Category: Next Net

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.

Early market test data coming in…

Over on the Itensil blog, I posted a note about early user adoption. To summarize, we’ve begun our Early Access Program for interested users. We’ve employed a useful web lead generation tool called Salesbuilder to categorize and qualify the interested parties in the product. For me, as a researcher, the early data coming in is interesting.

I was particularly alarmed by the answers to this question: User Adoption

Over 50% of the qualified leads were not able to get a product evaluated by the team that would benefit by using it. A mere 19% were. And there’s no guarantee, the product was adopted post-evaluation.

Although the data is not yet statistically significant, it’s an early warning sign to all Enterprise 2.0 vendors that user adoption is going to be a challenge for many enterprises. For this reason, I’m starting to think it’s in the best interests of the community to start educating and enlightening its target communities on the benefits of ALL enterprise 2.0 solutions.

I think Jeff Nolan was onto an idea like this… I will contact him and report what I find. In the meantime, I’m recommending all e2.0 vendors start accumulating data about their customer’s trials and tribulations while adopting or trying to adopt e2.0 products. If web 2.0 is truly about content, collaboration, and community– we will all benefit from eachother’s experiences, yes?

More user adoption… and so it begins!

Three items of note, coming in from the mainstream tech media. CNet, CIO Magazine and eWeek have recent enterprise 2.0 stories showcasing web 2.0 technologies at use or in trials at major corporations. I’m particularly interested in the American Express experiment:

From CNet:

American Express is experimenting with internal use of wikis. On its customer-facing web site, it uses RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, to deliver information, and the company’s web site invites its customers to provide feedback to influence product design, said Bob Morgan, vice president of technology strategy at American Express. We’re interested (in Web technollogies)– there’s clearly some applicability. And we want to give customers the sense of community feedback,” Morgan said.

I had an excellent chat with Indus Khaitan who’s part of a marketing group at Symantec.* Three and half years ago he launched a stealth internal blog on an old server they had in the department. He’s become somewhat of a renegade, internal web 2.0 “go to guy” for blogging and wikis today. He inspired not only his team to belly up to the web 2.0 bar, but an Executive VP who now has 700-800 readers on his blog. Khaitan has done all this under the radar of the IT department. “IT was busy on other projects,” he said. The truth is, he didn’t need IT. His department has virally caught on to the web 2.0 tools and now collaborate on campaigns and other projects. Sometimes he gets roped into helping colleagues hone their blogging or wiki skills, but he doesn’t mind. “It only takes about 15-20 minutes,” he said. He thinks the wiki is a great platform and he’s already coined a new term for its newfound popularity: the writable intranet.

These stories, in addition to forward-thinking IT groups, are how enterprise 2.0 will begin to spread virally throughout the enterprise.

*Although clearly Khaitan just got busy with web 2.0 on his own, I found it ironic that Symantec is self-described as “the global leader in information security and availability” considering some recent flak e2.0 has gotten on security issues. See Alex Barnett‘s blog post yesterday.

McAfee’s “Empty Quarter,” mind meld, and backlash.

I was encouraged when McAfee wrote about how his new Harvard graduates would be coming into the workforce with an “I want my MTV Internet” attitude. This sentiment is what I’ve actually been trying to get across here and here. His latest post on the “Empty Quarter” is even closer to my personal experience researching the Computerworld story on Enterprise 2.0. (Incidentally, there is excellent commentary from Microsoft’s Alex Barnett on McAfee’s Empty Quarter post.)

But like I told Dion Hinchcliffe a while back… be prepared for the backlash. As talk of real Enterprise 2.0 starts trickling outside the echo chamber, we’re going to start seeing some real negativity. Rod Boothby and Tom Davenport were debating its merits here. And McAfee got slashdotted here for his efforts in evangelizing.

The flipside to this negativity is the positive experience I had recently while visiting an Interactive Agency, Avenue A| Razorfish (AARF). Clearly, this firm “gets it.” The company is delivering Enterprise 2.0 solutions (despite the backlash) to their Global brands. The firm also eats its dogfood. The company uses a wiki (MediaWiki) to collaborate. Interesting enough, the way to the corporate user-adoption nerve center may be through the Chief Marketing Officer, not the CIO. Better- a collaborative effort between these two executives. Even though, today, AARF is focused on building consumer brands, the firm survived the dotcom bust by building and implementing enterprise portals behind the firewall. That experience goes far to explain how AARF can converse easily with advisors, employees/clients, and knowledge workers who are expecting the same experience in the Enterprise world as they have in the consumer world. “Technology is an enabler,” said Amy Vickers, who is heading up AARF’s enterprise solutions. “There is a robust set of flexible combinations… users are more empowered to have a voice and IT manages the collaborative effort between business and technology,” she said.

This is where web 2.0 meets enterprise 2.0. What’s changed is the consumer taking control of the brand conversation, according to Vickers. But in the enterprise all users are “consumers.” Bob Lord, the East Coast President for AARF said, “IT is put on notice. No longer is it a blackbox mentality. The corporate knowledge worker is saying, ‘I can do this on Amazon, why can’t I get someone’s address?'”

As the evangelizing starts to move its way into the empty quarter, it may be coming in the front door (CMO) as well as the back (IT). It’s more about demand than supply, in other words.

Along these lines, industry leading B2Bonline has a cover story on web 2.0 today. I found this quote interesting:

Weber [Larry Weber, chairman-CEO of W2 Group] said this latest iteration of the Web makes the Internet “very emotive.”

“It’s not a channel anymore,” he said. “B-to-b marketers need to understand the profound impact this platform will have in their buying and selling, and in their relationships with customers. The job of marketers in b-to-b today is to be that of an aggregator of products, trends, issues, events and communities.”

He said marketers will need to venture beyond their own sites to other Web destinations where customers congregate. “A lot of the b-to-b companies don’t understand that they have to go out to other people’s `parties,’ ” he said. “It’s just like networking in the physical world. You have to start going out so that the community comes back to you as well.”

 

Watch this Space: Hinchcliffe is Hot

Dion Hincliffe

Dion Hinchcliffe, as many of you know, is one of the leading pioneers in the Enterprise 2.0 movement. His regular blog posts on ZDNet and at the SOA Web Services Journal have explained concisely and eloquently how to apply web 2.0 in the enterprise. Yesterday, Hinchcliffe & Co. announced its Web 2.0 University. The university will be providing high-end Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 education solutions and premier consulting services in partnership with O’Reilly Media who delivered the concept and the term “web 2.0” to the industry.

The early registration list of A-list customers for the University is impressive. Classes and seminars for Web 2.0 University will be offered around the world in a variety of locations starting this year. The core curriculum consists of five courses, beginning with “bootcamps.” The next scheduled is the Enterprise 2.0 Academy ™ which aims to provide real-world, hands-on information on how to transform the enterprise. The first bootcamps will be held December 12th and 13th at the Carlyle Center in historic Alexandria, VA.

The University will train top executives, IT experts, programmers and developers and other business leaders on how to transform their business by focusing on “the power of the user.”

Hinchcliffe’s partnership, also announced yesterday with with Tim O’Reilly’s O’Reilly Media to deliver a suite of educational and consulting offerings to enterprise customers is a further testament to Hinchcliffe’s rising status as a thought-leader in the web 2.0 market. Tim O’Reilly certainly could have chosen literally anyone in the industry to partner with, but he chose Hinchcliffe. The combination of O’Reilly’s reach into global corporations and Hinchcliffe’s passion and depth of understanding for the technology that is fueling Enterprise 2.0 advances is an unparalleled match for consulting and education services.

Andrew McAfee recently wrote about “Evangelizing in the Empty Quarter.” With this O’Reilly and Hinchcliffe partnership, that quarter will be populated in no time. Remember, the “Rub’ al Khali” is one of the most oil-rich places in the world.