Susan Scrupski – Page 46

How much democracy is “too much?”

I was scrambling for a clean definition of Enterprise 2.0 yesterday and I was going to start with the one McAfee started on Wikipedia, but low and behold, the “thought police” (see excellent post by Dennis McDonald) had deleted the entry claiming it was “not notable.” I’m going to yield to the trail-blazers to resolve the definition-establishing process, but this brings up a more interesting conundrum. It appears, ironically, the Enterprise 2.0 camp have fallen victim to what those who are critical of it have been alleging– that there are gaping holes in an unstructured environment where there is no central command or authority to keep everyone on the same page. I’m simply pointing out the obvious, of course, (and I’d like to think I’m in this camp), but what will be interesting is to see how a genuine, grass roots, bottoms up effort moves forward to clearly establish itself as the technology continues to drive Enterprise behavior.

I’m going to keep thinking about this… It’s intellectually interesting…yes?

Starship Enterprise 2.0– Science Fiction or Future Reality?

So they say Businessweek is known to fan the flames of irrational exuberance by publishing covers such as this one on Web 2.0 darling Digg’s founder Kevin Rose. The beauty of the blogosphere is you’ll immediately get a credible reaction like this one to put it in perspective.

The more I research Enterprise 2.0 and its possibilities, however, the more I am encouraged. I’ve tracked startup trends for years in technology, and have to admit, don’t want to get burned up upon re-entry (again). The ideology has so much promise, but so far, very little demonstrable case studies. I asked Dion Hinchcliffe– a leading voice in the Enterprise 2.0 to solicit “real” examples, proofs of concept for Enterprise 2.0 applications and initiatives underway in the Global 2000 or in the SMB market. He did that today on his ZDNet blog.

For my part, I’m going to start my own tracking. Please email me (susanATitsinsider.com) with any and all examples of users/knowledge workers utilizing Enterprise 2.0 tools to get work done– outside of the domain of the traditional, centralized IT command center. That’s not to say IT may or may not have assisted, but the idea is “independent and productive via the web.”

SaaS-a-fras

All right, admittedly this is a stretch. I actually picked up a physical dictionary today (who doesn’t use dictionary.com?) to see what I could do with SaaS. This is the best I came up with. Thanks to Wikipedia (who doesn’t love Web 2.0?), I discovered that the oil of the Sassafras tree is a key ingredient in the street drug MDMA or “ecstasy.” Now maybe the heat wave here on the East coast has me a little high, but as I have finished the reporting on the SaaS story for GITS and continue to investigate the Enterprise web 2.0 market… I think I might predict a rave party coming on in the knowledge-worker universe.

If what I’m hearing is true, and it’s THAT easy to create these “long tail” micro situational apps, we are headed for a serious reshuffling in the balance of power, once again, in the tech business.

Musings on LBI International AB announcement

I met my deadline early, so I will post some commentary here on the LBI/Framfab announcement. What we have here is a post-dot-com era rollup strategy. LBI International is now, unquestionably, the largest interactive agency in Europe. Robert (Pickering) told me in an interview recently that LBI is roughly 10x larger than the number 2 player in Europe and that the company is #3 in the world and probably #4 if you include Sapient. His plan to grow the company is still expanding. Margins have improved about 20% a quarter for the past six quarters and still moving up. Utilization is in the 50% range with a lot of opportunity for improvement. Overall the company has been growing 40% a year– organically 20% a year. With cash on the balance sheet and zero debt, the company share price has steadily been improving over 49% a year.

This is what Robert does. He’s a financial guy. He’s got the stret cred of a turnaround CEO. He did it at Philips global IT division, Origin B.V. and he’s doing it here. The question is, however, has this industry matured enough to withstand the weight of a rollup strategy? In web 1.0 the first to crumble were the rollups– iXL, USWeb/CKS, Luminant, etc. I may be off base here, but recognizing that these firms, interactive agencies, are largely creative services firms, there may be the same recurring issues. Creative people don’t always mesh; creative people are not a labor pool. Maybe the Europeans are cooler than Americans afterall, and they can “mashup” a culture. Any American who has spent time in Europe or the U.K. in a pub during World Cup season would be hard-pressed to believe that. I guess time will tell.

LBIcon/Framfab merger closed today

I don’t have time to comment on this today because I’m on deadline. It’s worth posting the press release info, however. I will come back post-deadline with comments.

From the Press Release:

LBI International AB, Europe’s leading digital and interactive agency is born

With today’s registration of the merger between Framfab and LB Icon the leading digital and interactive agency in Europe has been born. The combined entity will adopt its new name, LBI International AB, as of August 1. In addition to the existing listing on the Stockholm Stock Exchange, LBI International AB will as from August 1, be listed on Eurolist by Euronext in Amsterdam. The new company symbol (ticker) on both exchanges will be “LBI”.

The Swedish Companies Registration Office (the “SCRO”) has today registered the merger between Framfab AB and LB Icon AB. The SCRO has also registered the issue of 35,634,133 new Framfab shares which will be used as merger consideration where LB Icon shareholders receive one Framfab share for each LB Icon share. The new shares are expected to be registered on LB Icon shareholders’ accounts on August 1. Following the registration of the merger and the new issue of shares, Framfab has in total 60,522,946 shares outstanding.

The registration of the merger and the new issue completes the merger process from a legal perspective and as a result LB Icon has been dissolved. LB Icon will be delisted from the Stockholm Stock Exchange and Eurolist by Euronext in Amsterdam as of August 1. The last day of trading in LB Icon shares on the Stockholm Stock Exchange was July 26 and the last day of trading in LB Icon shares on Eurolist by Euronext in Amsterdam is today, July 31.

On July 13 Framfab held an extraordinary shareholders meeting where it was resolved that the parent company Framfab AB, subject to the registration of the merger, would change its name to LBI International AB. With today’s registration of the merger such condition has been fulfilled and as of August 1, the merged entity currently known as Framfab AB will be renamed LBI International AB. The completion of the merger process between Framfab and LB Icon and the related name change to LBI International AB marks the creation of the leading digital and interactive agency in Europe.

The Long Tail of a Short Tale

I recently emailed my friend Phil Wainewright that “I’m so excited [about this new sector], I feel like a Pointer Sister.” I’ve been swamped with the research and reporting for this GITS story on how SaaS and Web 2.0 applications could potentially disintermediate the billable consultant. The interviews are facscinating. Kicking off with Dion Hinchcliffe, a brilliant guy, and someone who is clearly blazing the trail in the enterprise 2.0 space, I’ve been trying to absorb the full impact of changes ahead for what Hinchcliffe refers to in his writings as the “inversion of control” coming down the pike as a result of the next evolutionary, and perhaps revolutionary, paradigm shift in our beloved tech sector.

So many story ideas and initiatives are flowing out of this piece, I’m eager to file the story to get onto the next one. Unfortunately, GITS won’t permit me anymore to post the stories online here. You’ll have to subscribe to the newsletter to read it. Other interviews in the piece include: Phil Wainewright, Rod Boothby, Jeff Kaplan, Peter Cervieri of ScribeStudio, Josh Greenbaum, Dan Gisolfi from IBM’s Internet Emerging Technology group, and Amy Wohl, longtime analyst. OH, almost forgot, Joe Kraus, CEO, JotSpot.