Irregulars – Page 6

What will the new spring crop yield?

I’ve been taking a lot of satisfaction these past few weeks in how our little enterprise 2.0 garden is growing. In the past few weeks I’ve been asked to podcast, to appear on a video segment, and to participate in an enterprise 2.0 “rave.” All good stuff. The analyst and media coverage of enterprise 2.0 has really started to pick up too. I’m particularly encouraged by the management findings and recommendations we’ve seen coming out of MIT’s Sloan Management Report and McKinsey. I guess they legitimize our inner-circle zealot ramblings.

A few items of interest: I attended Ajax World a couple weeks ago. I listened to a few of the speakers, but spent more time trolling the vendors in the exhibit hall for real examples of how Ajax solutions were generating real business advantages for their customers. Nexaweb had some interesting case studies. They quickly rattled off projects at Bank of Toyko, Mitsubishi, Seimans, AFLAC and EMC where companies had built rich Internet applications that were making a difference in their markets. Another interesting observation was a casual chat I had with Chris Warner at JackBe. He basically told me the audience makeup is different this year. That it was not so much developers in jeans and ponytails asking technical questions, but guys in Polo shirts and khakis asking how to solve a business problem. He said, “When suits start walking around, we’ll know the market has matured.”

I ran into Dion Hinchcliffe in the lounge. Dion and Jeremy Geelan had kindly asked me to participate in their ground-breaking Enterprise 2.0 premier web TV segment. Unfortunately, I had to decline, but look forward to future episodes. Don’t miss the first episode, airing Monday, April 9.

Here is Dion’s description of the show:

The Enterprise 2.0 TV Show Airs Web-Wide This April from the Reuters TV Studio in Times Square

We’ve teamed up with former BBC producer Jeremy Geelan — and IT industry maven extraordinaire — to create a new world-class Web-based TV show with broadcast quality production values that obsessively covers the rapidly emerging topic of current industry fascination: Enterprise 2.0. Taped in leading venues throughout the country, the Enterprise 2.0 TV Show is designed as an open, freely-distributable communication stream created to tap the exploding popularity and delivery models of the online video medium. The show is carefully crafted to help non-technical business leaders explore the power and potential of the very latest industry developments on the Internet. Each show delves into the most important new trends that are helping reshape the face of the enterprise today and have the potential to unleash significant productivity gains and competitive advantage. Episode #1, a deep dive into the moving parts of Enterprise 2.0, has already been taped with industry leaders such as SocialText, Kapow, Jubii, and Near-Time and will be ‘airing’ in April on the show site as well as everywhere else on the Web. Also, if you are interested in appearing on the show or want to advertise or sponsor, please contact Jeremy directly.

I first started writing about what we now call “Enterprise 2.0” the end of June, last year. I believe it was about this time last year that McAfee published his seminal, “Enterprise 2.0: the Dawn of Emergent Collaboration.” Now, barely a year later, we’ve got our own T.V. show and we’re hosting Rave parties (more to come on that). I’m looking forward to harvesting the rewards of this year’s crop. It’s fun blogging history in the making.

———

Update: the Enterprise 2.0 Rave has a web site now… Lots of buzz on this already. They tell me they’re creating a button for blogger discounts, but if you want save $250 now, sign up here. I think they are capping the number of attendees, so it’s first-come, first-served.

It was a graveyard smash!

I finally got a peek at the Monster Mash-up maker Teqlo today. Jeff Nolan, whom many of you should know as the originator of the Enterprise Irregulars, joined Teqlo this year as CEO, leaving enterprise giant SAP. I’m sure all the Irregulars will be blogging about the demo today, but I thought I’d throw in my two cents.

I’ve written about mashups before, and I have to say, the Teqlo product is pretty impressive. (And I do mean pretty. I liked the user interface.) Jeff’s example made it look easy to create your own customized application using a few Google apps and widgets and some data he collected from various web-based apps.

Because I have an IT services heritage, I was interested in his plan to attract SIs and resellers in Q407. Teqlo is made-to-order for SIs. Integrators have the deep process knowledge of their clients’ businesses and enough tech competence to deliver customized solutions. These mashup makers like Teqlo may be the killer un-enterprise app of the next decade.

Teqlo is initially focused on the SMB market. Jeff commented that there are too many challenges (security, compliance, etc.) to target large enterprises today and that IT is somewhat threatened by mashing up services anyway. His pricing was really reasonable too– a small business could even get started with Teqlo for free, but they’d have to see some ads.

Also on the mashup front, I heard from IBM today who already has a plan for its mashup maker QEDWiki to integrate with Yahoo Pipes.

Reality e2.0. Let the hype-busting begin.

I’ve been busy converting early access trial users to customers for my e2.0 client, Itensil. I feel sort of like a 21st century Lewis and Clark, where I’m charting new territory. A lot of the discussion to date about adoption in the enterprise has made liberal use of the future tense. The conversation usually involves how web 2.0 “will” be adopted and how, sometimes when. I’d like to bring that discussion into the present tense. The good news is the feedback we’re getting is validating what those of us who’ve been evangelizing in the sector have been predicting.

The vast majority of early access trial users at Itensil have been user departments, not IT departments. We ask them to describe their basic problem they’re trying to solve. These are some of their answers:

XYZ has offices spread all over the world that often work together. We need a new toolset to make this interaction simpler

We have a number of undocumented and unmanaged processes within the organization which require input from various teams. These cross multiple areas of the company from marketing to HR.

We have multi-state annual direct-mail campaign stretching over 5 months.

Manage a team of 25 shift and day working staff across multiple sites. Struggle with effort coordination and communication.

We are a small but rapidly growing third party warehousing/logistics company with 5 facilities around the globe and roughly 50 internal employees and 700 external customer employees. Being a third party warehouse/logistics company involves a huge degree of collaboration as we not only have to work together as a team within (across our 5 separate facilities) but we are acting as a direct partner of our customer’s business and need to tightly collaborate with them (roughly 35 brands) scheduling their execution. The big challenge we experience is having a group of people scattered physically around the world (easily 30 locations) be able to efficiently work together with maximum visibility so that everyone always knows what’s going on.

Although it’s still early days for Itensil, we’ve received hundreds of inquiries along these lines. Itensil is a small start-up that hasn’t really started a broad marketing initiative. We’ve tapped into user demand from the blogosphere. I’m sure if Itensil is experiencing this level of interest, other firms in the category must be swamped with the here and now of enterprise 2.0 adoption. So, perhaps, the revolution has turned into an expedition for those of us in the rivers and valleys of delivering on the promise of web 2.0 in the enterprise.

Feel free to share your experiences.

Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it… except IBM

Move over Farmer’s Almanac, mashups are coming to the rescue. Today, IBM’s Emerging Technology Group and AccuWeather (the leading weather authority) announced an agreement to use IBM’s QEDWiki platform to create situational mashups for its enterprise customers.

I spoke today with Paul Raymond, AccuWeather’s senior product manager for AccuWeather’s commercial client business and Dan Gisolfi from IBM’s QEDWiki team. Raymond is looking to use the mashup technology to bring just-in-time data needed to his commercial clients when and how its needed. “We get requests daily from businesses to create applications or provide data that has an impact on their business.” He sees the new QEDWiki platform as a surefire way to rapidly develop new prototype applications for his clients.

What kind of applications are we talking about?

Straight from the press release:

The types of AccuWeather information to be delivered via a subscription–based service using QEDWiki technology include:

Weather forecasts, current conditions and historical data, including temperature and precipitation, for over 2.7 million locations worldwide, for use by energy analysts, traders as well as retail and other business analysts

Real–time Local Storm Reports, providing critical, localized and dynamic data to emergency managers and risk managers

Doppler Radar with StormTimer™ forecasts for anticipating arrival times and conditions of severe weather

Severe weather watches and warnings for tornadoes, hail, heavy rain and lightning, enabling businesses to protect their personnel and property.

Tropical and marine forecasts, such as sea surface temperature, wind speed and direction, and ocean wave heights, guiding off–shore interests in transporting and servicing mobile and stationery assets.

Raymond described a real-life scenario that recently cropped up. An energy trader and commercial client who already subscribes to AccuWeather for daily temperatures related to its natural gas and heating fuel inputs asked him if he could make him an application where he could simply “grab” this information, rather than doing manual data entry and using spreadsheets. He wanted real-time live access to temperatures for the last month in 12 cities and then a forecast for the next three days’ high temperatures. This application is made-to-order for a mashup.

What I find really interesting about this announcement is not necessarily the fact that the two companies intend to try and get the mashup market going for weather, it’s that the market is user-driven. Raymond says, “The people who are coming to AccuWeather with the business need are the business managers.” Gisolfi notes that it’s possible to go direct to the user in this case because of the skill set of the end-user. AccuWeather’s commercial clients who already pay for subscription data are scientists and engineers. They already have a baseline high tech skill base. Although Gisolfi says IBM is happy to mentor AccuWeather’s IT staff if the situation warrants it.

Because the QEDWiki team is now rolling out the platform to select clients, Gisolfi says he’s creating a “sandbox” where widgets can be incubated and shared. “You need an eco-system of content providers like Dun & Bradstreet, AccuWeather and others as well as people willing to consume and create mashups like the Environmental Protection Agency and American Express.” In the true spirit of web 2.0 collaboration, Gisolfi is optimistic IBM will get the feedback it needs from the community so they can get the business model right.

Like Gisolfi said, “A content provider like AccuWeather who already has a commercial business is trying to embrace the long tail around weather and provide a vibrant, new channel for their existing assets.”

IBM, with its ginormous client base, wins the Enterprise 2.0 evangelizer of the year award for 2006.

What do Enterprise 2.0 and Mrs. Robinson have in common?

I’m going for seduction, but the real answer is a good post by Mike Gotta an analyst at the Burton Group. Mike brought up some good advice for e2.0 evangelists: the next time you’re touting your wares, add a footnote on “security, identity, records management, integration, interoperability and other concerns.” I’ve been somewhat in denial on the security issues related to e2.0 solutions, but perhaps it’s time to face the music. Each vendor addresses these issues in different ways, but it’s worth a mention on how you’re going to address these issues if, God forbid, the solution takes off virally through popular adoption within the enterprise.

Something else I realized while reading this post is how young this market is. Andrew McAfee named the baby “Enterprise 2.0” in the spring of this year– we’re about 9 months into the sector–therefore, extending the metaphor… the baby isn’t even born yet.

At Office 2.0, there were 54 product vendors that showed up clamoring for attention. And considering how the threshold for building and launching enterprise 2.0 companies is so low, we could be looking at hundreds of vendors in this category before the baby starts to crawl. This week, I noticed that CMP changed its “Collaborative Technologies Conference” to “Enterprise 2.0” further validating the sector.

So, get ready to pass out the cigars… the baby is healthy and growing. But as we start to consider care and feeding, let’s make sure he’s safe at home.

Mike Gotta:

While it is important to enable users themselves to construct their own communication, information sharing and collaborative environments, they need to do so within policies and structures that do not put the enterprise at risk. And that’s a key message I want to get across with this post.