Shared Spaces ... the Collaboration Advisor

Collaboration Intelligence Service: Annual Subscription Service, May 20

A subscription-based analyst service focused on issues pertaining to departmental and enterprise IT in the collaboration vein

I joined a telecommunications company straight out of university in 1995. After a few excellent years with some great people, I wanted to stretch my wings and try something different. The manager of the department that I was in gave me some great career advice: “discover your professional passion, and do it” (thanks Bruce!). If you take even a glance at this site, you will quickly come to the conclusion that “collaboration” and “collaboration technology” are front-and-center passions for me.

Today sees the launch of a new (big) step in the development of Shared Spaces ... and that is a subscription-based analyst service focused on issues pertaining to departmental and enterprise IT in the collaboration vein. Now that I have (almost) completed the 7 Pillars of IT-Enabled Team Productivity material, I will be shifting my research and publication focus to:

1. Collaboration Product Reviews. A review of a collaboration product against the 7 Pillars. If you have read any of the free 7 Pillars white papers, you will know that the framework is vendor-neutral and entirely independent. The product reviews will be too. These reviews will cover major platforms that cross multiple pillars, as well as individual products focused on a single pillar.


2. Collaboration Technology Tutorials. What to look for in a collaboration technology area, such as the decision criteria that you should use when approaching a new class of collaboration technology. My intention is to help you demystify a technology area, and give you an independent perspective of the lay of the land. These will help you think clearly about what you need to put in place to enable an effective technology strategy and deployment.


3. Effective Collaboration Infrastructure. How to evaluate the effectiveness of a collaboration infrastructure and its impact within a team, business unit or organization. Topics explored will include reducing email overload, and justifying investments in new collaboration technology.


4. Strategic Viewpoint Reports. Continuing in the same vein as my Microsoft and Groove paper, this series will detail how an organization should respond to a significant marketplace change.

Technologies and areas covered will definitely encompass the breadth of the 7 Pillars material, although I summarize those up into three key areas: collaborative applications, wireless messaging and collaboration, and instant interaction technologies.

Subscribers to the annual Shared Spaces Collaboration Intelligence Service will receive the following deliverables over-and-above the current publications on the Shared Spaces site:

• 12-15 reports a year, across the four main areas outlined above. These can be distributed within your business unit or department.


• Attendance at web seminars hosted by Shared Spaces. These will focus on presenting a summary of a research report, and provide a forum for further discussion, elaboration, and interaction.


• Phone-in, IM-in, and email-in consulting, for receiving quick answers to your questions, or a quick reaction to something you are working on.

Note that in all cases, Shared Spaces is impartial, independent, and not vendor-aligned. We don’t write about a vendor’s products because they pay us to do so, but rather because the product offers something of benefit to organizations.

Sign Up Today for the Charter Subscription Rate
This service will start formally in July 2005, once the Collaborative Technologies Conference has finished. If you sign up between now and June 30, you will receive a 30% discount on your first year’s subscription, and a further 15% discount off your second year’s subscription. Please contact me directly for the annual rate for organizations, or the annual rate for vendors of collaboration software and technology. I look forward to working with you more closely.

Shared Spaces Briefing, May 19

Today's highlights: Live Meeting and Live Communications Server to merge; Lotus Activity Explorer; Plumtree and Fuego; Open Text BPM Platform; Open Text Production Document Management System; New Customers for Notes and Dominon; FileNet Team Collaboration Manager; XFormx Conferral;

• Microsoft plans to add Live Meeting web conferencing capabilities to the next major version of Live Communications Server. This will enable customers to run their own internal Live Meeting servers, rather than relying on Microsoft's hosted set. CNET News


• Ambuj Goyal demonstrated activity-based collaboration capabilities inside a future edition of the Lotus Notes client at The View Administration Conference in Boston. The idea is to display an activity centric set of documents, processes, tasks, content and applications that an individual uses to get a piece of work accomplished, particularly in those cases where collaboration with others is essential. CRN


• Plumtree Software announced an OEM partnership with Fuego, whereby Plumtree will use Fuego's business process management graphical designer and process execution engine. A forthcoming server from Plumtree, the Plumtree Process Server, will enable organizations to manage, automate, and optimize business processes across workgroups, IT systems and applications. Anticipated capabilities include the spinning out of a collaborative workspace at a point in the process to enable people to collaborate on a deliverable or jointly resolve a problem. BusinessWire


• Open Text unveiled a new business process management solution that tightly integrates business processes with documents and content. The intention is to enable customers to tightly link documents and other content into major business processes, whereby workflow rules manage and mitigate what goes on. Open Text


• Open Text introduced its Production Document Management solution, targeting areas such as customer account statement processing and distribution, insurance policy statement generation, and utility invoices. Includes imaging and archiving technology, and integrates with Open Text's Livelink content management platform. Open Text


• IBM named some recent wins for its Notes and Domino platform among the SMB market: Aleris International, Miller Thomson LLP, and Jacksonville Airport Authority. MarketWire


• FileNet shipped its FileNet Team Collaboration Manager solution, a Web-based shared workspace offering for teams. Includes discussion forums, live meetings, and interactive polls. One of the first customers is AMEC Paragon, a provider of engineering, procurement, and construction services to the oil/gas and pipeline industries. FileNet



• XFormx released Conferral, an online meeting and real-time joint editing and review offering for Microsoft Office. It enables users to show PowerPoint presentations to others, and to jointly work in Word, Excel and other documents. People hosting the conference need a 28 MB download, but participants only require a Web browser. Until May 31, the cost for a perpetual license is $199, and a 15 day free trial is also available. Conferral

This Briefing was written by Michael Sampson, of Shared Spaces Research & Consulting Ltd. Email or IM Michael to discuss any of these items further.

One Month to Go, Are You Coming?, May 19

At 9am on June 19 I will be standing in this room at Pier Sixty in New York seeing what you can see now ... rows of empty seats. By 10am, there will be at least three people in the room for the pre-CTC conference tutorial that I'm delivering on The 7 Pillars of IT-Enabled Team Productivity. It's going to be a great day ... I'm planning for it. And I'm looking forward to it big time ... it would make my day to meet you there.

If you were thinking of coming to the conference, then register today. If you want a priority code to secure a discount off the price, then let me know and I'll send you mine.

P.S. I say "three people" because three people have told me that they are coming. I know there's more ...

Shared Spaces Briefing, May 18

Today's highlights: Inxight and Intelliseek; Xythos 5.0; Xythos and Oracle; Office 12 and Collaboration; Five Across Bubbler; JP Mobile and Microsoft;

• Inxight acquired federated search and alert technology products from Intelliseek, and has renamed what was Intelliseek Enterprise Discovery Suite to Inxight SmartDiscovery Awareness Server. The server will search multiple sources of rich content and alert people who need to know. Available immediately. Comment: one capability is "collaborative results sharing" by email or printed report ... what about adding RSS support? Wouldn't that be a natural extension ... and a much better way of doing things? InXight


• Xythos Software released Version 5.0 of three new product suites: Enterprise Document Management Suite (for lifecycle management of documents, targeted at enterprises and government agencies. Includes document library services, automated document classification, and workflow capabilities), Digital Locker Suite (for content sharing in an academic environment ... see a list of new customers), and WebFile Development Suite (for application developers to integrate content management capabilities into their own offerings). Available immediately. Xythos


• Xythos announced that Oracle licensed its Xythos Drive product, for integration with Oracle Collaboration Suite. Xythos Drive provides an integration between the Windows desktop and Oracle OCS, and offers folder-level access and management control. Relies on WebDAV. Xythos


• Microsoft's next version of Office will include more collaboration capabilities, such as integrated display of presence and availability, and Internet telephony. Microsoft Office Communicator 2005 displays some of the possibilities. CNET News


• Five Across released its hosted blogging service, Bubbler, as well as an offering for ISPs and blog hosting providers to offer a branded Bubbler service. The Five Across offering integrates the ability to create Web pages that incorporate photos, documents, and other content. Available immediately. BusinessWire


• JP Mobile announced a strategic partnership with Microsoft to make its SureWave Mobile Connect wireless email service available to hosting providers that offer hosted Exchange 2000 and 2003. SureWave offers automated over-the-air provisioning, to keep costs down for hosting providers. Available for a limited time with a free trial. JP Mobile

This Briefing was written by Michael Sampson, of Shared Spaces Research & Consulting Ltd. Email or IM Michael to discuss any of these items further.

Revision to Pillar 7, May 18

I made some factual errors in my coverage of Tacit Software in Pillar 7: Broaden the Network through Automatic Discovery Services. I've posted an update to the paper ... if you downloaded it already, please get the revision ("Release 2 on May 18, 2005" is displayed on the front page).

Boston GEEC Dinner on Thursday June 23

As I said yesterday, I will be in Boston on Thursday June 23-Friday June 24. There are so many people that I'd like to meet up with, that it just won't work to have one-to-one meetings. So ... let's have a "GEEC" dinner ... that is a Global Experts in Electronic Collaboration dinner on Thursday night. Location to be confirmed. Contact me to register interest.

Notes from "Creating a Collaboration Strategy: Aligning Solutions to Business Needs", May 18

Today I attended CollaborationLoop's Web seminar entitled Creating a Collaboration Strategy: Aligning Solutions to Business Needs. Eric Krapf from BCR was the moderator, and Larry Cannell, IT Researcher at Ford Motor Company, was the presenter. Note that the Web seminar was not a case study on Ford Motor Company, nor was Larry speaking as an official spokesperson for Ford.

Collaboration Tools are Proliferating
Larry began by saying that collaboration tools are proliferating within companies ... team workspaces, web conferences, email, wikis, P2P, audio conferencing, instant messaging, RSS newsreaders, online discussions, and many more. Contributors to this proliferation are, firstly, the IT department, and secondly, end users that bring tools into the enterprise without IT's help. Usually these are Internet-based services (eg, a Socialtext wiki, Instant Mesasging via AOL), or open-source applications that they download and install themselves. IT is charged with bringing order to the suite of tools, but the tools don't integrate too well. Also, within a given company, there are multiple competing tools that have overlapping functionality. The lack of integration makes it difficult to enable collaboration across the organization.

Is Technology-Aligned Classification Appropriate?
How should we classify the tools? Do we use traditional IT terms, eg, messaging, VoIP, real-time and non-real time, file sharing? This classification is okay for IT understanding how to manage the tools, but it doesn't work for end users because the terms don't align with the problems they face on a day-to-day basis. Another issue is how to align a technology within the classification to the actual business problem faced by a team? Larry's proposal: to use a new approach to collaboration tools, that is understandable by both IT and the end users. The IT department needs to view itself as the owner of the application, not just the operator.

Collaboration in the Business Process
Since collaboration tools are still immature, we need a framework that links business goals to the technology that is deployed. Larry's proposed framework is shown in the diagram below. The essential idea is that business goals and objectives drive a series of business processes, which generate tasks for people to do. Collaboration makes sense within the "Work Processes" box, where the work actually gets done. In addition, collaboration tools can also be used within a specific business process, eg, to coordinate work between people.

Technology for Team Collaboration
In terms of team collaboration, Larry sees five key technologies: email, online meetings, team workspaces, instant messaging, and calendaring. Presence and identity management provide foundational services that should work across all five key technologies. In drilling down, Larry further discussed:

• Online Meetings. Involves the sharing of voice (via the telephone or VoIP), and Web or data conferencing (for application sharing ... which is absolutely critical).


• Team Workspaces. This is a broad area, and there is a lot of variety in delivered products. Larry says that team workspaces should help a team to get their work done, not just to share files. Key capabilities include tracking issues, having discussions, and tracking tasks that team members are working on. A recent development is the tight integration of project management capabilities within a team workspace.


• Instant Messaging. There is a lot of integration taking place between IM and online meetings, to enable seamless escalation from one to the other.

These three tools are key and essential, as is reflected by the strategies from Microsoft (Live Meeting, SharePoint, and Live Communications Server) and IBM (Web Conferencing, QuickPlace, Workplace Collaboration Services, Sametime, etc).

Technology for Communities of Interest or Practice
With respect to communities of interest or practice, people collate around an area of interest. A key difference between teams is the lack of a tight focus on actual deliverables and tasks. The community provides a way for people with similar interests and practices to ramp up their skills for then applying those skills within teams. Key technologies are email discussion lists, self-managed web pages, blogs, wikis, and expertise locators (see my Pillar 7). The expert locator enables finding other people who could contribute to the community, and perhaps even pull them into the community.

Common Technology Requirements for Both Teams and Communities
Tools and technologies for both team collaboration and communities share four key characteristics: ease of use, self-management, global access (see my Pillar 2), and extensible (for integrating with information stored in other enterprise applications).

Next Actions for IT
Larry concluded with 6 things for IT to do:

1. Start small, learn what works, and become the expert on collaboration for your company. At a minimum, start using the tools yourself!


2. Build a network of influential end users, as soon as possible. This won't be too tough, because end users will seek out help from IT.


3. Test collaboration tools in the real world, eg, work with end users as they test the tools within their work processes.


4. Get IT operations involved early, eg, infrastructure support, help desk, etc.


5. Think about how to deploy the technology for organization-wide usage, so as to minimize barriers to adoption.


6. Work with end users to sustain growth of the platforms.

More Information
Larry covered more material than I've written about here, including contextual collaboration (collaboration within an application, within a platform, or within a workspace), and structuring work through repeatable processes (using collaboration tools instead of email for various processes). The session was recorded, so ensure that you get it to listen to the entire thing.

Interwise hosted the session, and its technology worked fine. The pre-event reminders again flowed well, ensuring that I didn't forget! Audio was streamed over the Internet, and it was perfectly adequate about 95% of the time. Interwise recorded the session, and it will be available for offline access from tomorrow.

Attendee Participation
The number of attendees was fairly consistent over the duration of Larry's presentation, meaning he held interest well. Here's the stats:
05 mins ... 45 people
10 mins ... 54 people
15 mins ... 54 people
20 mins ... 52 people
25 mins ... 54 people
30 mins ... 54 people
35 mins ... 55 people
40 mins ... 53 people
45 mins ... 54 people
50 mins ... 55 people

What are my "Must-Dos" or "Must-Sees" in New York and Boston?, May 17

It should be no secret that I'm visiting New York next month to speak at the Collaborative Technologies Conference. I will be attending with David Allen's technologist and the Tablet PC brigade's almost latest evangelist, Eric Mack. I have four contributions to make:

• On Sunday June 19, I'm leading the 7 Pillars of IT-Enabled Team Productivity tutorial.


• On Monday June 20, I'm a panelist on the Collaboration Is IT's Last Chance to Matter panel.


• On Tuesday June 21, I'm moderating the Collaborative Team Workspaces: The New Locus for Team Work panel, with speakers from Microsoft, SiteScape, Intralinks, IBM, and EMC Documentum.


• On Wednesday June 22, I'm moderating the Extending Collaborative Applications to the Mobile Worker panel, with speakers from Unisys, Orative, CREDANT, Intellisync, and IBM. RIM may also be there ...

Anyway, in my spare time (?), what should I plan on doing in New York? I plan on visiting the Apple SOHO store, and Marc Orchant has strongly recommended that a visit to Joe's Shanghai Chinese restaurant is a must. Is there anything else that I "must-do" or "must-see"?

Secondly, I'm visiting a client in Boston at the end of the conference, and will have half a day or so "spare". I'm going to visit the Boston Levenger store, Harvard University, and if possible, follow McGee's recommendation to have pizza at Bertucci's and ice cream at Herrells. What else should I plan on doing?

Shared Spaces Briefing, May 17

Today's highlights: Mobile email on the Nokia 9500; Public Folders in Exchange Server 2003 SP2; TELUS adopts Ensim; Verizon Wireless Wireless Email; KnowNow 3 Enterprise Syndication Solution;

• TNT is rolling out 700 Nokia 9500 devices to its executives, for mobile email. The intention is to replace laptop PCs with the smaller device. ComputerWeekly, and Mobile Enterprise Alliance Blog


• The Microsoft Exchange team are making some changes to the administration of Public Folders in SP2 for Exchange Server 2003. The changes cover property settings, and the deletion of public folders. Exchange Team Blog


• TELUS, a Canadian telecommunications company, has adopted the Ensim Unify hosting automation platform to help manage its Microsoft Exchange and Windows SharePoint Services hosted offerings. Yahoo


• Verizon Wireless revised its pricing strategy for wireless email services that rely on behind-the-firewall wireless email servers. From May 23, BlackBerry and PDA/smartphone users can choose from two monthly plans: $29.99 for 10MB of traffic, for $49.99 for unlimited data traffic. Verizon also introduced two new wireless email servers for enterprise customers, both powered by Intellisync: Wireless Sync Workgroup (for up to 20 users, providing wireless email, calendaring, contacts and tasks), and Wireless Sync Enterprise Server (for supporting thousands of users). Verizon


• KnowNow released KnowNow 3 Enterprise Syndication Solution, an RSS aggregator targeted at the enterprise market. Provides live, automatically updated channels for flowing information to employees, customers, and business partners. Based on publish-and-subscribe technology, rather than periodic poll. Available July 2005. KnowNow

This Briefing was written by Michael Sampson, of Shared Spaces Research & Consulting Ltd. Email or IM Michael to discuss any of these items further.

Pillar 7: Broaden the Network through Automatic Discovery Services, May 17

(PDF, 9 pages, 836 KB)

"Teams need to be informed about other internal or external people who have expertise in the specific project matter under consideration. Internal automatic discovery services constantly scan the minute-by-minute chatter of the organization—the emails and IMs, the documents being written, the web pages being read—to build a sense of who knows what, and to create bridges for communication between distinct experts. External automatic discovery services are less mature, but enable people to track certain keywords or phrases of interest."

Teams that converge around a specific purpose need to get the job done to the highest standards of quality within the shortest possible duration of time. The initial composition of the team is often determined by mandate, managerial direction, or simple geographical proximity, however organizations often contain many other people who could make an equally valid and constructive contribution. How does a team find out "who knows what" in the organization for the purpose of ratcheting up the quality of their deliverable? How do they discover who has prior experience in the matter at hand, or know who has expertise that could be used to the advantage of the team, its deliverable, and hence the overall organization? Pillar 7 is concerned with driving higher quality outputs over a shorter duration of elapsed time by making visible the other people inside and outside of the organization who could be tapped to contribute to the team’s objectives.

This paper discusses:

• The Situation Today ... how do teams find external experts and other resources to consult on problems today?


• Negative Effects on Team Productivity ... as a result of relying on existing ways of doing things.


• The Ideal Future Situation ... what are the key attributes of an intentional and proactive system for helping teams find other appropriately skilled people to be involved?


• Positive Effects for Team Productivity ... of using an intentional and proactive system for broadening the network.


• Technologies to Consider ... how Entopia, Tacit, AskMe and RSS syndication indexing services go some way toward addressing the ideal future situation.

What's Next?
This brings us to the end of this seven part series on the key IT components of an overall environment for facilitating team productivity. I will be refining this material through workshops and seminars during the remainder of this year, and through discussions with people that share an interest in helping organizations to be effective through a productive deployment of collaboration technology. Please drop me an email to discuss any of this material, either as it relates to your organization, or to your collaboration technology product strategies. All the best for your collaboration endeavors on behalf of internal teams.