Last fall, we announced our 2.0 Adoption Index Prediction Market. The market is a partnership between the 2.0 Adoption Council and Crowdcast.* We are tapping into the knowledge of E2.0 experts and evangelists to crowdsource predictions and insights about the adoption of 2.0 technologies within organizations. This is addressing a need we’ve heard many times – that it’s challenging to obtain accurate data about where Enterprise 2.0 is heading.
The forecasts in the Prediction Market will be “closed” based on a select sub-set of data from the 2.0 Adoption Council’s twice yearly member survey – the next survey will be conducted in May 2010. Participants can bet on forecasts until March 31. The results will be announced during the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston from June 14-17.
Now Announcing Prizes for e20 Fans and Friends
Some dedicated supporters of the E2.0 community have generously donated prizes.
The top player as of 11:59PM PST on March 31 will receive a free Market Leader (full) conference pass to the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston from June 14-17
The player in 1st place after we close the forecasts (May 2010) will win a private breakfast at the Boston conference with Dion Hinchcliffe, an internationally recognized business strategist and enterprise architect with an extensive track record of building enterprise-class solutions with clients in the Fortune 500, federal government, and Internet startup community.
The player in 2nd place after we close the forecasts (May 2010) will win a beer with Andy McAfee during the E2.0 Conference in Boston. Andy coined the phrase “Enterprise 2.0” in his 2006 Sloan Management Review article “Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration.” Andy’s an MIT professor, writes a popular blog about Enterprise 2.0, and is quite the beer connoisseur.
It’s that time of year again and everyone in the USA has Super Bowl Sunday on their minds. It occurred to me that common penalties in American football have a lot in common with penalties for rolling out an Enterprise 2.0 strategy and deployment.
Here’s a quick chalk talk for e20 evangelists everywhere who are trying to move the ball downfield in their organization. Enjoy.
The year I transferred from a small, liberal State college to the ginormous State University, I started the fall semester with a bevy of difficult subjects: Chemistry, Calculus, Introduction to Philosophy, and Abnormal Psychology. When I showed up for my first day of Chemistry, little did I know I had entered the wrong classroom. I was seated in an Organic Chemistry class, not beginner Chemistry. Of course, I made a good show of it– nodding with the professor at different intervals, taking notes, looking confident. Meanwhile, I had no idea what he was talking about and wanted to run out of there screaming. However, I now know that 40 minutes was not a waste. I learned something day one at that class I never forgot. That lesson is that all organic compounds (and all lifeforms on the planet) have one thing in carbon: Carbon.
I was thinking of this random fact the last few days when I read somewhere that Social Media goddess @charleneli was recently quoted saying, “Social Media will be like air.” (Love that, actually.) And also because there’s been a bit of to and fro from the business process stalwarts who have once again found the Enterprise 2.0 conversation to occupy their fancy.
Because (admittedly) I have somewhat of an unfair 50-yard line view of the playing field for Enterprise 2.0 adoption in the work I do for The 2.0 Adoption Council, I feel relatively confident in saying, “If Social Media will be like Air, Enterprise 2.0 will be like Carbon.” I commented to this effect on Zoli’s Enterprise Irregulars re-post of David Terrar’s @DT‘s blog post, although I’m not sure the EI blog is drawing traffic these days.
This is a great post. Read it on @DT’s blog. Totally agree that the bridge between traditional enterprise systems/data/process is the “missing link” in the e20 evolutionary branch of life. Where social will be “like air” as @charleneli says, Enterprise 2.0 will be like Carbon (where Carbon compounds form the basis of all known life.)
But looking at the enterprise through the process prism is not the right perspective, imho. The enterprise of the future will be a social web of connected individuals and teams– innovating, experimenting, verifying, discovering, deciding. The correct view is to analyze the social layer and align process to meet the demands of an ever more productive and innovative workforce.
My friend @sameerpatel has just completed a report, “The Real-Time Enterprise.” Although I have not read this report, I’m fairly certain Sameer and I see the world through a similar lens. I highly recommend you check it out. Enterprise 2.0 is coming. It’s analogous to trying to stop the Internet from encroaching on global trade in the late 90s. In the decades to come, it will permeate every business process, every line of communication, every channel to every member of the eco-system of the Enterprise. Count on it.
To close out 2009, I thought I’d write a wrap-up of some of my favorite Enterprise 2.0 platforms that for some unknown reason don’t have the visibility they may perhaps deserve in the broader landscape. If you’re shopping for Enterprise 2.0 platforms in 2010, please be sure to give a few of these a looksee.
1. Traction Software. Traction Teampage has been around since 1999 and was originally developed by the good folks who created hypertext journaling (like, orignally). As you can imagine, over ten years this product has grown to become one of the most versatile tools in the socio-collaborative arsenal. Traction has an A-list of great customers including many security-conscious Federal agencies (such as the Department of Justice). One of our members, Brian Tullis @briantullis (Alcoa), did an amazing job with his case study at Traction’s annual user group conference. You can watch that here.
2. PBWorks. Similarly, born “PBWiki,” PBWorks has outgrown its wiki origins and has a full-featured platform that now includes voice, micro-blogging, live-editing and notifications, IM, and project management. (I probably left out a few.) This tool also has a very pleasing user interface and could win awards for ease of use. PBWorks seems to have hit a home run in the legal sector, but it’s truly a great platform for anyone interested in collaborating online. ITSinsider e20 trivia contest: First person who comments on the blog who knows what “PB” originally stood for wins a 2.0 Adoption Council coffee mug. (PBWorks employees– you can’t play. )
3. ThoughtFarmer. Ah. Jevon McDonald@jevon (my brilliant, handsome fellow EI) introduced me to ThoughtFarmer. It was probably love at first site (pun, yes) with me and ThoughtFarmer. The first time I interviewed Chris McGrath, @thoughtfarmer I may have asked him to marry me as I was so swept away with the beauty of the software and its elegant design. The ThoughtFarmer story started like this: “A client hired us to design their SharePoint site. We hated it so much we decided to tear it apart and start from scratch building a product from the ground up.” Of course, I’m paraphrasing from my memory of the interview. What ThoughtFarmer did, however, was design a socio-collaborative platform starting with PEOPLE as the centerpiece. I think when I heard that, I popped the question to poor Chris. As I commented on the ThoughtFarmer blog last week, some of our best contributions in the Council come from ThoughtFarmer members. I look forward to many years of ThoughtFarmer success.
4. Lotus Connections. Luis Benitez@lbenitez approached me at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in San Francisco and asked me why Connections is not getting more love from the e20 echo chamber. I told him I hadn’t heard a lot from the Connections team and would like to change that. Considering word on the street is that the SharePoint team calls the SharePoint v. Connections bake-off Mike Gotta held in 2008, “The Boston Massacre,” Connections has lost a little momentum over the past year, especially, as MSFT is now evangelizing SharePoint 2010. Connections is still a best-in-class enterprise alternative. Headshift’s Jon Mell@jonmell has some great experience and posts on Connections. Head there for more details.
5. Socialcast. Socialcast continues to impress me. The latest redesign of the product is as elegant as it is functional. The platform’s ability to integrate legacy application data, its security provisions (behind the firewall as well as hosted), and the multitude of opportunities to feed external social content make it one of the most simple on-ramping e20 introductory tools available for businesses of every size. Socialcast is also free up to 50 for an unlimited number of users. Check ’em out.
Of course, these are just a few of my favorite tools in the e20 space. I wish every vendor continued success in the category. The pace of innovation in this sector is part of the fun of being an engaged observer.
Well, well, well. Didn’t I relish that gushing endorsement of social computing last week by Marc Benioff? Yes. I did. As the conversation took off on Twitter, what was game-changing-significant was that a tech celeb– known very well in Enterprise circles, as well as the financial community– threw his Enterprise SaaS hat in the ring and announced the company’s, “Biggest breakthrough ever: Salesforce Chatter.” Of course, Salesforce Chatter is the company’s answer to social computing.
Sometimes it takes a celebrity to help a new technology cross the chasm. But more often than not, however, the most influential catalyst is market acceptance. So, whilst I welcome the newfound attention and consciousness-raising for 2.0 adoption in business, I’m eager to start publishing some of the factual data that supports the hype is not without merit.
The 2.0 Adoption Council is now unveiling some of the research we’ve been collecting on our members. The first synopsis report should be ready this week, available for download. The survey reflects responses from over 70 of our members spanning over 17 industries, managing over $50M in budgets expressly dedicated to Enterprise 2.0 initiatives.
Here are some quick data points that are proving interesting:
In addition to our survey research, The Council has also released its first “how-to” report, “A Framework for 2.0 Adoption in the Enterprise.” This report was written by Gil Yehuda after interviewing members who described a narrative on how rolling out an initiative worked at their large enterprise. The paper tracks neatly through a logical iterative sequence and “Director’s Commentary” on how to successfully introduce 2.0 technology and practices to a diverse employee base.
The market survey results should be ready this week for download free (courtesy of OpenText who sponsored the study), but the “Framework” report is available now for $425 in our store.
More good news coming from the Council includes the announcements of some strategic relationships, as well as a new web site currently in production.
You know that feeling when you have to take a random trip to the mall and when you get there, the entire mall and every retail establishment has been magically transformed for the holiday shopping season? Wow. It’s not even close to Thanksgiving, you think… But sure enough, you find yourself a little excited, a little sentimental, a little anxious about the fact that the holidays are upon us. It’s an emotional, a psychological reaction that launches a number of triggers that will ultimately lead to the consumer behavior the retailers are banking on.
That’s how I felt the first day at SAP Tech Ed, SAP’s annual education extravaganza. I had never been to an SAP Tech Ed before, and wasn’t sure what to expect. In the first twenty minutes after I arrived at the newly renovated, cavernous Phoenix Convention Center, I started hearing the words collaboration, transparency, and social. And it wasn’t from the blogger’s corner, I was hearing these words from SAP executives and customers. The event was suddenly, surprisingly relevant to me in a way that I did not anticipate, nor that I was prepared for. It was magical.
And similar to my experience visiting the mall and being greeted by a re-themed holiday shopping bonanza, the event launched a numbers of triggers for me. The first trigger was excitement. SAP gets it! I beamed to myself. For so long, it appeared SAP corporate was just not interested in the Enterprise 2.0 agenda. As recently as last SAPPHIRE (April), SAP’s massive annual customer and partner event, I was grousing about the fact that 2.0 was all but completely absent on the agenda or the trade show floor.
The second trigger was anxiety. At the same time as SAP TechEd, Oracle was holding its famed Oracle OpenWorld. Keeping a CPA eye on the tweet stream, it occurred to me that Oracle was “getting it” too. As I write this, Microsoft is amassing its fan-adulating entourage in Las Vegas where it will announce the long-awaited SharePoint 2010 which has been predicted to be the e20 startup killer. And, lastly IBM got this a long time ago which completes the MISO (Microsoft, IBM, SAP, and Oracle) four horsemen of the 2.0 apocalypse. The combined market strength of the enterprise vendors to persuade and advance their particular offering signals an unmistakable step change in the heretofore teensy Enterprise 2.0 sector evolution. The big boys are moving in with their big marketing budgets and massive sales organizations. Not to be discounted either is Google whom unless you’ve been trapped floating above the earth in a homemade helium balloon, or hiding in an attic closet, you know has recently launched Google Wave: its impressive collaborative, real-time sharing platform. The other one I suppose I shouldn’t leave out is Cisco who’ve been re-tooling their go-to-market messaging around a fluid collaboration theme for months now.
Why does this tacit endorsement of e20 by the large enterprise vendors prompt my anxiety? Because I’m concerned they’ll dominate the discussion; maybe suppress innovation, dilute the passion that has historically fueled interest in e20. It’s hard to predict what the effects of mainstream promotion will be for e20, but one thing is for sure, e20 is about to bust out of the echo-chamber.
I started this post on the plane ride home from SAP’s TechEd (USA) two weeks ago now. Yesterday I was pre-briefed on Jive’s new announcements coming with its SBS 4.0 platform. Whatever real anxiety I felt about the big boys moving into the space has now been dissipated.
It takes a startup like Jive to inject innovation, creativity, passion, and excitement to this sector. Jive is releasing a ground-breaking set of features that will set a new high bar for excellence in the category. I’m certain the tech bloggers will cover the announcements in depth, but in brief, Jive is announcing an iPhone app (plus an email-driven enriched BlackBerry experience), very slick MS Office integration, and a bridging capability that will unite internal and external communities. All this in addition to the series of announcements Jive made previously that include social media monitoring and a SharePoint connector.
What’s significant about the Jive announcements is the company’s commitment to releasing timely, innovative new capabilities in response to customer feedback and requests. I’m here at JiveWorld, the company’s first customer event. From the energy circulating in the crowd here, it’s obvious to me Jive is customer-driven and loyalty from Jive’s customers handily delivers repeat revenue as well as product improvements.
Jive’s ability to manage the books, pay careful attention to its user base, invest in educating its partners and employees, rationally identify its target market, as well as manage its growth effectively squarely positions the company uniquely from other startup competitors in the space. Further, it accentuates the advantage startups have over the large enterprise vendors where releases are timed in years, not months.
So, as the e20 market twists and turns to accommodate innovation, advancement, and welcome step changes in attitude and strategic direction, one thing is guaranteed—all of this progress benefits customers. Customers have a hard enough time getting this job done, so thank goodness, vendors like Jive are making it easy to accelerate adoption and experimentation with 2.0 tools and philosophies.
The top player as of 11:59PM PST on March 31 will receive a free Market Leader (full) conference pass to the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston from June 14-17
To close out 2009, I thought I’d write a wrap-up of some of my favorite Enterprise 2.0 platforms that for some unknown reason don’t have the visibility they may perhaps deserve in the broader landscape. If you’re shopping for Enterprise 2.0 platforms in 2010, please be sure to give a few of these a looksee.
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