As I’ve matured through experience in the use of social media, I’m impressed by the number of times that this can be leveraged into supporting “real work”. My most recent post (which I’ve created as a page so it stays retains relevance) on the 10 Principles for Enterprise Social Software Adoption is a great example of this.

As a Twitter user, I’ve been tracking the usage of Lotus Connections and the buzz around it as approached its version 2.0 launch using Summize, (now Twitter Search). I set up a custom filter search which I shared with the community (through Twitter again) which let me monitor various tweets.

A couple of things came together. I tweeted about the fact I was working on the principles for Social Software adoption for my employer, and @Idonotes asked if I’d share which I was happy to do.

Through monitoring Twitter I also came to “know” at @lbenitez , a passionate evangelist for Lotus Connections. He tweeted about discussing principles for Lotus Connections and I shared the post I’d made on my blog here. Luis provided some feedback and so I took this on board and then we moved our collaboration into the real world, setting up a phone call and a discussion.

Luis took on the “job” of road testing these with his clients, while I shopped them around internally and on the blog. As a result of this collaboration I think we’ve acheived a great outcome and one that demonstrates how social networking can help you produce an outcome. I believe the new principles are now more sound than anything I’d of produced individually, my employer benefits, Luis has benefited and hopefully the community also benefits.

The first draft of the Architectural Principles for Enterprise Social Software was posted here. I invited feedback and was fortunate to get some comments from Luis Benitez, an IBM architect who deals with Lotus Connections who also then commented and expanded on these further in his own blog with a post 10 architectural principles for social software. I’m going to carry the conversation one step further and refine them again now.

First, a little bit more background. When we (myself and the team I work with) define architectural principles, one of the good pieces of guidance we use in drafting them, is that each principle must be able to be expressed as a counter argument. Why? Because this is something that guidance is therefore required on, and will generate a conversation with the business and help get to the root requirement. If no conversation is required, then it’s probably not a principle (it’s more likely to be a fact). The proviso I’d put around this is that one organisations “fact” will be another organisations “principle”, so you need to consider your requirements and if these principles here apply. For example, the Principle “Configuration not Customisation” does have a counter in our business where they would consider highly customising an off-the-shelf solution and have typically done so in the past, whereas in your business, it may not ever happen.

Applying this rule, I think that we can further refine two of Luis’ principles into one, because at the moment, while they are sound, they are also (at least for our organisation) “fact”; i.e if Internationalisation was available, no-one would say “don’t do it”, and equally with the UI, no-one would say “lets design a complex UI that requires lots of training”. So with that background, here are my 9 core principles from my original (7) and then Luis post (3 combined down to 2) plus a draft of a new one to bring the total to 10!

All this needs now is a review of a few eyes and I think a re-order perhaps to reflect importance a bit better.

Principle 1: Limit Social Software Data to Basic Security (Username/Password) Only

Rationale: Social software is by it’s very nature social! While user security is important, information requiring complex, 2-Factor security solutions is generally not considered appropriate for how social software will be used. In general, open read access is preferable.

Principle 2: Social Software should use Authoritative Sources for relevant Information.

Rationale: Internally we store a lot of information about users, including their phone numbers, contact details etc., we shouldn’t require them to re-key this and it should be updated automatically.

Principle 3: Simple Ubiquitous Online Access

Rationale: Social Software should be considered an online access solution (ie. limited facility to access the information in an off-line capability), but access should be facilitated from multiple points, not just a browser.

Principle 4: Global Sharing (largest number of users)

Rationale: The value of a trusted network dynamically increases with its size http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe’s_law

Principle 5: Modular, Highly Integrated Services

Rationale: Services should be designed to maximise simple re-use and allow users to mashup up modules to meet their specific requirements. Common standards support is key to enable this.

Principle 6: Configuration not Customisaton

Rationale: Social Software is rapidly evolving, we should only configure the software, not customise it t allow rapid roll-up to future versions and capabilities as these improve.

Principle 7: Build for Rapid Growth

Rationale: Social Software is difficult to control and pilot, we should be prepared for a rapid uptake and changing usage patterns. Effectively this means build with added headroom above what you might normally size for a production system.

Principle 8: By the People, For the People

Rationale: Social software is designed to be used by the people and for the people, we must be very clear on the aim and purpose of the system and remove barriers to adoption that prevent and hinder people sharing information with each other.  This includes promoting Internationalisation and Ease-Of-Use UI’s which facilitate easy use (no-one ever received training on LinkedIn).  The counter to this is that we have an Enterprise Centric Approach where the information and it’s use is driven and mandated by the Enterprise which is quite different in principle.  This is not saying Enterprise Information has no place, it does (see Principle 2), it just means that the Enterprise is not the end consumer of the information (it may be the benefactor), people are.

Principle 9: No User Content Creation Work-Flow

Rationale: Social software solutions promote the sharing of information and activities, deriving value from the flow of this information through the eco-system. Approval processes hinder the value of this conversation, reducing the incentive to participate in the system. Strong requirements for content-creation work-flow potentially suggest that either social software is the wrong solution for the business, or that the business is not yet culturally aligned with social software.

Principle 10: People not Documents

Rationale: Social Software is about people connecting to people and discovering and carrying on a conversation. It’s not a document centric publishing and storage platform (although it may potentially extend to that if documents aid the conversation).

We are considering implementing some Social Software so have drafted a series of Architectural Principles to help govern the planning for this. I tweeted on this and was followed up by @IdoNotes
asking if I was willing to share these, so here they are. I’d really welcome any feedback, good bad or in-different, particularly if you have implemented something similar internally.

I’ve removed a lot of the background information here and just shared the key points that are generally relevant (there are a couple of principles I’ve skipped which are just too specific to our circumstances).  There are also other more general architectural principles that we would under-pin these with, for example “Buy Not Build” but these are not included here.

Similar to these, there are some related business principles we’ve proposed for consideration that are not technical in focus, I’ll share these separately.

Principle 1:  Limit Social Software Data to Basic Security (Username/Password) Only

Rationale:  Social software is by it’s very nature social! While user security is important, information requiring complex, 2-Factor security solutions is generally not considered appropriate for how social software will be used.  In general, open read access is preferable.

Principle 2: Social Software should use Authoritative Sources for relevant Information.

Rationale: Internally we store a lot of information about users, including their phone numbers, contact details etc., we shouldn’t require them to re-key this and it should be updated automatically.

Principle 3: Simple Ubiquitous Online Access

Rationale: Social Software should be considered an online access solution (ie.  limited facility to access the information in an off-line capability), but access should be facilitated from multiple points, not just a browser.

Principle 4: Global Sharing (largest number of users)

Rationale: The value of a trusted network dynamically increases with its size http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe’s_law

Principle 5: Modular, Highly Integrated Services

Rationale: Services should be designed to maximise simple re-use and allow users to mashup up modules to meet their specific requirements.  Common standards support is key to enable this.

Principle 6: Configuration not Customisaton

Rationale: Social Software is rapidly evolving, we should only configure the software, not customise it t allow rapid roll-up to future versions and capabilities as these improve.

Principle 7: Build for Rapid Growth

Rationale: Social Software is difficult to control and pilot, we should be prepared for a rapid uptake and changing usage patterns. Effectively this means build with added headroom above what you might normally size for a production system.

Would you like to buy the Brooklyn bridge?

I was reflecting on some internal conversations around blogs a couple of days ago, and it really struck home that Enterprises haven’t really “got” blogs as one example only.  “What!” you cry. We have a blog, that our (insert marketing / managing director / team leader) regularly pontificates on things for us to read.  But how many Enterprises that have blogs have a rich internal blogging culture that exists on the internet, of these how many of them are non-technology companies?

The analogy for me is the plain old car.  Which came first? The car of the petrol (gas) station?  For cars to work, there is a rich eco-system (aside: is using the word eco-system and car in the same sentence an oxymoron).  For cars to operate effectively and safely they need, to name just a few things:

• Roads
• Petrol (gas) stations
• Standards (Road rules, safety standards etc.)
• Maintenance

Each of these in turn is part of a richer eco-system that maintain and produce these.  I don’t need to understand how roads are maintained, or how petrol is refined to know that I’m glad these things happen and I can reap the benefit.

Which brings us to blogs.  The first time user of a blog rapidly comes across these kinds of issues:

• How do people find out about my new posts? Ahh, well you need RSS / ATOM feeds. Oh and you need to deploy these readers to all of your staff and train them in how to use them.
• But how do I trust what this random person I don’t know has written? Oh, that’s easy, you need pingbacks, trackbacks and it really helps if you have a service like Technorati which provides an authoritative rating.
• How can I find what I’m interested in amongst these hundreds of posts? Easy! Just implement a feed aggregator and subscribe to a collection of tags.
• But no-one is writing anything! Ahh - you need a critical mass of 1000’s if not 100′000’s to be sure that your generating enough content for all these rich services to actually “trigger” in a meaningful way.
• Do you want to buy the Brooklyn Bridge?

The Internet has evolved (and continues to evolve) a rich and mature set of integrated services and standards that are not easily transportable to the inside of the Corporate Firewall, particularly when people tend to look at only one part of the problem “I need a blog”, “I want a wiki” etc.

This is why products like Lotus Connections, Jive and Sharepoint are important to Enterprises because while no individual component within them is as rich as a given tool in the OpenSource world, they help transplant an eco-system that works.

The current situation is a bit like a sucker-punch for Enterprises that are trying to move in this area, failure to see the bigger picture makes it hard to drive the culture change which is needed to be transplanted along with the technology.

Gia Lyons tweeted “[can someone tell me] the value of the data portability movement for enterprises, i mean. Not consumer sites”.

I thought I’d put my thoughts down here, not least because I know that Elias Bizannes and Chris Saad, both players in the Dataportability movement occasionally stumble across my musings and will no doubt carry the conversation back to Gia.

So, while under time pressure to watch a movie with my wife, here are three reasons to describe the value the dataportability movement brings to the enterprise.  Chris has also blogged on this just recently and I have appropriated some of his themes here.

1. Dataportability provides a language to combine previously disparate standards.  As an Enterprise Architect, I love standards and I love them even more when my two largest vendors, Microsoft and IBM are expressing interest and supporting at least some of the same ones.  Some Enterprises may not care about dataportability as a whole, but they will care deeply about the artifacts it produces and helps drive, like APML, OPML, OpenID etc.
2. Enterprise Social Networks are rapidly evolving.  Todays solution may not be tomorrows winner.  To be able to move and migrate easily between Confluence, Jive, Lotus Connections etc. etc. at will is always appreciated.
3. Enterprises will begin to break down the firewalls.  Ultimately Enterprises want to work with their clients; it won’t be tomorrow, but Enterprises will realise that clients don’t want to fill out yet another profile form, but want to share their own data in controlled ways with them.

There will be bumps along the way, but while the dataportability debate may not be critical to Enterprises today, the outcomes will be crucial.

The debate around Web 2.0 Vs Enterprise 2.0 etc. is an interesting one. Ultimately though, these are tags for concepts.  An interesting question is what does an Enterprise 2.0 actually look like.  Can we describe explicitly the functions, features, capabilities, staff, management style etc. that all build together to make this the Enterprise of tomorrow and not today.

The reality for Enterprises is that they need to work out how to rise to this challenge and meet the needs of staff who are demanding new and different ways of working, while still providing the seamless experience, security and control that they have traditionally required.  Unfortunately Enterprises almost always exist as a point in time; a combination of old systems and old ways of doing things which conflict against the need to change to meet new challenges with limited time, budgets and often buy-in to new approaches.

For a thought experiment, lets envisage the impossible; a mature enterprise that has no baggage; that can instantly adapt it’s system; where staff adapt and change as technology and process demand — what would it look like?  What would it be like to work and operate in Enterprise 2010 today — the Enterprise that we all believe we can deliver given a little bit more time?  Can we build a vision that could be achievable today if the constraints were removed.

There is only one rule — the technology that makes Enterprise 2010 must exist today.   Why? Because no real Enterprise can move that fast; it usually takes at least 2 - 5 years for consumer concepts to percolate inside the corporate firewall.  If it isn’t very near to being in the market today, then there is a strong possibility that the Enterprise of 2010 wouldn’t even be considering it anyway.  While I think removing constraints is important, I think this one rule helps keep us out of the realms of spacemen with little green suits into what could be done today with what we’ve got.

This begs one other question — am I in fact really talking about Enterprise 2008; the mythical Enterprise which makes the best today of everything that is on offer?

I’m going to let this topic sit for a day or two and hopefully elicit some comments from the usual suspects before I jump in with some of my visions on what this Enterprise would look like and what’s achievable.

Regular readers (and apologies to you all for my inconistent posting of late) will know that I have an Enterprise bent for which I make little to no apology.  Those that know me personally will also know that I am a regular gamer.  So talking about the upcoming Battlefield Heroes in the context of this blog makes a lot of sense!

I won’t rave about the gaming aspect of Battlefield Heroes (BFH), although I confess it’s something I’m excited to play.  What I’m interested in is the charging model they are looking to implement.  There is a lot of press and analyst commentary around emerging Software-as-a-Service models (SaaS), and while BFH doesn’t quite match the definition completely as it’s still a PC installed system, although web delivered, a lot of elements of it do.

So why is this of interest?  Well you my analysis after reading about this a little is simply this:

1. BFH is implementing a micro-payments model, where you get the core software for free, but enhancements (e.g. weapons, clothing, maybe specialist skills etc.) are paid for with a small fee.
2. It helps to combat software piracy — if the software is free, but requires connection to a central server to access and unlock key features, then there is little to no point in piracy, in fact copying and distributing the core software could well be encouraged.
3. My take is that extended features will be ruthlessly optimised and adapted — if they don’t work, people won’t pay for them.  Market forces are very powerful.  I’m not sure this will neccessarily lead to less bugs, BUT there are strong incentives to fix the bugs that do occur in given features.

How do these three features relate to the Entperprise world?  I happen to think that this is a real model of software that would work nicely for the Enterprise, in a very traditional market place.

Microsoft Office (amongst other Microsoft products) is facing increasing competition from ultra-competitive vendors, both Lotus Symphony and Google Docs are free for use.  The challenge that Microsoft have is that there are few compelling new features that encourage someone to move from a very effective word processor (Word 2003) to the latest release (Word 2007) when they have to pay for the priveledge.

A micro-payments model like BFH is one that I’d be interested to see a large Enterprise Software vendor adapt and experiment with.

Using the same three points as above and Word as an example:

1. Word could implement a free version of their core product, where I pay for the “extra” features to unlock them, for example, I might need to pay $5 to unlock the Table-Of-Contents feature the first time I use it, or perhaps $10 to unlock Index creation (something I suspect is even more rarely used).  Perhaps I could purchase a one off or limited time use, vs a permanent unlock.
2. While no software model is probably piracy free, this may help combat loss of software through piracy, as features would be unlocked from some central service, or perhaps via a one-time software key.
3. It would give a very real-time analysis of what features people really use and therefore where time and effort should be invested to enhance and improve aspect, while little used features could be priced up and perhaps weeded out of the product.

In an Enterprise perspective, I’d be interested in a central licensing server which Word connected to and reported what features were used and not so I can analyse this, pay the appropriate bulk discount for the feature and be able to direct my training team at features which are underused compared to the type of documents we produce.

Even true SaaS vendors like LinkedIn could benefit from a Micro-Payments model.  As one example, Linked In will show you who clicks on your profile, but to see more you have to upgrade, a hideously expensive fee for the one small feature I’m interested in seeing more of.  If they had a Micro-Payment option to just unlock this aspect of their software, I’d be more inclined to give them a small amount of money, rather than simply opting NOT to upgrade which is what I do now.

What do you think?  While I haven’t seen any evidence to date that mainstream software vendors are thinking about this, I believe it won’t be too far away and you can say you read it here first.

I spent a great couple of days this week discussing ideas around Social Software with some people who are researching, developing and thinking about it.  A lot has been discussed under a blanket NDA however so unfortunately no names or product mentioned here.

A really interesting comment that came up which I hadn’t really thought about too much before, was that social software is inherently selfish software.  The idea behind this is that ultimately the tools and mechanisms that drive social software adoption are really self serving.  The beauty of course is that why social software works is that my selfish behaviour drives a collective good, but ultimately it’s selfish.

Let’s consider a few of these:

• Technorati lets blog authors track their authority and relevance.  Why do I ping them, because it lets me know who’s linking to me.
• Tagging of any form — tagging is about helping me find me content again.
• Blogging — because it’s the easiest way to (be heard; say something; speak to a crowd; insert your reason here).

The feedback mechanism that encourages users to participate on most social software type sites is also a selfish one in the sense the reward you derive is a personal satisfaction.  How many comments did I get? How many friend requests? How many notifications? How many links and ping-backs?  Would you keep blogging if no-one read what you had to say?

I went searching to find some sites that support this idea, but didn’t come up with too many standouts, however I did like this one:

• http://12frogs.com/12/work/iasummit2006/ I love the poster on this site as it really shows the circular nature of the software and how increasing usage feeds itself.

If I re-word selfishness, I’d say it’s self-reward that promotes the use of social software.  The best social software promotes me to interact and share with others because there is a direct link to a personal reward.

This is something that’s been consuming my thinking recently.  I believe quite strongly that tools like Wikis, Blogs, Social Networks and others clearly represent real value for the enterprise.  But I also believe that there is a gap at the moment, the tools haven’t crossed the divide from the consumer world to the Enterprise (see my earlier post on this http://binaryplex.com/2007/05/27/what-start-ups-should-know-about-enterprises/).

I think there is a lot of evidence this is beginning to change, you only need to look at both IBM and Microsoft to see that features and tools that have evolved on the Internet are beginning to eek their way slowly into their product sets.  In some cases, there are partnerships to short-circuit their gaps, in others the big boys are starting again from scratch.

All of this has had me thinking about what does a model of the Web2.0 look like within the Enterprise.  Not what is the tool and who wrote it, but if you could design a system supported by standards (some of which exist), what is enterprise ready today, and where are the gaps.

I present my first cut of my model of Web 2.0 for the Enterprise.  I’ll take some time over the next week to post further and explain the concepts on here.  I’d love to take your feedback — I think a proper “joined up” design is what we need to work out where the gaps really are and how Enterprises want to use them. 

One simple example of the kind of joined up thinking required (not on the model funnily enough) is security - inside the enterprise I don’t want 15 different security models, or to log in repeatedly as I move between my blog and my wiki.

As I see it, the model is laid out in four parts, from bottom up:

• Services - fundamental elements that provide consistent experiences and management throughout the stack.  These are broken down into:
  • Notification Services
  • Validation Services
• Tools - the components that a pull together into a solution, they may exist discretely or combined together. These are broken down into:
  • Content Creation
  • Social Networking
  • Content Sharing
• Discovery - the “glue” that pulls it together, and often missed in the Enterprise today (how many of you have blogs without a service like Technorati to surface content and find blogs from feeds.  This is where I believe the emerging smarts are only now really starting to mature with tools like Particls, Spock and others to name a few I’ve mentioned. 
• Presentation Layer - the UI layer.  Critical for the consisten experience that the enterprise expects.

So there it is, as I say, feedback and comments welcome and appreciated — I going to expand further on this and explain the reasoning and functions behind each component in more detail, and look at what tools exist today that fill some of these gaps.

I’ve just returned from LotusSphere 2008 and had a great time.  While the presentations and demos are interesting, I found the most insightful part of the time there was spent in the Innovation and Development labs talking with developers about the advances they are making.  In the Innovation lab in particular, deep conversations can develop and you walk away feeling that some of the concepts will make it into a code.

 Loosely speaking, you can categorise a lot of the Web 2.0 tools and concepts into two very high level, broad categories like:

• Organisational Networks - LinkedIn, FaceBook, MySpace, Digg, Del.i.cious etc.
• Collaborative Creation  (Wisdom of Crowds type tools) - Wiki’s, Blogs etc.

What’s clear from LotusSphere is that IBM are clearly taking these broad brush categories (perhaps more or less) and building out tool sets like Quickr and Connections that apply these into the corporate world.

There are many reasons why this is appealing to corporates, not least command and control within the firewall on what is going on, but the most interesting idea is how it relates to Knowledge Management (KM). 

In my nearly 20 years in IT, I’ve been involved in various projects in different companies that again and again have tried to address the issue of KM.  What these Knowledge Management 1.0 efforts have all had in common, and why they’ve failed, is that they try and formalise the capturing of knowledge that is expressed and documented.  When I have to consciously make an effort, through modifying my natural processes and procedures, to share with you, then ultimately the effort will fail.  It fails because ultimately, the value in it for me, is not as great as the value in it for you.  Once the latest KM drive loses steam, I’ll drift back to my old ways and the path of least resistance.

In KM terms this type of knowledge is called Explicit knowledge.

Nickols, F. W. (2000). The knowledge in knowledge management. In Cortada, J.W. & Woods, J.A. (Eds) The knowledge management yearbook 2000-2001 (pp. 12-21). Boston, MA: Butterworth-Heinemann.
It’s worth taking a moment to browse the citation as it gives an excellent summary of the three main types of Knowledge as described in KM terms, I’ve paraphrased what I think are the key three here:

• Explicit - What has been expressed and captured
• Implicit - What can be expressed, but isn’t captured
• Tacit - What can’t be expressed (so by definition isn’t captured).

As an aside, I suspect the categories of Tacit knowledge are decreasing over the years (biometrics probably couldn’t be expressed years ago, but now we have computers that can recognise faces in crowds).  Anyway, my point is this, while the Web 2.0 world and the categories of tools bring real value to corporations, one form of value I haven’t heard expressed until recently is that they will help corporations capture Implicit knowledge by mining my behaviours and actions.

When Lotus Connections 2.0 announced at LotusSphere promises to deliver a Colleagues version of the friending concept, it’s really building an Implicit knowledge network that can be mined for real information that is accessible to all users across the organisation.  Atlas mines your e-mail for your connections and expertise. Spock mines social networks for Implicit knowledge on who you are and who you know.  Wiki’s mine the knowledge of the crowd through the creation process. 

When corporations ask what value in Web 2.0 concepts and social networking, they are undervaluing what most would say is their greatest asset - the collective knowledge of their employees.  I believe that the real value in a lot of what we call Web 2.0 will be realised when these tools begin delivering ways for corporations to finally tackle Knowledge Management 2.0 — non-intrusive KM, captured by tools that work the way people work and ensure that the Implicit knowledge of the organisation is captured effortlessly by people simply doing their job in the way they want to do it.

Based on this, my final three thoughts are simply that:

1. The reason Collaborative Creation tools are being adopted by corporations today (and will be at an increasing pace) is because they deliver a form of Implicit knowledge that corporations (slowly and eventually) “get”.  Content is delivered in a relatively concrete way that mimics a document to some degree.  The stretch is less.
2. Social Collaboration tools will begin to boom as Corporations realise that they are a promising solution to unlock the Implicit knowledge within their organisations that they can’t see.
3. Discovery and Surfacing tools (of which Spock, Atlas and Particls are all examples of) will become even more critical.  Smart ways of unleashing the networks and information people are building to capture and deliver value that was not easily attainable before.

Bernard Lunn commented on my last post  that when it comes to Enterprises and Start-Ups, we are thinking along similar lines.  His second post on his blog B2B media 2.0 and globalization is a well thought out discussion along similar lines, but with some minor differences in perspective to my comments.  If you enjoyed my post, then I can recommend Bernard’s as adding some great value to this conversation.

One thing he says that really got me thinking is:

The gatekeepers still have veto power but only if the software breaks the rules on privacy and security. It is not just start-ups buying this way, it is self-managed teams and departments. Try it free and use the credit card to buy a bit and expense it; the credit card vendors do a good job at expense tracking and those miles and other benefits are nice bonus.

As someone whose role is as a bit of a gatekeeper, I think he’s right.  It’s harder and harder these days to keep the gates shut against the storming hordes of Web 2.0, especially when the software is on the internet and essentially free. 

Hard earned stripes on implementing innovation tell me this isn’t a bad thing.  There’s nothing like passionate users in the business to drive the need for Enterprises to sit up and take notice — there are very few IT shops left I would think that don’t value their user as their customer (those that aren’t are probably only a swift signature away from being outsourced) and as we all know, customer is king.

That said, the problem space changes when it moves from individuals making independent choices, to trying to implement an enterprise wide solution.

I’ll use Word Press as a great example (and I’m biased as this is a Word Press blog as well).  As Bernard points out:

Add a few colleagues/partners as posters. Add some traditional semi-static pages. Add some social network, a bit of video and a podcast or two. Pretty soon I have a modern CMS, with minimal implementation costs and all on a pay as you go basis.

For individuals or small groups, word press is fantastic and can achieve exactly this, but it’s still lacking some features that would make it really appealing in an Enterprise.  For example, LDAP groups to manage the large numbers of starters and departers, centralised comment management so the marketing mafia can monitor what’s going on across multiple blogs and any number of small, incremental value adds.  Enterprises will want a real Enterprise Content Management system implemented underneath, users will cry out for single sign on so they don’t have yet another password, then marketing will want a reporting system to see whose hot and whose not.

Unfortunately (and to my own point maybe because they’ve already paid for it) Enterprises will wait for their major vendors who are on the roadmap and mostly only months away from releases that begin to incorporate many of these features (with “committed” roadmaps for the next 12 months that show when the missing ones will come).

It’s not all doom and gloom, I think Enterprises are slowly changing, and the gatekeepers are become more shepherds — letting the users mill around while trying to keep the flock from coming to too much harm!  Open standards are the glue that will let the start-ups and the Enterprise meet in the middle.

I love Bernard’s quote from Einstein that he concluded with, I’ll borrow it here:

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler.”

It’s my increasingly strong belief that open standards will help us on this road (see some thoughts on this here: Poor-Rich applications).

…and why start-ups should want to play with them.  Chris commented on my “Are you hearing me? Who needs a new metric post?” regarding my position that an Attention gathering standard (and more specifically an Attention Engine) would be ideal for Enterprises.  He made the valid points that Enterprises are not friendly to start-ups and costly to build the service infrastructue around that they require.

 I thought I’d answer this here as a seperate post, because this is something I’ve been thinking about and I suspect going to be referring back to regularly in the future.  While I’ve never run a start-up, I’ve certainly been around large Enterprises a lot, worked with them, consulted with them and studied them.  Like individuals, it’s hard to categorise Enterprises with the same broad brush, but I’m going to give it a go here.  I should make the point that none of this is aimed at Chris or his company in anyway.

Here are some of the things start-ups should understand about Enterprises if they want to play (and a bit at the end about why they should want to play).

1. There is no doubt that most Enterprises are risk averse, and start-ups can be risky, however this does not mean Enterprises won’t take risks.  Enterprises will take risks if the rewards stack up.  Start-ups need iron clad business cases AND have to be prepared to let Enterprises validate this for themselves by trialling software and assessing the benefit.
2. Enterprises do not consider themselves an endless pot of gold, in fact most of them are cheapskates.  Don’t expect an Enterprise to pay for trialling your software — they expect and demand as much as 60% or more discount off list price from billion dollar software companies.  If you’re selling to an Enterprise, be prepared and willing to let them trial it for free.  On the positive front, poor payment terms aside (they’ll make you wait 60 days for your cash), Enterprises do pay their bills and will pay what something is worth (see point 1).
3. No-one wants to pay twice for something.  Anyone selling software needs to appreciate that Enterprises have long term contracts with major vendors, may be privvy to information that the general populace is not, and generally have an overall direction they are heading in.  Why should you pay for some new software that duplicates functionality you are likely to get in 12 months, will fully integrate with your environment and have probably already paid for to some degree.
4. It’s changing as the world of WEB 2.0 evolves, but generally speaking, Enterprises like to bring things inside their firewall.  I wouldn’t let this stop you BUT you will probably get faster adoption if you can deploy your technology inside the firewall.
5. Enterprises understand that most of the cost of ownership in software is in the support.  Enterprises don’t implement version 1.0 of something, and the general trend of Web 2.0 start-ups to release pre-version 1.0 software or continual released product that’s really just beta builds, while good consumer sense, is foreign to Enterprises.
6. Enterprises LOVE a good open standard.  As Chris points out, Enterprises will want to integrate your product into their environment.  True LDAP support should be a mandatory minimum.  Make your product as open as possible.

So lets be frank, if you’re a start-up, Enterprises are a pain in the butt, they’ll push you round, demand features which are un-appealling to consumers (who cares about LDAP if you’re an individual) and drag out the terms.  So why bother?

Well there are several reasons I think that Enterprises are worth the effort for the brave:

1. No-one got really rich (apart from Google) off the back of ad-sense.  If you think Enterprises are cheap, consumers are even cheaper still, they expect everything for free.
2. Lots of users and big complex systems lead to lots of big complex problems.  Enterprises are crying out for GOOD solutions that help them address real business issues, and the business issues are not that different from those faced in the consumer world. 

So why bother? Well, if you have:

• A unique solution to a real Enterprise issue that no-one else does;
• If you’re willing to let an Enterprise trial it for a reasonable period of time;
• A solution that is robust and rich in its problem space;
• Support and promote logical open standards which will allow integration;
• Can consider letting your software hop the fence to the inside of the firewall (or are willing to jump a few extra hoops if you won’t);

then Enterprises will pay and they will pay well.

In finishing, not every Web 2.0 solution drives a good Enterprise business case, but those that do should be very open to a key market that I think will ultimately assist them in what start-ups want — to be successful and make money. 

You can make money and be successful in the consumer space only, but if your offering makes sense to Enterprises, then don’t be afraid to play.

Chris posted on the need for a new metric which could supplement traditional page-view metrics.

I’m going to add to the call-to-arms from the Enterprise point of view.  The ability to understand not just what people click on, but the attention they give to elements of the new, rich media world is crucial.  Detailed information that goes beyond “IP Address loaded page X” and various derivatives of this is crucial.

I touched on this in my earlier post about Syndication in the Enterprise, the model I proposed there includes an attention client and engine which collects the data independently of the RSS browser, but this could do SO much more.

Chris is correct when he says that there is a vast range of attention data, for example, YouTube videos, flash movies etc. etc.  An open standard here for collecting and analysing this information would be a real boon to the emerging Attention arena.

Elias took up the conversation over here as well and raised an interesting point:

So before we come up with new measurement systems, lets spend more time determining why we are measuring. Simply saying we are better measuring what consumers are giving their attention to, is only part of the problem. We need to first determine what value we obtain from measuring that attention in the first place.

My push-back to both of them is simply this — I think we DO need a standard for aggregating attention data from all the different clients people use during a day, for the very simple reason that in Enterprises understanding what people are using and how they are using it is a crucial part of the delivery eco-system for information.  It’s the feedback loop that lets you know you’re getting it right.

It may be useful for bloggers etc. as well, but I think the problem should be focussed on the Enterprise as this is where the “real” need is (I show my bias here, but I don’t believe I as a blogger need to know in great detail who looks at what, but as an Entprise of 160,000 people globally I do need to understand where and how my information is flowing).

What’s new in all this is not the concept — Advertisers have been doing this for years with demographics, TV ratings seasons, market surveys etc. etc., however what is now being proposed is a very finely tuned attention engine that understands (and helps others to understand) that most unique of individuals — you.

A brief post, but I wanted to share this excellent post on Principled Innovation.  I think Jeff D Cagna’s spin on this topic is a little differently focussed from where I’m taking it, but I think what he is saying is valid not only for associations and organisations, but Enterprises as well (perhaps he also meant this, I’m not sure).

He says:

 The real threat to our future is the way we’re thinking about and leading our organizations today.

I see evidence of this all the time - Enterprises are setup to preserve the status quo, breaking through the tried and trusted to approach something in a new way is generally considered a threat.  More from Jeff:

This is not a point I make lightly, but we must be clear on what is really holding our organizations and our community back, i.e., our inability or unwillingness to admit that we actually do live in a different time and that we must adjust our ways of thinking and leading accordingly.

I’ve been working with a number of bricks and mortar retailers in fashion recently, and one thing that’s come through again and again is a sense that while they believe that something might be happening, they can’t quite place their finger on what it is all about.

Are we holding ourselves back as Enterprises from embracing the new, and will our risk aversion to experimenting with the new modes of business hamper us in the near future?  Or is it a Tortoise and Hare race, with the Enterprise the Tortoise that will eventually adapt and win the day?

I was sent the following by a friend with the above title, I’ve tried to source it, but while many have quoted it (here is one), I can’t find who to attribute it to.  Originally it referred to programmers or web designers.  Although this is the first time I’ve seen it, Google found me copies dating back to 1997! Let me know if you have any good ideas where it came from, mean-while, it still remains so true it hurts.

Dear Mr. Architect:

Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion. My house should have somewhere between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the blueprints to me, I will make the final decision of what I want. Also, bring me the cost breakdown for each configuration so that I can arbitrarily pick one.

Keep in mind that the house I ultimately choose must cost less than the one I am currently living in. Make sure, however, that you correct all the deficiencies that exist in my current house (the floor of my kitchen vibrates when I walk across it, and the walls don’t have nearly enough insulation in them).

As you design, also keep in mind that I want to keep yearly maintenance costs as low as possible. This should mean the incorporation of extra-cost features like aluminum, vinyl, or composite siding. (If you choose not to specify aluminum, be prepared to explain your decision in detail.)

Please take care that modern design practices and the latest materials are used in construction of the house, as I want it to be a showplace for the most up-to-date ideas and methods. Be alerted, however, that kitchen should be designed to accommodate, among other things, my 1952 Gibson refrigerator.

To insure that you are building the correct house for our entire family, make certain that you contact each of our children, and also our in-laws. My mother-in-law will have very strong feelings about how the house should be designed, since she visits us at least once a year. Make sure that you weigh all of these options carefully and come to the right decision. I, however, retain the right to overrule any choices that you make.

Please don’t bother me with small details right now. Your job is to develop the overall plans for the house: get the big picture. At this time, for example, it is not appropriate to be choosing the color of the carpet.

However, keep in mind that my wife likes blue.

Also, do not worry at this time about acquiring the resources to build the house itself. Your first priority is to develop detailed plans and specifications. Once I approve these plans, however, I would expect the house to be under roof within 48 hours.

While you are designing this house specifically for me, keep in mind that sooner or later I will have to sell it to someone else. It therefore should have appeal to a wide variety of potential buyers. Please make sure before you finalize the plans that there is a consensus of the population in my area that they like the features this house has. I advise you to run up and look at my neighbor’s house he constructed last year. We like it a great deal. It has many features that we would also like in our new home, particularly the 75-foot swimming pool. With careful engineering, I believe that you can design this into our new house without impacting the final cost.

Please prepare a complete set of blueprints. It is not necessary at this time to do the real design, since they will be used only for construction bids. Be advised, however, that you will be held accountable for any increase of construction costs as a result of later design changes.

You must be thrilled to be working on as an interesting project as this! To be able to use the latest techniques and materials and to be given such freedom in your designs is something that can’t happen very often. Contact me as soon as possible with your complete ideas and plans.

PS: My wife has just told me that she disagrees with many of the instructions I’ve given you in this letter. As architect, it is your responsibility to resolve these differences. I have tried in the past and have been unable to accomplish this. If you can’t handle this responsibility, I will have to find another architect.

PPS: Perhaps what I need is not a house at all, but a travel trailer. Please advise me as soon as possible if this is the case