iPhone and the Beginning of the End for Corporate Email?
So the iPhone is nearly on the market, and the reviews are in. Nearly every media outlet new and old, including CNBC, has been buzzing about it all week. One of the most common complaints is that the iPhone does not support corporate push email - no Exchange integration. For the business Blackberry addicted world, this is a non-starter and the common thesis goes it will significantly impact iPhone market penetration. We’ll forget about whether the keyboard will work or not for now (reviewers are saying it works well).
With this in the backdrop, I’ve been digging in deep on Facebook and applying it to my professional life. I see great potential in the platform and am already getting value from it, and also understand that challenges exist and will continue to emerge. Of course I’ve been following the blogosphere reviews on Facebook for business and came across this great synthesis by Dennis Howlett of AccMan and a member of the Enterprise Irregulars. Below is a quote from Dennis’ post that sparked my post:
Today, I see a combination of Twitter and Facebook as having the potential to replace 90% of the email I receive while improving my personal productivity. I’ve become enough of a Twitter junkie to make sure I receive updates while out and about–along with Facebook updates.
I’m not sure about the 90% number, or am I sure when it will happen. But, I have experienced the point made. The combination of Facebook with Facebook mobile (i.e. I get my inbox delivered to my phone via SMS) and Twitter (which is also delivered to my phone by SMS, and to which I was admittedly a relucatant adopter) is filling a rapidly growing percentage of my communication and collaboration needs in a way that email does not any more. I find that the message gets my attention quicker, and that the issue being discussed gets solved faster this way. Plus, whether on Twitter or Facebook, there is a record (public or private at my discretion) that I can refer back to at my convenience.
Here is a real scenario. I update My Trips in Facebook to let my friends know where I’ll be for the next two weeks. A BSG colleague notices that I’m traveling to the Bay Area and send me a Facebook message about meeting a potential business development opportunity out there. I get the message on my mobile phone, and we dialog and make the trip happen. It would be even better of the prospective opportunity is also a Facebook member and a friend of my colleague.
Another potential scenario once our Boston colleagues are on Facebook and Twitter! I send Twitters about what I am seeing at the Enterprise 2.0 conference. A BSG sales colleague in our Boston office sees that I’m in the city and at the conference, and arranges for me to come into a sales meeting on short notice the next day to discuss BSG’s outlook on Enterprise 2.0 and the impact for Next Generation Enterprises.
Notice that these scenarios do not require corporate email. In each case, the colleague may never have thought or known to reach out to me, even though some of that info may actually be in Exchange.
So, does Apple really know something we don’t about the future of corporate email? Is the iPhone a harbinger of business communication devices for the Net Generation? Would not have thunk it even a month ago, but it’s an interesting thought today and has some emerging use case support. Corporate email may never die, but it may not need to be as mobile as it is today or it may just get put back on the desktop.
^ brian
LinkedIn following Facebook lead
I read today in Techcrunch that LinkedIn is opening up its platform for application development to follow Facebook’s lead. To me it seems too little and too late … anecdotally I’ve seen a fast pickup shifting of people from LinkedIn to Facebook in my network. I’ve read about the same. LinkedIn is rapidly becoming known as a recruiting tool / job board network.
I’ll go out on a limb to say that LinkedIn needs to do something more interesting than follow Facebook’s moves nine months later.
^ brian
We’ve got a problem …
Listening to the Director of Research at Manning & Napier speak at the Enterprise 2.0 conference about his adoption of a SocialText wiki for his 40 person group. The firm manages $16 billion of client assets.
He started out by saying they had a management problem (i.e. a pain), and then went looking for solutions. This is a key and probably obvious insight … yet, with all of the talk about Ajax, Wikis, Blogs, mashups, Ruby On Rails, etc., the will to buy and the will to adopt/use new technology is born and fed from the need to solve pressing problems and it feels like the need to solve a pain is many times missed in the 2.0 talk.
The problems were as follows:
- Inability to efficiently capture and retrieve the knowledge of the Research Department (high turnover industry) - most info was in the email system and impossible to find.
- Promotion of communication between different sector groups and different age groups - breaking up silos and bridging the communication gaps.
- Potential for communications between different parts of the organization (e.g. Research & Marketing)
- Real-time documents, time and space shifted meetings
Biggest gripe of the Chairman was the lost knowledge when the research analysts walked out the door, which is the first bullet above. This was a very big problem for him - turnover is an industry wide issue that while constantly addressed, still happens. With the prospect of solving that pain, they adopted the wiki. From that initial adoption, they have begun to start solving the other communication problems that seemed to be less pressing … for example, the 71 year old chairman is the most read blogger in the company and now and puts out routine blog posts to the company.
It seems this knowledge capture and sharing is a classic benefit provided by a wiki, so the fit seems natural.
^ brian
Technorati Tags: e2.0, enterprise20
Bridging Worlds
In immersing myself in enterprise 2.0 and web 2.0 technologies and platforms … Facebook, Twitter, Texting/SMS, Wikis, Blogging, RSS, etc., while also working with those that are addicted to the traditional email/phone way of collaborating, I’m continually finding myself bridging worlds. For some of my business dealings I’m watching email and the phone, while for others I’m connected in real-time through the Web 2.0 / e2.0 collaboration technologies mentioned above. I have to say it’s very interesting watching these two worlds do business with me in very different ways at the same time. It also taxes my mobile device (Treo 750) and laptop (MacBook Pro) significantly, though both seem up to the challenge.
^ brian
Technorati Tags: e2.0, enterprise20, social media, web20
Enterprise 2.0 Smackdown - watch the video
If you missed the debate, watch it below!
Another Key Parameter of the e2.0 Paradigm
From a social standpoint, and per the McAfee point of “obsessive platform” users highlighted in a previous post, another key parameter of the e2.0 social and collaboration paradigm seems to be emerging at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference. This is highlighted in Stowe Boyd’s session on Social = Me First, and is the concept of the value of connections and how your connections (and I will personally add you reputation among this list and in general) are key to success in the socially networked world.
Some interesting quotes …
“the buddylist is the center of the universe”
Stowe further points out that “it’s mostly connections” and
“I am made greater by the sum of my connections, and so are my connections”
^ brian
Technorati Tags: e2.0, enterprise20
e2.0 Smackdown in Boston
Social Computing Magazine and Robin Fray Carey weighed in on the debate between Andrew McAfee and Tom Davenport at the Enterprise 2.o Conference yesterday. The debate can be viewed in its entirety here. A big thanks to my BSG Alliance colleague and e2.0 blogger Susan Scrupski for pulling off this wonderful event!
I would like to add to the coverage by addressing an of interesting point that I thought came out of the discussion.
One point made by McAfee was that the consumer side of 2.0 is about the adoption of platforms and platform usage. To paraphrase Andy …
People graduating from college these days grew up on Web 2.0 … Facebook, MySpace, del.icio.us, etc. They find email quaint, and are obsessive “platform users.â€
The point about these consumer-side Web 2.0 platforms in the context of what is Enterprise 2.0 and how will it evolve is interesting. Enterprises tend to be walled gardens, and thus the adoption of a platform - which one assumes will transcend enterprise walls - becomes challenging. What are platforms in the e2.0 context?
One point of view we have at BSG Alliance about this new wave of business transformation - the Next Generation Enterprise (NGE) wave - is that it is less about front or back office automation (i.e. CRM and ERP) and more about “getting out of the office” and the automation of the extended enterprise. Thus I do believe that Next Generation Enterprise talent will need to be, to quote McAfee, “obsessive platform users”.
In fact, platforms are essential. NGE talent will need to leverage their profile (including their own metadata and their reputation) outside of the enterprise walls as we know them today. As enterprises evolve from hierarchical organization structures to organic ecosystems, more of our work will be done through external partners and alliances. Thus, these notions of (a) the profile that transcends enterprises and (b) seamless usage of multi-enterprise platforms become vital.
So, what are the platforms that NGE talent will need in order to compete going forward? What are the viral effects that will allow these platforms to grow and thrive? What will be the common glue that enables NGE talent to join and operate within and among the platforms they need to do their work? I believe that e2.0 will truly come alive through these (to be) emerging platforms.
^ brian
Technorati Tags: e2.0, enterprise20, platform
A Web 2.0 / E2.0 Paradigm shift
Listening to Dave Weinberger speak at the Enterprise 2.0 conference. One paradigm shift that seems to thread his presentation so far and is important to understanding Web 2.0 and E2.0 is that the owner of stuff (content) no longer owns its organization on the web. The users own the organization - think about Google’s page rank algorithm (every link impacts results), tagging, etc. Seems to me this is a critical point to understanding the power of Web 2.0 technologies. It may be an obvious point, especially to us deep users of Web 2.0, but it’s very important to understanding the shift.
On a somewhat related topic, at the conference I’m trying to synthesize where the true impact of E2.0 will be on the enterprise based on the presentations and content of the conference. So far (an this has been in Dave’s presentation throughout so far), the area of “knowledge management” for lack of a better term right now seems to be the most common thread - i.e. making the organization more intelligent and effective (at least the knowledge workers). I think bigger impact areas are out there, not to trivialize this area, but these other impact areas seem to not be mainstream yet.
^ brian
Technorati Tags: e2.0, enterprise20, web20
links for 2007-06-13
links for 2007-06-12
Why I love my MacBook Pro
I’ve been running my 15″ MacBook Pro for about four straight days now without a restart. I’ve put it to sleep four times, been in two different cities, bounced it in the back seat of my car ran the battery below 5% three times, am running OSX and Windows XP via Parallels simultaneously, and have started and stopped multiple applications on both operating systems, and it’s still running fast.
I may reboot it tonight for the hell of it, provided that I get through about 10 tabs in Firefox that I’ve been trying to read for about 3 to 4 days.
Thanks Apple for a great product!
^ brian
Enterprise 2.0 Challenges & Opportunities
As a person trying to shine the light in my own organization on Enterprise 2.0 style collaboration and trying to lead other organizations toward the benefits of social software on productivity and effectiveness, I’m constantly reminded of both how far along we have come as well as how far we have yet to go. Enterprise 2.0 is in many ways still an early adopter game, thought the adoption curve is steeper and faster than in previous technology shifts.
Below is an excerpt from a longer post written by Lee Bryant and featured here at Social Computing Magazine that illustrates some of the current pressing needs in Enterprise 2.0 social software development to pick up the next wave of adopters. These are the folks that are flexible and creative, and want to try new, potentially more productive applications. Yet, they are not the early adopters that will try anything. They are productive in what they do and use, and are looking for the next edge. The switching costs are just a little higher now.
Here is the excerpt and the link to the longer post:
At the opposite end of the stack, I think we need to think about consistent interface design to avoid the obvious problem of users (especially the all-important second wave adopters) having to get to grips with too many different interface patterns, metaphors and identities. It will not always be necessary or desirable to create a unified interface for a number of different tools, but I foresee this being a frequent request from both users and buyers. In this scenario, plugging in different applications, services and data sources between a consistent interface and a common data architecture becomes a whole lot easier. We have talked about creating a lightweight social interface onto corporate systems, but perhaps this might also extend to other social software tools and services as well, with feeds and APIs doing the integration leg-work to allow what users think of as ‘the system’ (i.e. the interface) to float gracefully above the water like a swan.
The goal here is to offer companies a fluid combination of tools, web services and bespoke systems to allow them to craft evolving solutions, rather than static systems that gradually fade into obsolescence. It is the ‘release early, release often’ principle of Web 2.0 applied to internal corporate systems.
I’m seeing this in practice as we get to the next wave of adoption. It’s clearly a problem that will be solved, yet it is also clear that nobody has provided the right solution yet in Enterprise 2.0 land. We are experimenting with everything now and are working on our own apps in this area too. Assuming the early adoption productivity is the tip of the iceberg in value creation (as it usually is - think Microsoft), then solving the problem for the next wave of adopters and the next after them is really interesting.
Here is the link to the post. Comments welcome.
^ brian
Vote on McAfee vs Davenport - It’s Free!
Thanks to guys at Zoho, my good friend and BSG colleague Susan Scrupski is going to start polling the community on the McAfee vs Davenport debate.
Vote below! And, feel free to post this poll to your own blog … the more votes, the better.
Web 2.0 Executive Bootcamp Review
I had the pleasure of being invited by Hinchcliffe & Company to attend their Web 2.0 Executive Bootcamp as a guest VIP blogger. The session was a day-long interactive session all about Web 2.0 - including education on all of the aspects of Web 2.0, as well as examples of innovators and discussions about implications and applications for personal and business use.
The day was organized around Hinchcliffe’s Seven Principles of Web 2.0. I could, and probably will, write an entire blog post on my interpretation of each of these Principles. For now, I will focus on making this a synthesis of the event and highly recommend that anyone interested in Web 2.0 attend one of these bootcamps. If you find this post interesting and useful, the bootcamp should be worth your time … of course, the constant changing nature of Web 2.0 will ensure everything is fresh and new, so this is pre-reading.
I think the course can actually appeal to both those that are Web 2.0 neophytes as well as to those that are in the early adopter camp, which is where I’d put myself. The Seven Principles are a good organizing framework for Web 2.0, and each explodes out into a web of interesting implications and opportunities for enterprises looking to leverage Web 2.0. For heavy Web 2.0 adopters, there will be some very familiar territory covered (e.g. what is a wiki, blog, etc. and how to set up), however, the content was delivered in such a way that if you were already at a high level of understanding, the content allows you to think at the next level for each of the Seven Principles.
Below is a list of the Seven Principles and some of the salient points that I thought came out of our discussion on each:
- Web as Platform
- Services beyond a single device
- Data is the competitive advantage
- Lightweight programming and business model
- Rich user experiences
- Harnessing collective intelligence
- Leveraging the Long Tail
This one seems to speak for itself. The premise is that the Web is becoming the primary location for our applications and data. The difference this time is the network effects are far stronger than on the PC or Client/Server platform. With a global audience of over 1 Billion people using the Web, and the application of Reid’s Law - each new human node in the network increases the network’s value exponentially, this new platform is immensely more valuable for all users. We had a fairly deep discussion of the impact of these network effects and the opportunities. Case example - with services such as Amazon’s S3 in the cloud, what is the impact on M&A for new startups? If a startup can get reliable storage services for $0.15 or less per Gigabyte and the service scales, then the need to sell to a larger company to support its growth diminishes. Now extrapolate that to a series of viable services that scale, are reliable, and are cost-effective … the potential to innovate up the stack appears to grow massively.
The core argument here is the combination of the sheer number of mobile devices and their ability to connect to the Web at high speeds. With over 2 Billion handsets about to be sold this year, and a growing number with robust web browsers and flash in the browser, the ability to leverage the web while mobile will increase substantially. Add on to that the use of SMS and RSS integrated with web services, and the mobile device is now intricately tied to the web. Outside the US in fact, the mobile phone is becoming (or may be) the preferred (or most frequently used) way to access the web. Services that appeal to younger web users seems to be leading the charge here … Facebook and its use of SMS is a prime example … Google also has great mobile services for Gmail and Reader. The Blogging Contribution Chain [hmm ... the notion of a "Contribution Chain" is interesting in the context of Web 2.0 services - this should be studied, though I'm sure it has been ... if not, I'd like credit for the term please!] was highlighted as an example in the bootcamp. Bloggers can post from multiple places, including Mobile phones. Also, with RSS, the blog posts can be read while mobile (mobile RSS reader or Google’s mobile Reader).
This is the topic of data as the new “Intel inside”. As people come to a web service and participate, they are contributing data - intention data (clicks), personal data, new content, ratings, etc. Web services that are the first to aggregate interesting and useful data establish a clear leadership position and a high barrier to entry for competition. Witness Google and its search index capability due to page rank data, Amazon and product reviews, Craigslist and classifieds. We discussed opportunity areas where new companies can be formed around this notion of data as the competitive advantage.
A core part of Web 2.0 is being agile, nimble, quick, and collaborative. This is all achieved with a lightweight programming and business model. Gone are the days of long software development lifecycle. Web 2.0 work is done with speed to market and speed to adoption in mind. This requires more agile methodologies, a perpetual beta product, shorter release cycles. It also involves a shift in design patterns. Hinchcliffe and Company highlights a number of Web 2.0 mantras, and at least one came out in this section, namely “Web 2.0 is not about push, it’s about pull.” A fundamental tenet of Web 2.0 from a design perspective is putting the person at the center of your service - they’re in charge. As such, we discussed the Architecture of Participation extensively, including how to create one and some components that are required in order to create one - being open in design and using the simplest standards to get the job done. The information in this area was quite rich
Staying on the topic of ‘rich’, we transitioned into the principle of creating rich user experiences and how to do that. This discussion included an overview of the main Rich Internet Application tools available today - Ajax, Flash/Flex, and now SilverLight from Microsoft. Despite my initial read on SilverLight, it actually sounds more powerful than I originally believed. We reviewed the basic positives and negatives of each, and the notion of the proprietary plug-ins required to run Flash and SilverLight applications vs. the openness of Ajax. Also discussed was the current complexity of Ajax due to the myriad toolsets available and thus lack of productivity. We closed with a good discussion on Widgets - the notion of being able to create functional chunks of application capability that can be distributed across the web and embedded in remote websites - examples include Google AdSense, and YouTube. In fact, it was interesting that a lot of YouTube’s early viral success was because it was easy to embed video clips in MySpace pages to share with that powerful social network. For a good look at widgetization of the web, check out WidgetBox.
Hinchcliffe states that this principle is tied tightly to the third principle, “Data is the competitive advantage”. We returned to a core principle of Web 2.0, namely that “it is about the people”. A paradigm shift is required to truly understand this and create a valuable Web 2.0 service - need to recognize that the people that come to use your service are “partners”, and their use and contributions make the service more valuable. These partners increase the value of the service through their contributions and their intention data that is contributed through their usage, not to mention their referrals and word of mouth that enable exponential growth. Services need to be sure to empower the users to improve the service. Some interesting and some now familiar examples were discussed (the Chevy Tahoe design your own ad campaign). An interesting one was XM Radio’s 20 on 20 campaign, which allowed users to design the programming for Channel 20. In a Digg-like rating fashion, users were responsible for the top 20 songs for Channel 20. Ratings for Channel 20 on XM rocketed up from the basement to being consistently among the Top 3 XM channels. We also discussed collective intelligence as a core enabler and component of social networks, blogs and Wikipedia.
I had to leave at this stage to catch a flight and get back to work on the Next Generation Enterprise revolution. Information on this Principle can be found on the Web from Dion Hinchcliffe’s writing, as well as their corporate site, and other bloggers who have written about Hinchcliffe’s work.
Overall, this bootcamp was a rich discussion of Web 2.0 and the core principles discussion was also followed by other items such as a discussion of Enterprise 2.0. Very thought provoking information, and a good framework for thinking about the complexity and overall opportunity of Web 2.0.
I’m now going to think a bit about this notion of a “Contribution Chain” as part of Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 services. If people are at the core of Web 2.0 services, data is the core competitive advantage, and harnessing collective intelligence is key, then knowing how the Contribution Chain works is vital to Web 2.0 service design, growth and scalability. Though, Chain may be too rigid … may need to think about “Contribution Webs” or “Contribution Ecosystems” or “Contribution Networks”.
^ brian
Technorati Tags: e2.0, enterprise20, hinchcliffe, web20
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