1. Every business relies on collaboration and communication to do business.
2. Almost all business collaboration and communication is supported by some form(s) of information technology (IT), whether e-mail, social media telephone or even fax.
3. To win consistently and thrive competitively, businesses need to be able to do the right things for customers, partners and prospects consistently and respond to changing requirements or conditions in a timely, agile fashion.
4. Ad hoc, inconsistent collaboration or communication practices make it unlikely to impossible for businesses to do what they need to do to win consistently or thrive competitively.
5. The key difference between collaboration and communication practices that help a business to win and those practices that don't are consistent business-driven processes implemented and enforced across all business-critical activities and actors.
6. Processes that are crafted, documented and enforced well and consistently help to ensure that all important actions contribute to satisfaction of customers, partners and prospects and business success.
7. At most businesses, critical processes are often inconsistently and poorly crafted, documented and/or enforced, when they exist, are documented or are enforced at all.
8. The businesses best able to capture, define, implement, enforce, integrate and manage critical processes are those best positioned to win and to thrive competitively.
9. A potentially powerful way to achieve these goals is to process-enable the collaboration and communication solutions upon which the business already relies and with which users are already familiar.
10. Fortunately, new IT tools are appearing that make it relatively easy for even non-technical business decision makers to capture, define, implement, enforce, integrate and manage business processes effectively and consistently, and to process-enable key collaboration and communication solutions.
11. Examples include Cordys, which offers cloud-based process and workflow management that integrates with Google's online office applications, and EnterpriseWizard, which combines cloud- or premise-based application building and process capture/creation with an unconditional money-back satisfaction guarantee.
12. Your business needs to begin by capturing, analyzing and optimizing all critical incumbent processes, evaluating and prioritizing key collaboration and communication solutions and mapping out how best to process-enable these -- preferably now if it hasn't already.
13. For more on this (and on EnterpriseWizard), read my recent Focus Brief at http://focus.com/c/B3E/; to discuss, feel free to drop me a line at mdortch@focus.com and/or at medortch@dortchonit.com.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Thursday, July 8, 2010
No Flash? No Problem: Three Work-Arounds for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch Users
As you may already know, I'm a big fan of almost all things Apple, especially and most recently my new iPad. As you may not know, I'm also a big fan of all the Adobe technologies with which I have experience, especially Flash. However, I am definitely NOT a big fan of how the two companies have been dealing with the lack of Flash support on Apple's iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch devices, two of which I own and use almost every day.
Partly out of frustration and largely to help other similarly frustrated users, I've collected and offer for your consideration three work-arounds -- one involving creative search engine use, one involving Web sites designed for mobile devices and users, and one involving a bit more risk. You can read about them in detail in a Brief I've just published at Focus.com under the same title as this blog post. Of course, as always, your thoughts welcome.
Partly out of frustration and largely to help other similarly frustrated users, I've collected and offer for your consideration three work-arounds -- one involving creative search engine use, one involving Web sites designed for mobile devices and users, and one involving a bit more risk. You can read about them in detail in a Brief I've just published at Focus.com under the same title as this blog post. Of course, as always, your thoughts welcome.
Friday, July 2, 2010
Unified Communications? How About UNBRIDLED Communications?
In the 1970s, companies bought a bunch of computer equipment -- when what they really wanted and needed was computing.
In the 1980s and 1990s, companies bought a bunch of networking equipment -- when what they really wanted was connectivity to business-critical technology resources.
More recently, many vendors are selling, and noteworthy numbers of companies are buying, stuff that's referred to as "unified communications."
With all due respect to those worthy sellers and buyers, I'd like to submit that "unified communications" is not really what users want or need.
As I see it, the term "unified communications" is focused a bit too tightly on the underlying enabling technologies, and not tightly enough on user and business goals and needs. No more than a cursory look at how business is evolving reveals a bit of useful detail about those goals and needs.
So, what does business want and need? I'm glad I asked. Here's one answer. Business wants and needs the ability to deliver the right information to the right people at the right time in the right form, anywhere and anytime, in ways that enable and sustain high levels of user productivity, constituent care and business success.
From this perspective, businesses and their users, I believe, need "unified communications" far less than they need unbridled communications -- anytime, anywhere and secure access to accurate, consistent, timely and actionable information.
It may be a minor semantic distinction, but I mean for it to speak to a larger difference in perceptual focus. For almost the entire 30 years and change I've been in the information technology analysis business, vendors have tended to focus more on what they have to sell than on what users need to accomplish. Vendors have gotten better in recent years, to be sure, but every time a new spin on technology appears, the initial focus all too often reminds me of a popular Talking Heads lyric -- "same as it ever was."
I think that vendors would sell more solutions in less time, and that users would see meaningful, measurable ROI faster and more consistently, if each focused more on users' needs and goals. Smart resellers and integrators are making fairly nice livings by basically doing nothing but this. It's time that more of those companies and the vendor companies that supply the building blocks of those solutions followed suit. And given the business criticality of agile, secure, flexible, integrated communication and collaboration, there may be no better place to pick up the pace of the transition than the market currently -- and soon formerly, I hope -- as "unified communications."
Shameless Self-Promotion Department: One of the things I see helping to move things closer to what users need and care about is that whole "cloud computing/software-as-a-service/SaaS" thing. In fact, two of the areas in which cloud-based and SaaS business solutions are seeing their most rapid growth are in collaboration and communication. But I worry that some IT people at some businesses may be sabotaging the adoption of such solutions, intentionally and/or otherwise.
I've posted a blog entry that goes into a bit more detail about my concerns, which you can read here. I'd like it very much if you'd offer your opinions about this in a discussion going on now at Focus.com. Or you can feel free to write to me directly at medortch@dortchonit.com with opinions on anything about which you care enough to write. Thanks in advance!
In the 1980s and 1990s, companies bought a bunch of networking equipment -- when what they really wanted was connectivity to business-critical technology resources.
More recently, many vendors are selling, and noteworthy numbers of companies are buying, stuff that's referred to as "unified communications."
With all due respect to those worthy sellers and buyers, I'd like to submit that "unified communications" is not really what users want or need.
As I see it, the term "unified communications" is focused a bit too tightly on the underlying enabling technologies, and not tightly enough on user and business goals and needs. No more than a cursory look at how business is evolving reveals a bit of useful detail about those goals and needs.
So, what does business want and need? I'm glad I asked. Here's one answer. Business wants and needs the ability to deliver the right information to the right people at the right time in the right form, anywhere and anytime, in ways that enable and sustain high levels of user productivity, constituent care and business success.
From this perspective, businesses and their users, I believe, need "unified communications" far less than they need unbridled communications -- anytime, anywhere and secure access to accurate, consistent, timely and actionable information.
It may be a minor semantic distinction, but I mean for it to speak to a larger difference in perceptual focus. For almost the entire 30 years and change I've been in the information technology analysis business, vendors have tended to focus more on what they have to sell than on what users need to accomplish. Vendors have gotten better in recent years, to be sure, but every time a new spin on technology appears, the initial focus all too often reminds me of a popular Talking Heads lyric -- "same as it ever was."
I think that vendors would sell more solutions in less time, and that users would see meaningful, measurable ROI faster and more consistently, if each focused more on users' needs and goals. Smart resellers and integrators are making fairly nice livings by basically doing nothing but this. It's time that more of those companies and the vendor companies that supply the building blocks of those solutions followed suit. And given the business criticality of agile, secure, flexible, integrated communication and collaboration, there may be no better place to pick up the pace of the transition than the market currently -- and soon formerly, I hope -- as "unified communications."
Shameless Self-Promotion Department: One of the things I see helping to move things closer to what users need and care about is that whole "cloud computing/software-as-a-service/SaaS" thing. In fact, two of the areas in which cloud-based and SaaS business solutions are seeing their most rapid growth are in collaboration and communication. But I worry that some IT people at some businesses may be sabotaging the adoption of such solutions, intentionally and/or otherwise.
I've posted a blog entry that goes into a bit more detail about my concerns, which you can read here. I'd like it very much if you'd offer your opinions about this in a discussion going on now at Focus.com. Or you can feel free to write to me directly at medortch@dortchonit.com with opinions on anything about which you care enough to write. Thanks in advance!
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Salesforce.com's Chatter: Better Business Collaboration and Customer Care in 2010?
Why is it easier to follow friends or strangers on Twitter or Facebook than it is to keep track of what your colleagues at work do and with whom they communicate?
Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff has been asking himself such questions, and he and the team at his company have come up with a pretty interesting answer – what he calls “our biggest breakthrough ever.” The call it “Salesforce Chatter.”
It’s designed to bring “the magic of Facebook and Twitter” to the enterprise – real-time links among content, applications and people. It’s basically a collaboration cloud – a private social network for businesses, and a platform that can enable any application built and run upon it. This means that business collaborators can communicate, collaborate and keep track of one another more easily and consistently. It also means that custom applications can gain and use social networking features, including real-time feed updates, user profiles and all kinds of interaction.
This is new and different. It’s basically a social cloud, analogous to the Sales Cloud and Service Cloud solutions Salesforce.com has introduced previously. It’s got a lot of the dynamic, interactive flow and feel of many of the demos I’ve seen of Google Wave, but it’s focused on business functions. Oh, and it enables applications and content (such as PowerPoint presentations) to “talk” to people as easily as people talk to each other. So things that happen across the enterprise can appear as events in your organization’s Chatter-empowered social cloud.
Salesforce.com’s Chatter could turn out to be the foundation for bunches of different types of business collaborations and communications. (It’s already at the heart of the most recent versions of Salesforce.com’s Sales Cloud and Service Cloud offerings.) If you’re interested in such things, whether you’re a Salesforce.com customer or not, you really ought to dig into Chatter, starting at http://www.salesforce.com/chatter/. Then, let me know what you think, preferably by joining the conversation about Chatter at Focus, which you can find at http://bit.ly/ChatterAtFocus.
Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff has been asking himself such questions, and he and the team at his company have come up with a pretty interesting answer – what he calls “our biggest breakthrough ever.” The call it “Salesforce Chatter.”
It’s designed to bring “the magic of Facebook and Twitter” to the enterprise – real-time links among content, applications and people. It’s basically a collaboration cloud – a private social network for businesses, and a platform that can enable any application built and run upon it. This means that business collaborators can communicate, collaborate and keep track of one another more easily and consistently. It also means that custom applications can gain and use social networking features, including real-time feed updates, user profiles and all kinds of interaction.
This is new and different. It’s basically a social cloud, analogous to the Sales Cloud and Service Cloud solutions Salesforce.com has introduced previously. It’s got a lot of the dynamic, interactive flow and feel of many of the demos I’ve seen of Google Wave, but it’s focused on business functions. Oh, and it enables applications and content (such as PowerPoint presentations) to “talk” to people as easily as people talk to each other. So things that happen across the enterprise can appear as events in your organization’s Chatter-empowered social cloud.
Salesforce.com’s Chatter could turn out to be the foundation for bunches of different types of business collaborations and communications. (It’s already at the heart of the most recent versions of Salesforce.com’s Sales Cloud and Service Cloud offerings.) If you’re interested in such things, whether you’re a Salesforce.com customer or not, you really ought to dig into Chatter, starting at http://www.salesforce.com/chatter/. Then, let me know what you think, preferably by joining the conversation about Chatter at Focus, which you can find at http://bit.ly/ChatterAtFocus.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Microsoft Office Web Applications Arrive: Is It Finally Time for Your “Office in the Cloud(s)?”
Microsoft has begun rolling out something many of us in the punditocracy have long viewed as inevitable but unlikely – Web-based, so-called “lightweight” versions of its flagship Office programs. The debut is so far limited to a subset of the Office suite, and to invitees only, but the implications for collaboration – and for the venerable, nearly ubiquitous Microsoft Office itself – are already significant.
Microsoft is in fact focusing largely on support for collaboration with its Office Web Applications. They’re accessible via Internet Explorer, Firefox or Apple’s Safari Web browser (but not Google’s Chrome, at least so far), and the Web-based version of Excel already supports multi-authoring, or simultaneous editing of the same workbook by multiple collaborators. Users can’t yet create Word documents, but should soon be able to create and collaborate on all types of Office documents.
Microsoft plans to make Office Web Applications available in three different modes. Subscribers to its Windows Live service will have no-cost access. Users of Microsoft Online Services will be able to purchase subscriptions. And companies licensing Microsoft Office 10 will also be able to license and provide access to Office Web Applications.
I expect these Microsoft offerings to be very popular, especially at companies seeking to reduce or halt the growth of their licensing and support contract costs for Microsoft Office. Many such companies have deployed or begun exploring other online alternatives from Adobe, Google, Zoho and elsewhere. However, these all offer mixed bags of interoperability and compatibility with native Office applications and file formats. So an online suite from Microsoft should eventually offer an alternative that does not suffer from such limitations. But those other online office/productivity suite providers aren’t going to stand still either.
Microsoft’s official entry into the online collaboration suite market will definitely make the market more interesting. Whether it will benefit Microsoft as much as or more than its cloud-based competitors remains to be seen. But where users are concerned, more online collaboration choice is definitely better, especially if it comes with more seamless interoperability with all of those Microsoft Office files most of us rely upon every day to do business.
If you want to know more, check out these two Focus Research Briefs – “The Productivity Suites War” (at http://www.focus.com/briefs/information-technology/web-based-productivity-suites-war/) and “10 Signs that it May be Time to Consider a Web-based Productivity Suite” (at http://www.focus.com/briefs/information-technology/10-signs-it-may-be-time-consider-web-based-business-software/). And if you have opinions on where online collaboration and productivity suites are headed, please share them at http://www.focus.com/groups/information-technology/topics/view/officeproductivity-applications-desktop-cloud/.
Microsoft is in fact focusing largely on support for collaboration with its Office Web Applications. They’re accessible via Internet Explorer, Firefox or Apple’s Safari Web browser (but not Google’s Chrome, at least so far), and the Web-based version of Excel already supports multi-authoring, or simultaneous editing of the same workbook by multiple collaborators. Users can’t yet create Word documents, but should soon be able to create and collaborate on all types of Office documents.
Microsoft plans to make Office Web Applications available in three different modes. Subscribers to its Windows Live service will have no-cost access. Users of Microsoft Online Services will be able to purchase subscriptions. And companies licensing Microsoft Office 10 will also be able to license and provide access to Office Web Applications.
I expect these Microsoft offerings to be very popular, especially at companies seeking to reduce or halt the growth of their licensing and support contract costs for Microsoft Office. Many such companies have deployed or begun exploring other online alternatives from Adobe, Google, Zoho and elsewhere. However, these all offer mixed bags of interoperability and compatibility with native Office applications and file formats. So an online suite from Microsoft should eventually offer an alternative that does not suffer from such limitations. But those other online office/productivity suite providers aren’t going to stand still either.
Microsoft’s official entry into the online collaboration suite market will definitely make the market more interesting. Whether it will benefit Microsoft as much as or more than its cloud-based competitors remains to be seen. But where users are concerned, more online collaboration choice is definitely better, especially if it comes with more seamless interoperability with all of those Microsoft Office files most of us rely upon every day to do business.
If you want to know more, check out these two Focus Research Briefs – “The Productivity Suites War” (at http://www.focus.com/briefs/information-technology/web-based-productivity-suites-war/) and “10 Signs that it May be Time to Consider a Web-based Productivity Suite” (at http://www.focus.com/briefs/information-technology/10-signs-it-may-be-time-consider-web-based-business-software/). And if you have opinions on where online collaboration and productivity suites are headed, please share them at http://www.focus.com/groups/information-technology/topics/view/officeproductivity-applications-desktop-cloud/.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Google Wave: The Future of Collaboration, Unified Communications and Business Intelligence
Note: I originally posted this at ebizQ, but wanted to make sure everyone saw it here, too. If you've already read it, my apologies -- feel free to share with someone who hasn't!
Lars and Jens Rasmussen of Australia, the creators of Google Maps, have done it again.
Google Wave is an open platform and open set of application programming interfaces (APIs) that integrates multiple collaboration techniques into logical, flexible and powerful virtual shared conversations, or "waves." You can "jump in" at any point in a wave's existence, play back parts you missed, and determine whether everyone or only certain people receive whatever you decide to share. Waves can feed blogs with minimal coding. Web sites can be wave-enabled with relative ease. You can access and participate in waves from mobile devices. Waves enable consolidated content collaboration and discussion - no need to choose between, for example, an e-mail thread and a wiki.
There's a whole bunch of other cool stuff in Google Wave, but there's no way I could do it justice here - at least not until I download and become conversant with the APIs and relevant other tools. Which isn't happening - not this week, anyway. You should go to http://wave.google.com and check out the hour-plus presentation and demo, take a shorter "sneak peek" or learn more about the Wave.
And you should expect to be as surrounded by waves as Australia, Tasmania, or your ocean-based land mass. The growth of public, private and hybrid computing clouds is very likely to be mirrored by the growth of public, private and hybrid waves supporting every type of business communication, collaboration or relationship. Which means waves will quickly become essential tools in the service of those pursuing more and better business intelligence (BI).
Why am I so confident? Partly because of what's happened to and with Google Maps - zero to near-ubiquity as the enabler of geographic content and features in Web-based applications in almost no time. Partly because of what's happened and is happening to and with Google Docs & Apps. But mostly because of all of the above, plus it's Google. And because I can't imagine any type of size of business that can't improve communication, collaboration and/or outreach to clients, prospects and partners with the current and likely forthcoming features of Google Wave.
The open APIs and protocols, along with Google Wave's native HTML 5.0 foundations, mean that integration with other online and traditional applications is coming sooner rather than later. And I'm sure that tools for analysis of feature and content access and use patterns are also coming soon. Heck, someone's probably working on direct integration with at least one open source BI tool even as I write this, let alone by the time you read it.
Frankly, I'm hoping to encourage development of more features and integrations among all interested in Google Wave. I am fervently convinced that the delivery of customizable and flexible consolidations of content creation, collaboration and sharing can lead almost directly to greater BI - and more intelligent businesses. And Google has demonstrated its ability to develop and deliver powerful, flexible and open enabling technologies. So I, for one, expect a tsunami of support for Google Wave, and for must of that support to result in new and useful options for those seeking powerful and flexible BI solutions.
Lars and Jens Rasmussen of Australia, the creators of Google Maps, have done it again.
Google Wave is an open platform and open set of application programming interfaces (APIs) that integrates multiple collaboration techniques into logical, flexible and powerful virtual shared conversations, or "waves." You can "jump in" at any point in a wave's existence, play back parts you missed, and determine whether everyone or only certain people receive whatever you decide to share. Waves can feed blogs with minimal coding. Web sites can be wave-enabled with relative ease. You can access and participate in waves from mobile devices. Waves enable consolidated content collaboration and discussion - no need to choose between, for example, an e-mail thread and a wiki.
There's a whole bunch of other cool stuff in Google Wave, but there's no way I could do it justice here - at least not until I download and become conversant with the APIs and relevant other tools. Which isn't happening - not this week, anyway. You should go to http://wave.google.com and check out the hour-plus presentation and demo, take a shorter "sneak peek" or learn more about the Wave.
And you should expect to be as surrounded by waves as Australia, Tasmania, or your ocean-based land mass. The growth of public, private and hybrid computing clouds is very likely to be mirrored by the growth of public, private and hybrid waves supporting every type of business communication, collaboration or relationship. Which means waves will quickly become essential tools in the service of those pursuing more and better business intelligence (BI).
Why am I so confident? Partly because of what's happened to and with Google Maps - zero to near-ubiquity as the enabler of geographic content and features in Web-based applications in almost no time. Partly because of what's happened and is happening to and with Google Docs & Apps. But mostly because of all of the above, plus it's Google. And because I can't imagine any type of size of business that can't improve communication, collaboration and/or outreach to clients, prospects and partners with the current and likely forthcoming features of Google Wave.
The open APIs and protocols, along with Google Wave's native HTML 5.0 foundations, mean that integration with other online and traditional applications is coming sooner rather than later. And I'm sure that tools for analysis of feature and content access and use patterns are also coming soon. Heck, someone's probably working on direct integration with at least one open source BI tool even as I write this, let alone by the time you read it.
Frankly, I'm hoping to encourage development of more features and integrations among all interested in Google Wave. I am fervently convinced that the delivery of customizable and flexible consolidations of content creation, collaboration and sharing can lead almost directly to greater BI - and more intelligent businesses. And Google has demonstrated its ability to develop and deliver powerful, flexible and open enabling technologies. So I, for one, expect a tsunami of support for Google Wave, and for must of that support to result in new and useful options for those seeking powerful and flexible BI solutions.
Imitation Being the Sincerest Form of Flattery...
...I am borrowing an idea from my former Aberdeen Group colleague and the coolest enterprise mobility analyst I know, Philippe Winthrop, an analyst at Strategy Analytics and the guy behind the most excellent blog "Enterprise Mobility Matters." In his recent posting, "Fireside Chats on Enterprise Mobility," he describes a nifty interviewing methodology he's introduced at his blog.
Quite simply, I'm borrowing -- NOT stealing -- and adapting it for those of you interested in IT-enabled collaboration. (At MIT, where I went to school, they said MIT students never lie, cheat or steal -- they elaborate, collaborate and borrow.)
I'm starting to e-mail questions to some of the people I believe to be the leading lights in the industry, and will share my questions, their answers, and my reactions to them with you here. So stay tuned, and send suggestions for interview subjects and questions you'd like to see them answer. Meanwhile, thank Philippe for me, should you see him or visit his blog, which I strongly urge you to do!
Quite simply, I'm borrowing -- NOT stealing -- and adapting it for those of you interested in IT-enabled collaboration. (At MIT, where I went to school, they said MIT students never lie, cheat or steal -- they elaborate, collaborate and borrow.)
I'm starting to e-mail questions to some of the people I believe to be the leading lights in the industry, and will share my questions, their answers, and my reactions to them with you here. So stay tuned, and send suggestions for interview subjects and questions you'd like to see them answer. Meanwhile, thank Philippe for me, should you see him or visit his blog, which I strongly urge you to do!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)