MindTouch recently identified a security issue that, under certain server configurations, could cause administrative credentials to be disclosed. Our engineering team has confirmed the issue and released a hotfix to remediate this issue for all versions supported by MindTouch. We have also issued an incremental release (9.08.3) which contains this security patch. If you are running an older version of MindTouch, we have also provided patch files if you feel a major upgrade is too risky. Detailed instructions on how to patch your systems can be found here.

It is imperative that you update your MindTouch installs immediately. We urge you to take a proactive approach in applying this patch, which should take no longer than ten minutes.

MindTouch places a great emphasis on the security of the platform, and will continue to improve on our release processes to diminish the likelihood of these types of issues.

For our OnDemand and Cloud customers, your sites were upgraded during the emergency maintenance window last week, and you need to take no further action.

While the economy as a whole has contracted, MindTouch has achieved remarkable growth. I’m proud to report that In 2009 we experienced 130% revenue growth, doubled our customer base and created a blossoming partner ecosystem. If you love what you do professionally please consider working at MindTouch. We are hiring for the following roles:

• Web developer (a webmaster, I loathe the term, but it’s fitting). Does effecting the behavior of millions of visitors excite you? Can you hack together systems for the sales and marketing team (MindTouch software makes it pretty easy)? Do you have stellar webdev and basic UX/UI skills? This is all you. 
• Business analyst. This is a hard core data monkey that loves pouring over numbers. If you love data and analytics you will <3 working at MindTouch because everything we do is data driven. Test and measure, test and measure. Come help us. 
• Technical trainer. Assist partners and customers ramp up development on MindTouch. Lay the foundation for self-paced training and technical documentation. This is more a customer/partner facing technical role than it is a documenter role, but you will be creating documentation.
• Account manager. 20% of MindTouch customers double their spending within the first 12 months and over 80% of MindTouch customers renew. These are impressive statistics for a company that currently has no formal account management resources or process. Help define the team and process while learning why MindTouch users and customers love our software. 
• Product manager. Define and drive product specifications based on user, customer, partner and market inputs.
• Tier 2 customer support.
• Product marketing.
• Channel marketing.
• Channel sales.
• Technical documentation lead.
• User experience designer.
• Platform evangelist.
• Software developer engineers.

This is not all the positions we are hiring for, but these positions are top of mind. If you love your work please consider contacting us, but please include a cover letter, resume and some mention of why you are a good fit and would like to work with us at MindTouch. 

RoyK recently shot some photos of our current office in anticipation of our imminent move to our new and improved offices. If you’re considering employment at MindTouch I thought it would be interesting to see some of the faces you would be working with.

Tim O’Brien is a MindTouch sales representative. Indeed, Tim is the highest earning MindTouch sales representative. He was one of the very first sales hires and has been with the company for 1.5 years. In this photo Tim is on a call with a customer. This customer generates more than $4.5B in annual revenue. We have an exciting project underway. Stay tuned.

Pete Erickson was a MindTouch contractor before we had any employees. The guy is brilliant. He was at Great Plains before the Microsoft acquisition. Microsoft recognized his talent and made him a crisis ‘firefighter’ of sorts. When I met him he was the CTO for a fiber to the home startup. It’s a joy to work with and to know Pete. Unfortunately, he still lives in Minnesota and I don’t get to see him much, but he is omnipresent at MindTouch.

Max Mass is another of the many brilliant members of MindTouch engineering. He started with MindTouch 3.5 years ago. It was only earlier this week that I realized it’s been that long. It seems like yesterday. I interviewed him over the phone from an airport, the Minneapolis airport if I recall correctly. I remember giggling during the interview while I addressed him by his full name: Maxim Mass. Say it aloud.

Corey Ganser is the gentleman on the left and GuerricS is on the right. Corey has performed the following roles at MindTouch: office admin, trainer, sales and support manager; in that order. He has been a MindToucher since the first year of business. Corey is the reason our customers consistently rank MindTouch support 4.75 out of 5 every month, quarter and year. Guerric is responsible for a lot of the user interface at MindTouch. He’s a real engineer from Urbana-Champagne (he couldn’t get into UNC ;-).

Damien Howley is the technical lead for the professional services team at MindTouch. He’s been with us for three years and started as the webmaster. There were fewer than ten of us at MindTouch when Damien started. In 2009 MindTouch professional services increased by 36%. This year It was19% of our total revenue. I intend to keep it there.

Sarah Carr is the marketing coordinator at MindTouch. She’s been with us for almost a year.

Roy Kim is a fellow UNC alum. He is also the first employee of MindTouch and our VP of Engineering and the photographer of most of these photos. Roy started college at 16 and graduated four years later with a degree in Economics and Chemistry while simultaneously launching a popular blogging/social site that has only suffered from his investment in MindTouch over the last five years.

MindTouch is a great place to work. In fact, it is ranked one of the best places in San Diego by the San Diego Business Journal. Our pay is competitive. The benefits are superlative. There are many miscellaneous perks including catered (free) lunches, free snacks and $600 a quarter per employee for personal development. Most importantly, employees receive equity in the company and MindTouch is growing exponentially. If you want a deeper understanding of what it is like to work at MindTouch read the recent post at my personal blog titled: “Four keys to success”.

Please apply if you are ambitious, brilliant, and hard working. I would love to work with you.

In our first discussion with Larry, he outlined how companies can overcome barriers to Enterprise 2.0 implementation and adoption.  In our next discussion we cover a range of topics and a prediction. 

But first a short quiz.  Do you think Larry believes;

A.   Enterprise 2.0 is redefining Enterprise Software and will become as common place as email. 

B. Enterprise 2.0 is overhyped and he prescribes to the Dennis Howlett school of thought of “It’s all Bullocks”.

C.  Open Source software will help spur Enterprise 2.0 adoption and lower licensing costs.

To learn the answer, follow along as we ask Larry some of the same questions our customers are asking us.   For the skimmers, please scroll to the bottom. 

How important are the analytics behind Enterprise 2.0 tools? In other words, is it important to inventory worker skills and collaboration patterns to help find internal subject matter experts? Or to optimize worker productivity by analyzing informal networks? Or to measure, rank and rate employees based on the net dollar value they are providing the organization?

The ability to log and analyze system transactions is an important component of any enterprise system, and that fact has not been lost on vendors or deployers of enterprise social software. Most enterprise social software vendors now include activity logging and reporting capabilities in their products or services.

Some applications of analytics are highly visible, such as usage statistics reports that help site owners and community managers make informed operational decisions. Enterprise social software usage statistics could be used to rank and rate employees based on their contribution to the organization, but the metrics would most likely be stated in terms of quantity and quality of information and knowledge shared, rather than in hard currency amounts.

Other analytics applications are, ideally, invisible to the people using the system. For example, enterprise social software should leverage transactional data to automatically recommend relevant content and subject matter experts to someone using the system, saving them the time and effort expended in manually searching for those resources. Analytics can be used to determine and generate visualizations of an individual’s social graph, and to recommend people in their network who can introduce them to a potentially valuable new contact. These systematic, invisible uses of social transactional data are currently less common than their visible cousins, but they have the potential to produce greater value.

What in your opinion is the “killer app” that will be the catalyst for mass Enterprise 2.0 technology adoption?

Wikis and blogs have been the most widely adopted E2.0 tools to date, but neither has made enough of an impact on business in terms of mass adoption or value creation to be called a killer application. Micro-sharing (or micro-blogging or status updates) has the potential to be a significant value driver for organizations, because it combines attributes of communication, presence, and location technologies in a simple, yet flexible user experience. Micro-sharing is a relatively new tool in the E2.0 toolkit, and we don’t have enough solid data about its impact on organizations yet to crown it the killer application, but micro-sharing seems to have the highest potential to positively effect mass adoption.

What if anything will open source software contribute to Enterprise 2.0 technology adoption?

Open source software should increase social software adoption because of its propensity to spur innovation, lower licensing costs, and make it relatively easy to integrate social functionality into other enterprise applications. Community source software effectively crowdsources some or all of its feature development, leading to a faster rate of innovation compared to proprietary software vendors. Organizations are more likely to adopt a specific product or service when they can directly influence its functionality roadmap. The lower licensing costs of open source social software, as compared to proprietary offerings, makes it easier for organizations to deploy to larger numbers of people.

Finally, the Web and service-oriented architectures of most open source software means that it can be more easily integrated with, and into, existing enterprise applications and new mashups. Integrating social functionality into the environment in which people currently work is one of the best ways to spur adoption.

There have been many heated discussions between Enterprise 2.0 advocates and those that believe Enterprise 2.0 is a crock.  What is your position on the matter?

This should not be an either/or debate, as I said in a post on my blog entitled "Enterprise 2.0 is Neither a Crock Nor the Entire Solution".  In that post (and others which are referred to therein), I opined that E2.0 philosophy and technologies are complementary to traditional management techniques and enterprise systems. Large organizations need both structure and free-form collaboration to identify and act on business opportunities, and to best operational challenges. Overemphasis on one at the expense of the other will limit value creation within a large enterprise.

What should Enterprise 2.0 software vendors be doing to help their customers successfully adopt their offerings?

Enterprise social software vendors should proactively assist their customers from the pre-implementation planning phase to actual go-live over the course of multiple projects. Several vendors have staff with titles such as Social Software Advisor or Customer Success Manager, who are assigned to new customers and are partially responsible for the success of the customer’s social software initiatives. Other vendors prefer to partner with professional services firms to provide implementation strategy and execution services to their customers. Either way, it is in the vendors’ best interest to assist their customers and improve the likelihood that they will purchase additional software licenses.

What does the future hold for Enterprise 2.0, and which companies will participate in defining it?

Great question; I’d be very rich if I had the answer! But I’m not going to pretend to have "the" answer, because I don’t think anyone does. I can only make predictions based on past involvement with other management disciplines and related software market categories.
From a management perspective, it seems like the reaction to E2.0 has been similar to the reception given by most organizations to Knowledge Management. Organization leaders think it sounds good and interesting, but end up saying "where’s the beef", because they can’t attribute value creation that is quantifiable in terms of hard currency to the discipline. A relatively small number of enterprises will understand how and why E2.0 can help them, and succeed in making it part of their organizational fabric; the rest will experiment half-heartedly with E2.0 and watch their initiatives fail.

As for the technology, there is a high probability that the Enterprise Social Software market’s evolution will mirror that of the Enterprise Portal market nearly a decade ago (see his blog post on this subject). The Portal market experienced four years of strong growth and then consolidated rapidly, leaving only a handful of computing platform vendors with viable enterprise portal software offerings. Much of the portal technology base was subsumed in other categories of enterprise software, and the vendors that were not acquired died a slow, cash-starved death.

I have seen many indications that there will be a repeat of this evolution pattern in the Enterprise Social Software market, which is still growing at this point. However, there is one big difference this time around — the presence of vendors operating under open source development and licensing models. They may be able to compete with the proprietary computing platform vendors over the long haul, while most of the pure-play collaboration suite vendors will not.

Larry is speaking at Enterprise 2.0 in Boston.  That is if you vote for him.  Here is the quick process:

Step 1.

Register a user account. (two clicks away—assuming you use the tab key You must do this before proceeding to the next steps.

Step 2.

Vote for Larry’s session below by simply clicking the URL (you MUST be registered and login for the single-click vote to work—don’t skip step 1)

Emergent Adoption: Twitter’s Development as a Model for Adoption of Enterprise Social Software

While you’re there vote for the author’s sessions:

Surf’s Up: 5 Effective Uses of Google Wave in the Organization

Re-org!? Organic Organizational Transformation

Innovation through E2.0: Three Case Studies that Make the Business Case

Engagement + Evangelism = Community Success. The KPI’s and Strategy to Build Profitable Communities

Open Source is Wide Open for the Enterprise: A Techie Guide for Teaching Biz Users

How RESTafarian WOArriars Deliver Lower TCO and Higher ROI to the Enterprise

 

Answer C

MindTouch has submitted several sessions for this year’s Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston. The model of this conference is similar to SXSW where individuals vote for the sessions they want. This seems to work well for SXSW, but I’m bit cynical of this model for smaller conferences like E2.0 because in the past it trends to vendors. Anyway, we’d really like some of our submissions to make it through the voting process this year. So, I’m asking for your help. This will take, literally, 90 seconds.

Step 1.

Register a user account. (two clicks away—assuming you use the tab key You must do this before proceeding to the next steps.

Step 2.

Vote for each of the sessions below by simply clicking the URL (you MUST be registered and login for the single-click vote to work—don’t skip step 1)

Surf’s Up: 5 Effective Uses of Google Wave in the Organization

Innovation through E2.0: Three Case Studies that Make the Business Case

Engagement + Evangelism = Community Success. The KPI’s and Strategy to Build Profitable Communities

Open Source is Wide Open for the Enterprise: A Techie Guide for Teaching Biz Users

How RESTafarian WOArriars Deliver Lower TCO and Higher ROI to the Enterprise (whoa that’s a rather geeky session for E2.0. It would be hilarious if this was voted up—Kat submitted these not me)

Step 3.

Register and attend the conference. If you’re attending and you voted for our sessions I’ll buy you a glass of wine. I’m told bribing people with addictive substances is pretty effective.

For those who haven’t attended before, E2.0 has a lot to offer in the way of education, networking and trending. The community has historically been pretty tight-knit. Hopefully with your help we can infect the E2.0 Elite with our real-world experiences and customer stories. While I’m on the topic of real-world experiences and customer stories, I encourage all readers to submit their own sessions or to share their stories with us. Do you have an interesting MindTouch story you’re willing to share? Email a few sentences to SarahC at MindTouch.com.

Thanks for your help and happy 2010!

Many of our readers have asked us confidentially about strategies to gain Enterprise 2.0 acceptance in the corporation.  While every company is different (refer to Moore’s Crossing the Chasm), there are some that more difficult than others.  

I asked Larry Hawes of Gilbane to help us respond to the requests by answering a few of our questions.  He agreed.  

As more and more companies are exploring Enterprise 2.0 technologies and methodologies, Larry wants to help people understand how to use and integrate these new tools, while ensuring they understand the challenges. 

The groundwork for some of these tools has been in place for a few years, but we think corporations will finally start to embrace them enterprise-wide in 2010. 

How did you get involved in CMS and Enterprise 2.0?

I was introduced to the discipline of Knowledge Management by a professor while I was in business school. The use of content management and collaboration technologies to empower knowledge workers resonated deeply with me. I worked as an intern to the Chief Knowledge Officer at Lotus during the summer between my two business school academic years and have continued to work as an industry analyst and consultant in the field over the last 12 years.

Can you share some examples of companies that have set up Enterprise 2.0 initiatives inside their organization?

There are so many enterprise social software case studies available, but here are a few of my favorites. Professional services firm CSC has 40,000 employees using the pilot version of a social portal to better connect, communicate, and collaborate with each other. Penn State University’s Outreach program created an intranet with that allows staff to find subject matter experts, publish and share documents, and collaborate in groups — all to create information and programs that serve their customers. TransUnion is using an enterprise social networking platform to brainstorm, share, and evaluate ideas that will help them improve corporate-wide IT performance while minimizing investment in new hardware and software. Pfizer has used open source wiki, blog, and social bookmarking software to increase knowledge sharing and collaboration between researchers, sales people, manufacturing employees, and executives. Red Mountain Retail Group is using wikis and mashups to manage commercial real estate development projects across three offices and hundreds of project sites.

Is there a way that you can characterize those that may be leading the initiatives inside these companies?

I have been fortunate to meet several individuals who are Enterprise 2.0 evangelists within organizations. As a group, they are an extraordinary lot! These people may be best characterized as intelligent, forward-thinking, experienced in corporate workings, politically savvy, good negotiators, determined, and persistent. They understand both business and IT, and they effectively build bridges between those two worlds within their organizations. Most of all, Enterprise 2.0 evangelists understand and firmly believe in the value of empowering workers with connections to others and to information — even if it is difficult to demonstrate that value in terms of currency-based return on investment.

What are the most common barriers to Enterprise 2.0 adoption in corporations?

Most barriers are cultural and behavioral; they have little to do with technology. They may be summed up with two words: Ignorance and fear. Ignorance of what tools are available, where and how to best use them, and how they can create business value. Fear of loss of control and power, investment of effort and money in absence of pre-defined ROI, information insecurity, increased workload, and change in general.

How do you overcome these hurdles?

The old-fashioned way. The introduction of any new technology in an organization requires the implementation of several change management tactics, including extensive conceptual education, technology training, incentivisation, and, — most of all — communication. In this regard, E2.0 is no different than any other enterprise technology set.

I also encourage organizations to use an emergent adoption model that is hybrid of viral (grassroots) and intentional (IT-led) patterns. In the emergent adoption model, IT and business people partner to ask questions and define expected use cases, business impacts, and value measurement metrics for the E2.0 technology being deployed. Once the technology has been implemented, project leaders observe how the technology is actually being used and what value that use case is creating. If there are no metrics in place to measure that value, they must be created. Emergent uses of the specific technology are then standardized in terms of well-defined use case descriptions, business impact expectations, and metrics to measure value created. Then project leaders and people using the technology must communicate their experiences — tell stories — so the technology can spread to other areas of the enterprise.

Armed with E2.0 technology, will employees have more power?

Yes and no. Yes, any given employee using social software will have more power to perform their role in the organization, because they can more easily discover and share information and knowledge that will help them to do their job. They will also have more opportunities to gain power by building their reputation amongst fellow employees, as well as with customers, partners, and other external constituents. However, the introduction of E2.0 technology is not guaranteed to alter the power of position held in the organizational hierarchy; managers will still exert substantial influence and control over the work of their direct reports.

Knocking Down Corporate Silos

What kinds of management changes are needed to cope with all this?

Ideally, middle managers would become less command and control oriented and increasingly act as coaches and mentors to employees, facilitating their interactions with one another and with the organizations’ leadership. Senior managers would work to create and maintain an organizational culture that values trust, collaboration, communication, learning, community, and transparency.

In the short term, at least, I do not expect to see those changes occur in most organizations. However, E2.0 is a way of being and operating for organizations; it is management philosophy supported by technology. Any organization that implements social software without changing management style and corporate culture will see its E2.0 initiatives fail.

Follow Larry on

 

To be continued…..

The book I edited for Newman and Glass: “Enterprise 2.0 Implementation“, published by McGraw Hill has been released for consumption free of charge at Scribd. Enjoy.

It’s interesting to note the Kindle edition is really expensive. It’s almost full price! Of course, you could just email the PDF from Scribd to your Kindle. Disclaimer: I do not condone this.

It was promoted as the final showdown.  During the preceding months there had been vicious campaigns run against the other.  Brutal, ugly propaganda campaigns aimed to persuade the judges.  The event was the Columbian Exposition. Westinghouse and Tesla stood on one side, equipped with the alternating current system. On the other side Thomas Edison and General Electric were trying to retain their current title by promoting direct current. 

The contest winner would power the Chicago World’s Fair.  It was a winner take all prize because the systems were incompatible.  So it is with today’s ERP systems. 

What do you mean?   Well I’ll get into that. 

"Enterprise software is going through a transformation in a very significant way," says Philip Say, Vice President for SAP Business Suite.  But not fast enough.  Despite the ERP behemoth’s attempts to move into the Enterprise 2.0 space they are burdened by bloated back-ends. 

According to Thomas Wailgum Editor of CIO.com, "Survey respondents (in a recent CIO survey) said that the inability to easily modify their ERP system deployments is disrupting their businesses by delaying product launches, slowing decision making and delaying acquisitions and other activities that ultimately cost them between $10 million and $500 million in lost opportunities," according to the survey report.”

Today’s Big ERP systems are not nimble, quick or extendable.  Yet the systems are constantly being updated or modified.  They don’t adjust well to changing business conditions and require massive IT departments to manage them.  

Their databases are accessible, but become less efficient when trying to connect other databases to them because they have proprietary and patented methods that don’t allow competitive systems to access them (for example accessing indices). 

Think of the phonebook.  I can search through every name sequentially to find a name, but it may take days.  Fortunately, the phone book is indexed so that I can find the name within seconds.  So it is with proprietary databases but they only allow their own systems access to the index. 

That means today’s approach to ERP is a one system fits all, closed loop system.  And if a Sales VP tries to bring in an outside system like Salesforce.com for CRM he or she needs to jump through many hoops to convince IT to support it and connect it to the ERP system.  Yes, it’s hard to break into the closed ERP loop.  It’s hard because of the reasons mentioned above.    

Yet there is another option.  An open source ERP option.  And within five years, ERP vendor lock in will be the exception and not the norm. There are already a number of open source ERP companies like  Openbravo, ERP5, Compiere, Open ERP and xTuple promoting open source access to their databases.  In the future it will be even more open and widely distributed. 

Cloud Sphere Alliances

Enter cloud computing.  Not just any cloud, but a cloud sphere.  Think of a cloud sphere as an alliance of vendors offering applications in the cloud that are seamlessly integrated (data, security, user profiles, etc.).  In other words, an open source suite of cloud enabled products architected to work faster and that easily leverage and use product suite information.  Because they are open and less exclusionary, this approach works well in the cloud.     

The cloud sphere alliances will also become marketing vehicles for the participants to drive adoption to all sphere members.  You’ll see vertical cloud alliances for Human Resources, Marketing, Finance, Supply Chain and more.  You’ll also see horizontal industry specific cloud spheres for healthcare, automotive, energy, pharma, mass media, insurance and a lot more.       

According to Steve Bjorg of MindTouch, cloud spheres already exists within Google.  They have a massive distributed database but it’s only open internally to Google.  Within Google, things run efficiently because internal users have permission to access the databases economically.  Externally, it’s not the case.  We can access bits and pieces of the Google databases, but in large part it’s closed to outsiders.  Moreover, even if we did have unlimited external access it would be terribly inefficient and slow.   

That’s why Open Source companies like OpenBravo, xTuple, Compiere, ERP5 and Open ERP will build cloud spheres that not only enable access to their open databases (including indices), but do it efficiently and cost effectively.  These cloud spheres will allow customers to choose ERP components a la carte or in whole.  They will also offer components from other vendors like SugarCRM, Alfresco, JasperSoft and Pentaho that are certified to work in the cloud sphere.

They will win in the post ERP world because of their openness and flexibility in the cloud.  

Open Source ERP companies will do it efficiently because their databases will be completely open to alliance vendors.   They will allow cloud sphere alliance vendors to subscribe to the secured data and to leverage the same methods and efficiencies as the ERP company.  They will still be the keepers of the data, but allow vendors to see the digested indexed version and to pre-fetch data as needed.

That’s why companies will be switching to ERP companies in droves. 

How Will I Know When This is Going to Happen?

Three things need to happen first:

1. The price of storage needs to come down drastically.  It’s already headed that direction, but there is a long way to go. 
2. The price of bandwidth needs to come down.  In the cloud sphere scenario, the amount of data transfer will be immense.  Today’s bandwidth prices are too high to justify the expense. 
3. Cloud databases need to be open and allow vendors to access the database protocols and indices.

Open Source Perceptions and Challenges Need to be Overcome   

A few CIOs I know summed up today’s perception of open source ERP best for me: “I don’t yet trust open source ERP systems, I need to see a few large companies using it successfully.”  The other said, “I’ve used non mission critical open source technology in IT, but I’m not ready for an open source solution for ERP.”

These attitudes will change.  The priests of the past that have built up loyalties and interests to their proprietary vendors (SAP, Microsoft, SAGE, Oracle) will recognize the advantages of a cloud enabled open source ERP solution.  For them, an open source cloud solution will be much faster, cheaper and easier to deploy.  It will also play nice with best in class point solutions.  

The issue of security and governance inevitably comes up in any cloud discussion.   “I don’t want to put my data in the cloud”, I’ve heard numerous times.  Yet Salesforce.com has proved that mission critical enterprise data is being stored off premise and more securely than most IT departments can do it.  This perception too will change. 

What this all Means for the CIO

Proprietary ERP companies make connecting to ERP complex.  Like Edison and Tesla, they don’t work well with competing systems.   Conversely, open source is about unifying things. 

While today’s open source ERP systems are good, they haven’t reached the point where replacing your existing SAP or Oracle installation makes sense.  Yet, in the next few years, the reduced cost and increased benefit of a cloud enabled open source ERP system will far outweigh the benefits of a closed proprietary system.

 

Note: The Columbian Exposition opened on May 1, 1893. That evening, President Grover Cleveland pushed a button and a hundred thousand incandescent lamps illuminated the fairground’s neoclassical buildings. This "City of Light" was the work of Tesla, Westinghouse who had won the final showdown.

reposted at Seekomega.com

While I typically write an end of year wrap up in the new year, I couldn’t help writing about some recent awards MindTouch has been honored by. Beginning with, for the second year in a row, MindTouch was listed as a ReadWriteWeb Top 10 Enterprise Products. Other products honored included those from Microsoft, Salesforce, Jive Software, Cisco Systems and Apple. I am proud to note Microsoft and Cisco are both MindTouch customers too.

Two of the selected products that shared the spotlight this year with MindTouch are Microsoft Sharepoint and Jive Software SBS. MindTouch VP, Mark Fidelman recently highlighted these products in a blog post at CloudAve: SharePoint 2010 vs, MindTouch the Battle of the Platforms and Jive Software vs. MindTouch – a Guide for Decision Makers. Thanks for the recognition Alex, Marshall, Richard, et al.

In addition to the RWW honor, MindTouch has received many other accolades in recent months including:

• EContent Magazine Top 100
• Forrester Research citing MindTouch as the best product alternative to industry heavyweights Microsoft and IBM (lead researcher @rkoplowitz)
• CIO Magazine citing MindTouch as one of 11 open source companies to watch (authored by @johnfontana)
• The Jolt product excellence award for best enterprise tool
• Inclusion in the Gartner Magic Quadrant report
• The San Diego Business Journal recognizing MindTouch as one of the best places to work in San Diego and honoring me as one of the most inspiring CEOs

In addition to the industry and media accolades, MindTouch continues economy-defying success with seven quarters of, at least, double digit revenue growth.

Thank you all for recognizing our hard work. At MindTouch we pride ourselves in working harder. We’ll continue to do our best to live up to the high standards set by these awards and recognition.

I wish that every one has a lot of time to spend with their loved ones during the holidays. For now, I’ll leave you with this JibJab video that was sent to me by a fellow MindToucher. It features the MindTouch executive team.

Left to right: Roy Kim, Steve Bjorg, Aaron Fulkerson and Mark Fidelman.

But survey respondents believe they need to be…

Recently, MindTouch sponsored a survey conducted by TechTarget to learn more about best in class Intranets in the SMB space and the Global 3000. We expected most Intranets not to be Enterprise 2.0 enabled, but we wanted to learn first hand the different varieties of Intranets and if they were providing value. 

Interesting note: 87% of the respondents had an Intranet while 13% did not. 

Who took the Survey?

TechTarget interviewed over 200 companies.  Twenty-three percent of them were over $1 billion in revenue while forty-two percent were between $1m and $50m.  A good mix of respondents. 

    

Let’s get to to the results:

Which Enterprise 2.0 Components are Companies Using?

It’s surprising to see how little Twitter style messaging has been adopted by companies.  User calendars, blogs, wiki’s and forums have high usage.  There appears to be ample opportunity for Enterprise 2.0 vendors to position their solutions around Scorecards, finding subject matter experts and workflow to name just a few. 

 

Intranets Remain Stagnate

When asked how they would describe their Intranet most described it as having static content with only a few empowered to update it.  

Response	Percent
Our Intranet is has a lot of static content updated by a few people	39%
The distributed intranet. In larger organizations, your intranet very quickly becomes decentralized. You end up not with a single, definable “intranet,” but with dozens or even hundreds of small applications (e.g. - a phone directory, document repository, an announcements system, a document library) that you group around common infrastructure.	34%
The collaboration platform. Users publish just as much as they consume. This type of intranet is big on wiki’s, blogs, discussion forums and other ways to people to connect with each other. Also may feature a document repository.	17%
Collaborative Network – A collaborative platform plus data integration sharing, dashboards, metric driven and project collaboration.	10%

 

Most Intranets have a Wiki

TechTarget asked respondents about the systems that constitute their Intranet.  Surprisingly, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) scored high indicating more CRM systems are being tied to the intranets or their CRM system is the Intranet. 

 

Revenue and Innovation are not yet tied to the Intranet

Most Intranets appear to be meeting planned objectives for internal cost savings, internal communication and operational effectiveness.  Opportunities for companies lie in the ability for Intranets to provide Revenue growth and innovation opportunities.  Look for MindTouch to have additional solutions here shortly.

Response	Not an area of focus	Not yet known	Did not meet planned objectives	Met planned objectives	Exceeded planned objectives
Internal cost savings (e.g. process streamlining, collaboration efficiencies, resource search)	22%	22%	8%	46%	2%
Internal communication (e.g. better information sharing, connecting with employees, etc.)	3%	9%	15%	59%	14%
Operational effectiveness (e.g. quality/process improvements, productivity increases, etc.)	6%	22%	13%	52%	7%
Data Integration (e.g. integrating data from disparate data sources)	24%	18%	11%	40%	6%
Revenue growth	55%	19%	9%	15%	2%
Product innovation	52%	16%	8%	20%	4%
Average %	15%	10%	6%	21%	3%

 

Most Intranets are not integrating data from ERP or CRM systems

One of the weaknesses of today’s Intranets are that most of them are not integrating data from other systems to give decision makers and employees a complete view of the corporation.  CRM appears to be the lone exception where 38% of the respondents have connected CRM data to their Intranet. 

 

 

Managing projects and team dashboards are number one choice for best in class Intranets 

According to respondents, managing projects, team dashboards, easier data integration, and robust document management are the top choices for what constitutes a best-in-class Intranet.   Most believe the Intranet should be used collaboratively and to help connect people with data and projects.  It should also be used to monitor projects and data. 

The Bottom Line

Corporate Intranets are not using the newest Enterprise 2.0 tools.  The majority remain static billboards.  Of those that are using Enterprise 2.0 tools, most report operational efficiencies, internal cost reduction and better internal communication.  The challenges are in measuring all of the benefits of E2.0 enabled Intranets. 

How do you measure ROI?  A new class of analytics are starting to tackle that problem and will be used to help convince even the most resistant CFO. 

Don’t miss my next post where I’ll break the data down into segments and show you how high performing intranets are being used in the workplace. 

Imagine you’re in a cube farm, perhaps the 6×6’ grey type we’re all so familiar with.  You’re at the center of the first floor of a multi-story commercial building.  No windows, just a view of coworkers typing on their laptops and placing calls to check on the status of their projects.  It’s difficult to know what’s happening outside of your surrounding area. 

Your phone lights up as you receive a call.  “Why haven’t we launched the marketing campaign for our new xPhone?”, your boss exclaims breathlessly. 

“I don’t know…”, you retort, “I need to check on that".”

“What’s wrong with your department?”; she says, “why am I constantly worrying about your team? I want an update and I want it today… do not pass Go - get it done!”

Hours pass.  You’ve placed calls into the marketing agency and Sales Manager, emailed the creative team in India, and hosted an hour long meeting with your team asking for updates.  With the exception of India (they are sleeping), they all promise to give you detailed updates before 3pm. 

With each passing minute you become more and more worried about what your boss said.  “What’s wrong with your department,” continues to echo in your mind while you nervously prepare the framework for your update.  You’re not sure this will end well. 

Now imagine that you answered your boss with a simple, “Just click on the community project dashboard to see the updates.  In fact all of our project updates and content are there. You can even subscribe to future updates.”  That’s more or less what an Enterprise 2.0 solution can do – it facilitates collaboration.

I know it’s difficult to start a shiny new initiative.  Especially in a recession.  Yet, as we’ve seen with the work the Adoption 2.0 council has completed, there are tremendous ROI benefits to implementing an Enterprise 2.0 solution.

By championing the cause in your company, the benefits to the organization and yourself are numerous. 

Enterprise 2.0 Strategy Guide -  How to launch an E2.0 solution

Step	Tool/Method	Online Resources
Determine the pain you’re going to solve	Call a meeting with key stakeholders.  Outline the issues.  Create a short 10 slide PowerPoint deck explaining the pain points & solution.	Start with this Enterprise 2.0 getting started guide I created just for you.
Document the current process and highlight the pain points	High level Visio-like diagram	Try Gliffy online
Estimate the cost of the current process and the potential ROI of an E2.0 solution	In terms of hours wasted, headcount redundancy, content redundancy, phone calls, etc.	Modify this calculator by  Nucleus Research to help determine cost and ROI
Determine the right team or division to pilot the solution	Look for those with the greatest immediate pain and offer to find a solution.
Source vendors	Once the pain has been clearly identified, find vendors that best meet your need.	Start with this E2.0 online RFP template.  Feel free to modify and use.
Seek objective & independent advice	Find sites that provide objective advice about E2.0 solutions.  Also talk to vendor references.	A few we recommend: ReadWriteEnterprise Collaboration 2.0 Future Changes ERP.com
Select Vendor	Scorecard the results in order to best choose.	Start with this Enterprise 2.0 scorecard and modify it to suit your needs
Implement the Solution	Working with vendor and pilot team, implement the solution.	Dion Hinchcliffe’s article on the subject is superb.  Ross Dawson provides a different view. Read both.
Track the business benefits	It’s very important you track the success of the project.  Be prepared to present the results to upper management.	See articles above
Market the results	Ensure all internal stakeholders understand the success of the program.
Expand the pilot	Once the pilot is successful, go enterprise wide.	A good whitepaper on the subject by VersionOne and an article on the FastForward blog

The guide and tools are above are to get you started.    I am very interested to hear your comments as to additional helpful resources not mentioned above. 

Reposted from (seekomega.com)