November 24th, 2009

The 'social enterprise' comes of age

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 10:34 am

Categories: CIO issues, CRM, Enterprise 2.0, IT issues, Oracle, SAP, Salesforce.com

Tags: Salesforce.com Inc., Social Computing, SAP AG, Enterprise, Dennis Moore, Status Update, Social Networking, Sales Force Management, Online Communications, Marketing

Salesforce.com’s flamboyant announcement of Chatter has catapulted social computing to the forefront of discussion among enterprise thought leaders.

First-rate CRM analyst, Denis Pombriant, explains that Chatter surprised many people, which is one reason it has received so much attention:

One thing that impressed me about Dreamforce was Salesforce’s ability to be creative, to invent something completely unexpected to announce in Chatter.  Whether Chatter will be any good when it is released next year is debatable but Salesforce did what it was supposed to do in bringing out a big new idea for its assembled customers.

Although Salesforce has upped the mojo on positioning social computing for the enterprise, we should remember they aren’t the first major software company to embrace social networking in a big way. For examples, look no further than Oracle and SAP.

Oracle’s internal collaboration platform has been around since mid-2007, built by an exciting group inside the company called the AppsLab. This small team is forward-looking and has its ear to the ground, even though its work has not received attention at anywhere near the scale of Chatter.

SAP has also focused thought leadership on social computing. A recent article written by Mark Yolton, Senior Vice President of the SAP Community Network, intrigued me. Mark describes a vision for the strategic value of social computing that he calls the “borderless enterprise.” It’s worth noting that his community has almost two million members.

From the article:

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November 23rd, 2009

Social computing in the enterprise, part two

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 6:19 am

Categories: CIO issues, Cultural issues, End-user impact, Enterprise 2.0, IT issues, Salesforce.com

Tags: Social Computing, Social Networking, Online Communications, Marketing, Advertising & Promotion, Michael Krigsman

Salesforce.com’s new product, Chatter, sparked a conversation on what happens when social computing hits the enterprise.

This video, filmed by Forrester CRM and customer service analyst, Natalie Petouhoff discusses challenges associated with cultural change and knowledge management when an organization introduces social computing.

The video records a conversation on these issues between Natalie, fellow ZDNet blogger Dion Hinchcliffe, and me. We used Chatter as a starting point, but the topics we discuss are broadly applicable to social computing and collaboration projects.

November 23rd, 2009

Social computing and the enterprise, part one

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 6:03 am

Categories: CIO issues, Cultural issues, End-user impact, Enterprise 2.0, IT issues, Salesforce.com

Tags: Social Computing, Social Networking, Online Communications, Marketing, Advertising & Promotion, Michael Krigsman

Salesforce.com’s new product, Chatter, raises a variety of questions about what happens when social computing hits the enterprise. In some organizations, the openness of social computing creates tension with established corporate cultures in which resistance to information sharing is a real fact.

This video, filmed by Forrester CRM and customer service analyst, Natalie Petouhoff covers key organizational issues associated with enterprise social networking. The video records a conversation on these issues between Natalie, fellow ZDNet blogger Dion Hinchcliffe, and me.

Although our focus point was Chatter, the topics and challenges we discuss are applicable to any Enterprise 2.0 project involving business or organizational transformation.

November 18th, 2009

Salesforce Chatter: Something to talk about

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 5:56 pm

Categories: CIO issues, CRM, Enterprise 2.0, IT issues, Salesforce.com

Tags: Salesforce.com Inc., Social Computing, Chatter, PROJECT FAILURES ANALYSIS Salesforce, Sales Force Management, Social Networking, Sales, Online Communications, Marketing, Advertising & Promotion

In a major update to its product set, Salesforce.com introduced an enterprise-level social networking platform, called Chatter, which was inspired by Twitter and Facebook. I think the announcement is exciting, but the picture is not entirely perfect.

Here are some first impressions, based on conversations with Salesforce executives, independent analysts, and bloggers. I plan to follow up with the company’s customers to gain a more complete view of this platform.

On the surface, Chatter seems rather unexciting. After all, enterprise social computing products aren’t new; for example, an enterprise Twitter-style application called ESME, which was created by developers connected with SAP, has been around for over a year.

Chatter sports some interesting features, such as the ability of Force.com applications to send status messages into the Twitter-like stream. (For an excellent breakdown of Chatter’s features, take a look at Dion Hinchcliffe’s ZDNet post on this topic.) However, the import of this announcement has nothing to do with features; it arises from Salesforce’s level of visibility and its commitment to social computing.

When a company of Salesforce’s size and stature seriously gets behind a particular technology or market, it brings credibility and a halo to everyone in that ecosystem. In this case, Salesforce appears to be making a substantive, long-term commitment of resources and marketing capital to the social computing and Enterprise 2.0 domains.

Of course, an announcement does not carry the weight of shipping real product to customer, so the jury of reality has yet to reach a verdict. With that in mind, I asked Brett Queener, Senior Vice President of products, to describe the company’s level of commitment to Chatter. His comments are unequivocal:

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November 18th, 2009

Dreamforce: Quick first impressions

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 10:48 am

Categories: CIO issues, CRM, Enterprise 2.0, IT issues, SaaS, PaaS, and SOA, Salesforce.com

Tags: Salesforce.com Inc., Sales Force Management, Sales, Michael Krigsman

Sitting here in the audience at the annual Dreamforce conference of Salesforce.com, a couple of quick impressions come to mind. This post is mid-stream during the first keynote speech, so there will be more later.

A few observations:

• Salesforce.com is indeed a force to be reckoned with. One of the largest software vendors in the world, with an annualized run rate of $1.3 billion in revenue, no one can deny the inroads that cloud computing has made in the enterprise. 19,000 people registered for this conference, an obvious indicator that something serious is going on.
• The company has developed a vibrant ecosystem. Wandering through the expo hall to see the vendors and partners showing their wares, I was struck by diversity. Notably, I spoke with a system integrator implementing large (over 1000 seats) Salesforce projects. At that scale, there’s real complexity, especially around business process redesign and integration with existing systems. I intend to explore this topic further.
• CEO Marc Benioff emphasized “trust” as key theme. In a slide showing aspect of the Saleforce’s infrastructure, trust was right at the center. Here’s a photo:

The trust issue is big and there’s no surprise Benioff positioned it front and center of his first slide on product strategy. Trust, confidence, and reliability are among the key matters of concern to large enterprise buyers.

This post comes while the keynote is in-progress. More soon…

[Photo by Michael Krigsman.]

November 16th, 2009

Resistance to change: The real Enterprise 2.0 barrier

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 10:29 am

Categories: CIO issues, Cultural issues, Enterprise 2.0, Failure 2.0, Governance, IT issues, Project strategy, Research and statistics

Tags: Barrier, Enterprise 2.0, Michael Krigsman

Large organizations continue to embrace Enterprise 2.0 as a viable addition to the corporate business process toolbox. As evidence, look no farther than the rapid growth of The 2.0 Adoption Council, which was founded this past June and currently boasts more than 100 member organizations, each of which has more than 10,000 employees.

Despite clear interest from the enterprise, discussion persists around obstacles to large-scale adoption of Enterprise 2.0 approaches, tools, and methods.

ZDNet’s Joe McKendrick summarized key obstacles in blog post at Fast Forward:

Resistance to change	52%
Difficulty in measuring ROI	42%
Integrating with existing technologies	41%
Security concerns	32%
Budget	25%
Product knowledge	23%
Tools not enterprise ready	22%

It should not surprise us that the top issue is resistance to change. Readers of this blog know that business projects of every kind suffer from issues related to poor communication, conflicting agendas across information silos, and related organizational causes of failure.

A recent study from The 2.0 Adoption Council also describes resistance to change as the significant barrier. This compelling slide clearly summarizes that message:

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November 2nd, 2009

Five definitions toward the maturing of Enterprise 2.0

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 7:14 pm

Categories: CIO issues, Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 Conference, Enterprise2conf, IT issues, SaaS, PaaS, and SOA

Tags: Apple iPod, Fragmentation, Enterprise 2.0, Conference, Miko, Enterprise, Michael Krigsman

The excellent Enterprise 2.0 Conference is currently in full swing in San Francisco. Given the excitement around this conference, now’s a perfect time to re-examine the “enterprise” part of Enterprise 2.0.

In this guest blog post, Miko Matsumura, Vice President and Chief Strategist of Software AG, offers a humorous look at the Enterprise 2.0 movement. In addition to his position at Software AG, Miko is the author of the book, SOA Adoption for Dummies.

Miko’s underlying message is important: to be successful, Enterprise 2.0 activities must remain rooted in the practical realities of real companies, processes, and corporate cultures. I share this perspective. Although the tone and images are funny, I assure you the message is serious.

———–

It’s a cool sunny day in San Francisco. I’m at the Moscone center where there’s some bustle around the Enterprise 2.0 conference. You can tell it’s an Enterprise conference because, unlike the Web 2.0 Conference, there’s no free pass even to the show floor. Also, the full pass is about $2500 bucks.

As I’ve been discussing on Twitter @mikojava and in my blog, here are my top five definitions of Enterprise. Feel free to chime in with your views via Twitter, email or my blog.

One way to define Enterprise is:

en⋅ter⋅prise:
/ˈɛntərˌpraɪz/ [en-ter-prahyz]
-noun

5. Stuff I wouldn’t do unless you paid me.

This definition puts Enterprise squarely in the camp of crime scene janitorial services. It adds a concept of “professional” to the discussion and establishes the Enterprise as the realm of uncomfortable clothing.

I recall reconnecting with Arthur Van Hoff after our adventures in Java and having him laugh at me because I was wearing (in his words) an “IQ Restrictor,” his parlance for a necktie. This definition also puts a dynamic tension between the “Suits” at the Enterprise 2.0 conference and the boho hipsters wearing the Emo Hair.

4. Software that sucks.

This was the definition I evoked in my post “The Human Enterprise.” To be honest, I introduced the idea of “The Human Enterprise” as a direct counter-proposal to “Enterprise 2.0.”

I think the piece that was missing from The Human Enterprise is the extent to which fragmentation plays a role in the essential nature of the Enterprise, which is a theme I’ve been addressing more lately in terms of the effect of sheer size on the Enterprise.

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November 1st, 2009

Amplifying 'weak signals' for IT success

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 3:29 pm

Categories: CIO issues, Collective intelligence, Cultural issues, Enterprise 2.0, Governance, IT issues, Project strategy, Risk, Tools

Tags: Technique, Information Technology, Organization, Asuret, Productivity, Michael Krigsman

Every seasoned executive knows that gaining detailed and accurate information about his or her organization’s activities is a challenging and ongoing struggle. Disconnects between operational data and management decision-making lead to inefficiency, waste, and ultimately to extreme failures of the type described in this blog.

Usually, some members of an organization do possess accurate early warning information regarding potential problems. However, as we have seen in situations ranging from Enron to financial industry practices that kicked off the current recession, surfacing that information can be difficult.

I asked top auditing services analyst and former BearingPoint managing director, Francine McKenna, to place this issue in context. Francine told me:

It’s a classic problem rooted in human nature. Information in large, complex, and geographically dispersed organizations tends to become diluted and distorted as it flows up the chain. Even worse, some individuals redesign information flowing through their hands based on personal goals and objectives.

The best organizations recognize this state of affairs and create standardized policies, procedures, and governance monitoring activities to overcome it. Despite these efforts, however, the problem remains a very real challenge.

Detecting and amplifying “weak signals.” Techniques that reveal hidden vulnerabilities are a valuable weapon in the fight against project failure.

My recent post, Learning from the weak signals of failure, discussed the importance of methods that detect and amplify these weak signals:

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October 9th, 2009

Twitter suspends security researcher's account as a threat

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 7:13 am

Categories: CRM, Cultural issues, End-user impact, Enterprise 2.0, Failure 2.0, IT issues

Tags: Customer Service, Twitter Inc., Product Marketing, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Security, Marketing, Enterprise Software, Software, Michael Krigsman

Twitter erroneously suspended, and subsequently restored, a prominent researcher’s account two months after he tweeted a security warning intended to inform his audience about an imminent threat.

Aside from poor security handling, this situation offers a case study example of immature customer service and suggests problems with the organization’s corporate culture.

Mikko H. Hyppönen, Chief Research Officer at well-known computer security and anti-virus firm F-Secure, discovered that Twitter unexpectedly banned his account without warning. Here’s a screen capture (that I edited for clarity) from Mikko’s blog:

When Mikko complained, Twitter restored his account with this minimal explanation:

I’ve unsuspended your acct.
You were suspended for using the malware URL rnyspeceDOTcom in DMs.
Be careful!
We scan evrythng for malware.

Apparently, this tweet got Mikko intro trouble:

I asked Mikko to share his thoughts on what happened:

Obviously, I was quite surprised about the whole incident. As I’ve worked with Twitter previously regarding Twitter worms and such, I really didn’t expect this. In addition, I wasn’t expecting them to ban me because of a tweet that was actually warning users to stay away from a phishing site. I think their process leaves a lot to be desired.

Twitter did not immediately respond to my request for comment.

THE PROJECT FAILURES ANALYSIS

There are several problematic aspects regarding Twitter’s handling of this matter:

1. Twitter waited two months to suspend Mikko’s account after he sent the “illegal” tweet. A two-month delay responding to perceived security threats does little to protect users.
2. This case has extreme irony because Mikko’s tweet attempted to warn followers away from a major security threat. In addition, his tweet included spaces in the middle of the address, making it non-clickable for readers.
3. For the coup de grâce, the company’s explanation is rude, blames the user, and does not even apologize. In addition, Twitter did not restore any of Mikko’s followers or the people he followed.

One might expect a small, poorly funded startup to exhibit these problems, but that’s not Twitter’s situation. According to Bloomberg, the company is valued at $1 billion, having raised $150 million.

Cute logos and web page illustrations are no substitute for genuine customer service values. If the company doesn’t improve customer service attitudes, its reputation may one day descend to the level of cable and telephone companies: hated utility services that we tolerate until a replacement comes along.

October 3rd, 2009

Various Google sites are down

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 4:58 am

Categories: Enterprise 2.0, Failure 2.0, Google

Tags: Google Inc., E-mail Providers, Cloud Computing, Internet, Michael Krigsman

Various Google properties seem either down or too slow to be usable right now. These include Google.com search, Wave, Gmail, Apps, FeedBurner, and YouTube.

I asked Twitter users for their experience:

And received back these responses almost immediately:

Interesting to note things seems fine in Rome. Meanwhile, apologies to anyone receiving late email replies from me — now you know why.

Update 10/3/09 8:07AM EDT: Google seem back up and working normally now.