This is the Enterprise 2.0 presentation that I wanted to create, but now I don't have to. It was created by Oscar Berg and Henrik Gustafsson at The Content Economy for a seminar they have been doing. It is an excellent overview of what Enterprise 2.0 is, why it is important, and how it is changing the way we work. Great job guys!

Enterprise 2.0 - Efficient Collaboration and Knowledge Exchange

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There's no shortage of Lotus Notes haters out there. If you believe what people are saying on Twitter, you'd think Notes was akin to an annoying rash that just won't go away. However, its also clear that most of these people are still using an older version of Notes and Domino. IT shops are just now starting to upgrade to the latest 8.5 release.

I have to admit that I'm a fan of Lotus Notes. I have been one for a decade. It has not been the best email platform. However, it is so much more than email. Its one of the best rapid application development platforms ever conceived. Its replication, security, and integrated address book where ahead of their time. The applications may not have been pretty to look at or even the easiest to use. However, for better and for worse, it let the business power create a quick application that would solve a business problem in a matter of days, without the involvement of IT.

With release 8, Notes and Domino received an extreme makeover. This time around IBM put real focus on usability and end-user functionality, an area that Microsoft traditionally excels. The resulting Notes 8 client is built on the Eclipse framework. Its well-appointed interface not surprisingly looks a lot like the Microsoft Outlook client. Indeed, many of the new usability features that Notes users have been asking for have been found in Outlook for years.

The purpose of this post is to list and describe my favorite Notes 8.5 enhancements. Actually, these are enhancements since Notes 6.5. I'll not attempt to identify which interim release between 6.5 and 8.5 included the new functionality. Just know that it was not in 6.5 and it is in 8.5. I've been using the Notes 8.x client since it was released nearly two years ago.

Please note that my list only contains major enhancements that end-users should notice. It is not meant to catalog every minute change. You can go to IBM for that. Here they are in no particular order:

• News Reader - A news reader is available in the new Notes right side-bar. It supports any RSS or ATOM internal or external feed, providing it does not require authentication.


• Integrated instant messaging "buddy list" - The instant messaging "buddy list" is now integrated into the Notes interface, instead of floating over it and getting in the way. The "buddy list" is part of the new right side-bar feature in Notes.


• Instant messaging history - You can now enable a feature that will save your instant messaging conversation to your email file. You can access prior instant messaging conversations in the Chat History folder.


• Day-at-a-glance - Now, no matter where you are in Notes email, you can see a day-at-a-glance in your right side-bar. For example, from your inbox you can see what meetings and appointments are scheduled for the day. This also makes it easy to look up a specific date without closing your current email message. You can even update your calendar entries from the day-at-a-glance view.


• Improved search interface - Search has an enhanced look in the toolbar, as well as a new Web-style user interface. I now run off a local, full-text indexed replica. The search feature is accurate and fast!


• Message recall - If you've ever sent an email, only to wish you hadn't, then message recall is for you. It lets you retrieve a message even though you sent it, and even if it was already opened by the recipient. The feature generates a report that will tell you whether it was successful and whether any of the recipients had already opened the message.


• Conversation view - It can be a challenge to keep track of a complex email message thread. Now, from the inbox folder or all documents view you can see every message that is part of a conversation, all grouped together. It automatically replaces the subject line with the first line of the body making it easier to find the message you are looking for.


• Improved address type-ahead - The Notes client now keeps track of the people with whom you interact the most. When you begin typing a name in the To:, Cc:, or Bcc: fields of an email, the more frequently used names display at the top of the list. This makes it less likely that you will send an email to the wrong "John Smith", since the John Smith you communicate with most will appear on top.


• Thumbnail viewer - With one click you will see a small thumbnail of each of the current Notes applications you have open. This makes it easy to quickly move from one application to another.


• In-line spell check - Notes will now tell you immediately when you have misspelled a word by underlining it. Right-clicking the misspelled word lets you choose the correct spelling, ignore the word, or add it to your dictionary.


• Collaboration history - The collaboration history lets you see every interaction you have had with a specific person, including common meetings, instant messages, and emails.


• Calendar ghosted entries - Before you accept a meeting, it appears on your calendar as a "ghosted" entry so you can visually see which meetings are pending your review. This helps prevent the problem where you are invited to multiple meetings at the same time, and accept a less important meeting before you see the invitation of the more important meeting.


• Calendar clean-up - Calendar items have always been a challenge to clean up, since repeating meetings will break if the original meeting is deleted. Consequently, we tend to leave calendar entries in our mail files indefinitely. Over time, these entries consume a lot of storage. With Notes 8.5 you will be able to clean-up old calendar entries without fear of breaking repeating meetings.


• Notes/Windows password synchronization - Although there was a feature to synchronize Notes and Windows passwords in Notes 6.5, the password synch feature in the new Notes 8.5 client is much more robust and user-friendly.


• Domino Web Access 8 - The new web client for Notes email has been completely redone. It supports most of the features present in the rich Notes client, including instant messaging integration. A new "lite" version of the web mail client can be used over low bandwidth connections. There is even an "ultralite" version for the iPhone.


• Overlay other public and private calendars - In addition to seeing your own calendar entries, you can overlay the entries of other calendars to which you have access. This could be very helpful for an administrative assistant or a team that works very closely together. Additionally, you can overlay public calendars from Google Calendar. A checkbox makes it fast and easy to choose which calendars are visible.

Remember, this is my list, and it is probably incomplete. If you have a favorite feature of Notes 8.5 that I missed, let me know.

Today we emphasize both Enterprise 2.0 and IT governance, which can appear to be at opposite ends of a continuum. On the one side we have IT governance which promises to introduce order, discipline, and accountability. There are many frameworks designed to support this level of maturity, including the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF), ISO 20000 – IT Service Management Standard, Control Objectives for Information and related Technology (COBIT), ISO 9000 – Quality Management Standard, and many others.
On the other end of the continuum we have enterprise 2.0 and social computing principles and tools, which threaten to break down barriers, flatten the organization, and reduce human latency. Enterprise 2.0 tries to breaks down bureaucracy. It is bottom-up, agile, and flexible. The benefits include faster speed-to-market, decreased cost, and increased innovation. So, how do we resolve IT governance and Enterprise 2.0? Are they mutually exclusive? Or can they coexist?

Mixed Messages
Today we receive mixed messages from management. We can hear about the merits of prescriptive processes from the same person who is telling us we need to adopt Enterprise 2.0 practices and tools. We are told that we shouldn't be working on anything except approved initiatives that follow the perscribed process. At the same time we are deploying tools that will make it easy for people to find and engage experts in ad hoc interactions. Do we have a split personality? Can we ever have an open collaborative workplace if resources feel constricted by IT governance?

Ideas for Reconciliation
Here are my ideas for reconciling the seemingly incompatible perspectives of IT governance and Enterprise 2.0. They depend upon top-down management endorsement and communication of how we employ social computing principles and tools within a disciplined work environment.

• Be clear about why we believe Enterprise 2.0 is important. This message needs to be succinct and repeated often. Tie it to business benefit. This message needs to be part of the earliest communications regarding the upcoming social computing capabilities.
• Communicate management's endorsement of an open, and collaborative work environment. Acknowledge that this is a cultural shift. Set the expectation that it will take hard work and that we will make mistakes. Introduce performance objectives that encourage collaboration and hold people accountable for achieving them.
• Communicate that certain collaborative activities are not only allowed, but expected, as part of our new culture. For example, we expect people to enable instant messaging, ensure that their status is accurate, and make themselves available. We expect people to populate and maintain their personal profiles. We expect that anyone can engage with anyone else - no boundaries. We expect people create a personal blog and use it as a knowledge repository, a virtual notebook for meeting notes, and for status reports. We expect people send links to content, and not to send file attachments via email. (There are obviously many others. These are just a few examples to get started.)
• Determine how to incorporate social computing principles and tools IT governance processes. Look for ways to leverage social computing technologies to reduce human latency and to promote a more open workplace, within the boundaries of good IT governance. For example, are their ways to eliminate some of the governance meetings. Instead of holding in-person review meetings that can throttle progress, leverage a virtual workspace for managing asynchronous discussions and approvals?
• Make it okay for people to interact with anyone. We must be clear that we expect people to make themselves available for knowledge sharing, even when it is not part of an approved initiative. Get over the idea that when someone wants to tap into your knowledge that it is a negative thing. Calling it a "virtual mugging" or even just annoying discourages the open interaction and trust necessary to succeed with Enterprise 2.0.
• Sharing knowledge should be allowed and expected, and a measure of one's value to the company. Find ways to reward and provide incentives for sharing knowledge in real-time or by capturing it within a virtual workspaces, such as a blogs or wikis.

The bottom line is that most people will not adopt social computing on their own, despite the personal benefits. You cannot rely on grass-roots adoption alone. People need social computing to be officially integrated into their IT governance processes. Then, from their perspective, they're just following the process. Otherwise, Enterprise 2.0 appears to be something extra, or in addition to their real job. In that environment, Enterprise 2.0 will fail.

What do you think? Do you have other ideas on how to reconcile IT governance and Enterprise 2.0?

We introduced blogging within our enterprise nearly two years ago. It has been an excellent way for senior managers to connect with people at all levels of their organizations. The executive blogs have been extremely popular among individual contributors who enjoy the opportunity to interact directly with their senior leader. They see it as a refreshing move toward transparency and breaking down traditional hierarchy. Based upon the number of comments, these blogs are generate a lot of interest and passion. At this point, there are about a dozen senior leader blogs across the enterprise. However, as we look to the future, we would like to enable any person within the enterprise to publish their own blog. The response from some executives is, "Why does everyone need a blog?"

Given that we have only used blogs for a single purpose to date, namely for senior executives to communicate, share, and interact with their large organizations, it's no wonder they're not familiar with other use cases. Here are some use cases that support the idea of giving everyone a blog:

• Knowledge Management - Blogs can be used to capture and publish knowledge that someone else can later find and use. A personal blog can replace a paper notebook or diary and contain ideas, best practices, and lessons learned.


• Personal Branding - Blogs can be a platform that individual use to sell their personal brand. It can highlight skills, accomplishments, and results. This information is searchable to those who are looking for people with particular experience.


• Meeting Notes - Blogs are a great repository for meeting notes/minutes. People with a wireless laptop can "live-blog" during the meeting and publish their notes in real time, for the benefit of others who will be able to search them later.


• Status Reports - Status reports for individuals or projects can be stored within a blog. This makes it easy to view a series of status reports in context. Managers can subscribe to the feeds of their employees' or projects' blogs so that they are kept informed, with minimal overhead.

To be successful, blog technology should be accompanied with specific process change that incorporates blogging. These process changes must be driven from the top-down. For example, a manager might mandate that going forward all status reports must be recorded within a personal blog, and not in email. This type of mandate provides the necessary impetus to begin changing the culture. You cannot expect most people to voluntarily adopt new technologies if the technologies are perceived as being separate from their work processes.

In most cases, blogging replaces functions that are performed within email today. However, a blog has tremendous advantages over an email message. A blog has single instance storage. It is sharable and searchable. A blog can be tagged or categorized, to make it easier for people to find content later. A blog is linkable. (Try linking to an email.) You can syndicate blog content using RSS or ATOM. Blogs maintain context and allow people to comment on posts and other comments.

What are some creative ways that you are using or plan to use blogs within your enterprise? What are you doing to encourage blog adoption among the masses?

There's been a lot of anti-SharePoint buzz in the Enterprise 2.0 blogosphere as of late. Most of the negativity is based on the fact that MOSS 2007 is seriously lacking with respect to social computing features. Not even Microsoft debates that point anymore. The following is an excerpt from a blog post by Oscar Berg of The Content Economy that summarizes this position very well:

"SharePoint / MOSS 2007 is designed for the (Windows) desktop and for collaborating on office documents inside the corporate firewalls. It is not designed for collaboration in broader terms - not even for simple file sharing if it goes across corporate firewalls. Furthermore, it is not designed for the web, it has only rudimentary Web 2.0 features and tools (such as blogs and wikis), it is not built with Web 2.0 technologies, and it lacks core Web 2.0 qualities such as ease-of-use. Despite all this, SharePoint is platform with a lot of capabilities which can be extended and leveraged through customization, third-party tools and complementary products and services. The key problem is just that many of the companies that have bought SharePoint 2007 believe they got more than just the basic capabilities out-of-the-box. They might not be ready for additional investments. This will most likely hold back the value they can get from their original investment in SharePoint."

Oscar's position should not come as a surprise any of us who are familiar with both Enterprise 2.0 and MOSS 2007. Here are my thoughts:

• MOSS 2007 is not a good choice for an Enterprise 2.0 platform. It is a good choice in meeting much broader collaboration and content management requirements. So if you're looking for the latter, either accept SharePoint as a weak Enterprise 2.0 platform or plan to augment SharePoint with best-of-breed Enterprise 2.0 add-ins and tools.


• The Enterprise 2.0 features in MOSS 2007 (i.e. blogs, wikis, profiles, etc.) they are infinitely more than what a lot of enterprises have today. Therefore, MOSS 2007 may still represent an important step in the right direction toward Enterprise 2.0.


• Enterprise 2.0 is really more about a cultural shift in the way we do work than it is about implementing a specific set of technologies. This cultural shift is necessary regardless of the technologies we implement. Based on the maturity level of most companies, SharePoint may adequately support their Enterprise 2.0 cultural shift.


• While MOSS 2007 is a weak Enterprise 2.0 platform, I hold out hope that future versions of MOSS improve significantly. While I don't expect MOSS 14 to be perfect, I do expect that it will meet our Enterprise 2.0 requirements for the next few years.


• Although my preference is to use MOSS 2007 out-of-the-box, there are times when 3rd-party add-ins make sense. The MOSS wiki, for example, is particularly bad. The Kwizcom WikiPlus add-in is a good example of what Microsoft partners are doing to take advantage of MOSS's current shortcomings.

Are you concerned about MOSS 2007's social computing limitations? Or do you agree with me that it is good enough for where most of us are at right now?

Gartner predicts that by 2012, 20% of the commercial email market will shift from premise-based to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). This is up from only 1% in 2007. Of course, email is only the beginning. Instant messaging/ presence, team workspace, productivity tools, and more are starting to be offered as SaaS from the likes of IBM, Microsoft, Google, and others. If you talk to the vendors, they're ready for you today. They have invested hundreds of millions of dollars into new data centers. They have tweaked their software to support an SaaS model. And, they are actively recruiting customers to make the switch from on premise to SaaS. Are you ready to go? How will you know when the timing is right?

While I am convinced that SaaS is real trend that will eventually pay-off. I'm not convinced that it is right for everyone, not yet. Beyond the hype, each SaaS opportunity must be evaluated on its ability to reduce long-term expense while sustaining quality and compliance. Every company must define what quality and compliance is for them. SaaS is not fully prepared to meet everyone's definition of quality and compliance for a price that is less that what they are paying today.

Here are five actions we can begin now to help us prepare for SaaS in the future:

1. Transition to "Out-of-the-Box" - The reason that SaaS vendors can offer communciation and collaboration services at a lower cost than many premise-based solutions is that they can recognize massive scalability. This can only be accomplished through shared, multi-tenent infrastructures. It also assumes that all of these tenents are using the same "out-of-the-box" software. If you have customized your on premise solutions to meet your company's special business requirements, it will be difficult to upgrade, let alone migrate to SaaS. Make "out-of-the-box" a design principle going forward. It may require altering some business processes. However, it will ultimately position your company for future cost-cutting options such as SaaS.


2. Know your cost - It is impossible to know whether SaaS provides value unless you understand your current cost structure. SaaS vendors can assist you in developing a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) model that incorporates all of your platforms costs. Remember, that acquisition and implementation are usually a fraction of the cost of ongoing support and maintenance. As you track your costs against that of SaaS, you will be able to forecast the point at which SaaS may be viable, from a cost perspective. However, cost is only part of the consideration.
   
3. Understand Your Requirements - Besides cost, you must know what requirements must be met to consider SaaS viable. Here are some questions you should ask: How will you integrate your applications? Do you need encryption? Do you need directory/security integration? How will you manage single sign-on? Do you have legal hold and discovery requirements? Do you have records retention requirements? What are your message hygiene requirements? Do you have special regulatory requirements? Are you able to use a shared infrastructure? How will you manage storage limits? What are your service level requirements? How will the support structure work? How will you coexist between on-premise and SaaS solutions? There are probably many more. Devote plenty of time to understanding the minimum requirements that SaaS must deliver to be viable.
   
4. Monitor the Marketplace - The SaaS vendors will provide you with an impressive list of customers already using their services. However, you will quickly notice that there are few if any government agencies or financial services firms represented. Most of the large early adopters have been from the manufacturing industry, which is often early at realizing cost benefits. Manufacturing is also less regulated than government and finance. Keep a close eye on the marketplace and when you start to notice the regulated industries jumping aboard it will signal that SaaS vendors have reached an appropriate level of maturity for most industries.
   
5. Start a Small Pilot - The best way to start to experience the benefits and drawbacks of SaaS is to start using it. Ideally you could identify a small number of people who could switch completely to a SaaS-based solution. However, there are some potential challenges for these people. For example, will they be able to access your corporate directory? Will they be able to do a free-time search? Will they be able to IM people on the on-premise platform? If the pilot people are separated too much from everyone else, they will not be able to effective evaluate it. The lessons learned around coexistance will be directly applicable to your future rollout. Coexistance may even be your long-term strategy if you opt for a hybrid approach where some users connect to premise-based services and others to SaaS solutions. You may need to do a small pilot every year to get a sense for how SaaS is evolving to meet your needs.

Although we're starting to see some companies make the leap to SaaS, it is still relatively immature. By following the guidelines above, you will be better positioned for making the SaaS decision when it truly benefits your company. For some of you, that could be many years from now.

Are you considering SaaS? What have you done to start preparing?

Recently, I started keeping track of my personal collaboration rules. Although I hadn't written them down previously, these are principles that I try to live by. This list is probably not inclusive of all the rules I subconsciously and consciously live by as I try to be good collaboration citizen. However, they are the ones that came to mind:

1. Capture once - There's nothing more wasteful than capturing the same information multiple times. Copy and paste makes that easy within the electronic world. However, what about when you're in a meeting and collaborating on a whiteboard or flip chart? Someone has to recapture that content electronically. This is wasteful. What about taking meeting notes on a paper notebook prior to distributing them electronically? This wastes time too. While there are some situations when you have to capture information more than once, you can eliminate most of them by making some minor changes to the way you work. Instead of using a physical whiteboard in a meeting, use an electronic tool on a laptop that can be projected. Or ask everyone to bring a laptop to the meeting and collaborate over a web conference, even though everyone is in the same physical conference room. Instead of carrying around a paper notebook, take your laptop to your meetings. Store meeting minutes and other sharable content in a blog or wiki, and then email the link.


2. Process once - How many times have I looked at an email just to defer action a little longer. Each time I have to reread it, I'm wasting time. If an e-mail requires action, and you do not have time to complete it immediately, copy the e-mail to a calendar entry, and schedule an appropriate amount of time in the future. Include some brief notes at the top of the calendar entry to quickly remind you of exactly what is needed, so that you don't have to reread the entire email.


3. Resist printing - Okay, we all know that printing kills trees. Paper documents tend to accumulate, take up space, and increase the amount of refuse for which we're responsible. Paper cannot be easily secured. It can fall into the wrong hands. There is no log to know who else may have seen the paper. There are really very few instances when printing to paper is a good idea. Resist printing an agenda or other meeting materials that end up in the trash within minutes of being created. Ask yourself whether this document, if printed, will remain useful and relevent for more than a week. If the answer is no, then figure out a way to meet your need without printing.


4. Don't use email to collaborate, use it to communicate - Email is a terrible collaboration tool, but an excellent communication tool. When it comes to collaboration, email tends to create more work, and lacks critical context. Take this scenario: We are working as a team to write a proposal. Someone writes a first draft and emails it to the rest of the team. Each member of the team marks up their copy and emails it back to the original sender. That person is now responsible for integrating the individual input from each person on the team. This is inefficient on multiple levels. Obviously it is for the person who compiling the feedback. However, it is also inefficient for the other people who are providing feedback without knowing how their team members are responding. It's very possible that they are coming to the same or similar conclusions. It is much more effective and efficient to work as a team on a single, shared copy of the content. Wikis are perfect for this use case. So, next time your about to send an email, ask yourself whether this is a simple, isolated commnication, or a collaborative effort that would benefit from having a dedicated virtual workspace.


5. Send links, not attachments - Nothing eats up disk space on email servers faster than attachments, especially if you're not sharing a single-copy message store. Think about it, everyone person on the distribution received their own copy of the attachment. What a waste! Instead, store your attachments in a place accessible by others and send a link. An additional benefit is that you can update the document and ensure that anyone who later follows the link from an email is getting the most up-to-date version.


6. Store in a searchable, linkable repository - Unfortunately, most people use email as their personal content store. The problem is that I may have some content that someone else could really use. However, if they don't know me, they will never find it. We simply don't allow other people, especially people we don't know, to search our email. A better approach is to store content that has value to more than just yourself, in a location that is accessible and searchable by others. A good solution for this is the public area of your SharePoint MySite.


7. Be a sharer, not a hoarder - Times are certainly changing. We used to value people because they knew stuff that no one else knew. They were the experts. Now, the more we share, the more we are valued. As we share what we know, others can become co-contributers. This results in a product that is better than any individual could have accomplished on their own.


8. Use real-time communication, instead of email and voice mail, to reduce cycle time - Voice mail and e-mail are slow. It usually takes at least 24 hours to hear back from someone. If you end up going back and forth for several cycles, you could waste days or weeks. Instead, leverage presence to see if the person you need is available right now. If so, use instant messaging, or ask if you can call her on the phone, if that is more appropriate. You can even setup an instant web or audio conference if there are multiple people that need to suddenly work together. Be the one to stop the email/voice mail tag game.

I'm sure there are other rules I'm forgetting. Do you disagree with any on this list? Do you have other rules of your own you would like to share? Let me know.