via numerous acquisitions, Oracle has built up a formidable collection of products that they sell for Portals, Content Management, Web 2.0, and other content technologies. As a result, customers find considerable overlap in functionality and often there are multiple options for doing same things. Consider blog services:

Oracle WebCenter page lists "...services such as wikis, blogs, discussions..." as one of the benefits

BEA AquaLogic Pages (now part of Oracle) touts "Drag-and-drop simplicity for creating wikis, blogs and basic Web applications"

Stellent had a blog module even before it got acquired by Oracle

So its perhaps a bit surprising that when it came to their own blogs, Oracle chose to migrate to Six Apart's Movable Type.

We had cautioned about lack of a decent blog functionality in Oracle stack in our recently released Enterprise Social Software Report 2008. Well to be fair to Oracle, they are not the only ones -- many other product vendors use 3rd-party blog and wiki products for specific functionality. Blog migrations are never easy, but Oracle seems to have pulled it off successfully.

So if you are a buyer of similar technologies, remember that:

If a product vendor is selling you a suite that claims to do everything, be very cautious and ask for real life examples and demos
A product suite might not be the best option; keep your options open and consider point solutions for specific requirements

It's quite possible that Oracle uses one of its own blog packages behind its firewall. But when ECM vendors put their trust in best-of-breed tools for high-profile, publicly-facing sites, perhaps there's a lesson there.