I’ve spent a few weeks now playing with Google Wave, and like most people who first encounter the service I started out deeply confused (see below for my exploratory exchange with Forrester RA extraordinaire Zack Reiss-Davis). As I got further into the tool I began to get a much better feel for the value it brings to the table. For a comprehensive write up see Daniel Tenner.

So what is the biggest frustration with Wave? It’s not integrated with my email. I now have two inboxes — three if you count Google Reader. Thanks Google. I have no idea when new Wave messages come in. Now admittedly this is a pretty minor quibble, but what I quickly came to realize, however, is that this problem of integration is a MUCH bigger problem than just two inboxes. What it means is that Wave will never take off as an email a stand-alone collaboration client.

Lets start with the assumption that Wave is the next paradigm in corporate email, IM, and collaboration. How will the tool be adopted? Presumably corporate IT will either proactively decide it has value or (more likely) cave to pressure from a subset of the business and start offering Wave or a Wave-like tool for employees. So what happens when the team that desperately wants Wave needs to collaborate with a coworker that doesn’t have Wave? That other employee is either SOL or he has to get his butt on Wave. That’s right, there is no clear way to use Wave in a mixed-modal environment — either EVERYONE is on or it’s simply not going to work. Having closely followed the enterprise software space for quite a while now I can assure you that no matter how much people dislike email you’ll have to pry Outlook out of their cold dead hands. To make matters worse its not like one single company can easily make the cutover either; if you abandon a traditional email client in favor of Wave you’ll constantly interact with customers, partners, and vendors who can’t make use of the Wave construct. Not too bad if you can mix traditional email and Waves into one inbox (which is undoubtedly coming) but how on earth do you invite someone into an in-progress Wave if they only have a traditional email client? (To see exactly why this is a problem take a look at Daniel Tenner’s writeup).

I have faith in Google’s ability to engineer themselves out of major computing problems, but I have yet to see them truly commit to a user experience and see it through to the end. Maybe Wave will be different, but I’m not holding my breath.

That all said, I do believe that Wave can be extremely valuable, but not as an email or IM client. Instead Wave should be applied to a collaboration environment like SharePoint or Jive. In this scenario we would abandon the Wave inbox almost completely and instead focus on creating and embedding individual Waves in workspaces and projects. Anyone with adequate permissions would be able to navigate to the Wave, comment, add value, hit replay, and quickly collaborate with colleagues. Here Wave is simply another content type. However even more likely is a scenario much like what SAP has already shown with its own Wave integration. Here Wave is simply the user experience on top of another artifact — in this case a business process modeling tool.

The Wave interaction model is very cool, and definitely groundbreaking. Advances like an appstore and federation will surely help push it along. But it will not kill your corporate email or IM; lets see what we can do with it elsewhere . . .

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[After a couple of years attending the Enterprise 2.0 show in Boston I decided to save myself the hassle of traveling cross-country and skipped the show this year. Turns out it was the best Enterprise 2.0 conference to date. My colleague TJ Keitt thankfully did attend and sent along the following impressions.]

Being Boston-based typically isn’t convenient for an analyst covering companies that congregate in Silicon Valley, which explains why this blog’s regular author decided to pull up his stakes and head West. But last week’s Enterprise 2.0 Conference happened to be held in my fair city, allowing me to drive 15 minutes to meet with vendors that would ordinarily require a six-hour plane ride. After spending two days cruising the pavilion where vendors showed off their wares to a business world at once fascinated with and wary of social technology, Oliver asked me to share my impressions.

Going to this conference, what I really wanted to hear from vendors was how you go about convincing end users to take up your blog, wiki, social network, etc. This is a question that has been coming up more and more as companies shell out money for solutions that will ostensibly make their employees more collaborative, only to find that just a small sub-segment of the workforce is actively participating. It is particularly troubling for companies trying to move their workers off of social technologies that they do not control, like Yammer, and onto solutions that they do, like the vendors on display at Enterprise 2.0.

Coming into the show I didn’t feel that the vendors had a particularly good answer. Walking away I was left with much the same impression. There wasn’t a clear sense among the vendors as to how to spur adoption, and some of the answers they provided were wanting. For vendors who target lines of business in a bottom-up manner, their schemes for viral adoption work so long as users actually take to it and the IT department doesn’t eventually shut them down in favor of an enterprise-wide solution. For those with a more traditional IT-centric selling scheme, their reliance on corporate standardization on their offering works only so long as end users accept it and don’t have workarounds that they prefer. What I did not hear from these groups are the three things that I think are crucial to encouraging use amongst the rank and file:

1. Helping business leaders map out what specific business problem the tool will solve. What we typically hear from information and knowledge management professionals is that there is some corporate mandate to “be more collaborative.” So, someone is put in charge of finding tools to make this happen. But without a clear sense of what “be more collaborative” means in the context of the business, there is no clear vision of who will be affected by the tool, what issues they face in their work and where a solution can begin to help the workers. [Oliver: I could not agree more. I hear from WAY too many businesses who's stated goal is to "collaborate better"]
2. Providing assistance in re-engineering the business process that will be served by the tool. When bringing in any new technology and telling workers to use them in their job, you are mandating that they fundamentally change the way they work. This can be especially hard for someone who has become accustomed to doing something one way over the last ten years. A vendor could play a significant role here if they are willing to provide the professional services to help a client figure out how to tune the business process to naturally route people to the tool without completely disrupting their work.
3. Embedding the tool within areas that the information workers live. Going hand-in-hand with the business process re-engineering is having the tool attached to the applications that the workers use in the course of their job. This is what makes offerings like EMC’s CenterStage and Microsoft SharePoint so compelling – the social tools are linked to the content that information workers are using in their daily job. This makes the experience natural and part and parcel of the assigned task.

Now, I am not saying that I did not see any of these things in the tools that I viewed at Enterprise 2.0. Most of the vendors had a story around the third point, but I did not see the complete vision – tying all three of these things together. For the point solution vendors, this combination of smart sales, consulting and product design can go a long way toward making them relevant as we race toward Oliver’s “Day of Reckoning.” And what could create excitement among those of us somewhat jaded from hearing the same pitch over and over is vendors coming up with innovative ways to address those three issues to drive end user adoption.

[Give TJ a piece of your mind in the comments or at tkeitt [AT] forrester [DOT] com]

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Chris Lynch over at CIO Magazine has a nice write-up on the Enterprise 2.0 market that is likely to ruffle a few feathers — Microsoft Sharepoint vs. Enterprise 2.0 Start-ups: Day of Reckoning Arrives. All in all the article does a very nice job of aggregating a diverse set of viewpoints and there are a few quotes from me personally (turns out I was the one to call Sharepoint 2010 a “day of reckoning”).

There are few things that do need a little clarification:

• The day of reckoning is at least a year off. SharePoint 2010 won’t be out this year, and it will take 4-6 months before a mass of companies actually complete their rollout. That said the SharePoint marketing machine will likely start working overtime in the next few months, so the impact will start to be felt before then. Then again I was speaking at the Gilbane Conference last week and noticed the Microsoft booth was still pushing SharePoint 2007.
• Existing Enterprise 2.0 customers will be unlikely to sink a lot of resources into switching. For companies like Jive, Telligent, NewsGator, and Atlassian the problems with SharePoint 2010 are going to crop up with new deal flow. It is unlikely that existing customers will jump at the first opportunity to take on a major transition that will require major IT resources, content migration, and (most importantly) user training.
• The market will be defined by incremental innovation for the foreseeable future. In the article Ross Mayfield, president and chairman at Socialtext, makes the important point that Microsoft is on a much longer development cycle than its smaller competitors: “A year ago, the idea of having micro-blogging and activity streams for the enterprise was a new concept. Well, that’s around the time they probably froze the spec for SharePoint 2010. Overnight, the demand for social software changed, and it will change again.” These innovations will have an impact on the usefulness and fidelity of Enterprise 2.0 tools, but I would not characterize these as major innovations; it seems unlikely that many companies will make a decision based on these incremental innovations.

Now, while I do believe that there is a base level of collaboration that will become a commodity (the broad collaboration that Microsoft and IBM will provide) there are some very important ways that the smaller vendors can stay relevant.

• Focus on the customer facing market. The customer facing side of enterprise Web 2.0 — the use of these tools by marketing departments — is going to remain hot, and differentiated, for quite a while longer. There is big business here and most vendors in this space already play in both camps.
• Tie the internal and external market together. Customer facing communities are great, but few thus far are having a real material impact on the business. Why? It’s a long manual process to take insight from the community and bring it into the business. Those vendors that can best tie these external marketing communities to internal productivity and collaboration communities will help their customers truly realize the value promised.
• Provide customer and partner communities. The extranet has long been the red-headed stepchild of enterprise collaboration because, frankly, its costly to get customers and partners working alongside employees and so far the tooling has been poor. That problem is rapidly disappearing and the vendors that can best equip their customers to get real work done with outside groups stands to make a lot of hay — and unless Microsoft changes its licensing model this is not a place it can compete.
• Get vertical specific or process specific. If the base level of collaboration is commodotized what is the next logical step? Get more relevant to the business. This will mean creating collaboration applications or modules specifically tuned to the industries and processes of the customer and providing a much improved out of the box experience for things like project management and innovation as well as a top shelf application for Law firms, doctor’s offices, and restaurants. NewsGator is already heading down this path with innovation and PbWorks is already heading down it for Law firms. Its a smart move and will save a lot of companies.

All told this market is set for a major change, and many of the vendors we know today will no longer exist — Microsoft is raising the bar and some vendors won’t get over it. But some will, and those that do should have solid businesses to show for it.

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A few months ago I went looking for technology vendor Facebook applications and found one from Microsoft that had just launched: Microphone. At the time there was not much activity, but I recently checked back in and was impressed with (at least parts) of what I found there. Now, I should admit that I am grading on a curve here; most of the apps I found were miserable, like this one from HP.

So what about the Microsoft app works?

First, the entire application has a gaming element to it and they award prizes to the most active users. Time and time again we see that these sorts of competitive games resonate with users and Microsoft has done a nice job of taking advantage — if you notice the leader board is monthly, so no one should feel completely frozen out.

Second, they have taken steps to incorporate other social networks and communications tools like Twitter. Microsoft has taken good advantage of a SocialEyes application to scrape Twitter and bring the conversation into Facebook (see below). I’ve actually never heard of this company but LOVE the approach; has anyone out there worked with them in the past?

Third, they have focused on tangible business functions like market research. A lot of companies have made forays into Facebook, Twitter, and other communities over the last few years and thus far few have real tangible business value to show for it. With this implementation Microsoft has done a great job of keeping their feet firmly planted on solid ground, focusing on customer care and market research. I am likely a bit biased by the fact that I am a market researcher, but this aspect of the application is especially well thought out. For example we see Microsoft measuring customer reaction to recent television ads (see below). Admittedly this is not a substitute for real quantitative market research, since anyone adding the Microsoft Microphone application is likely a bit biased in the first place, but if done right it can provide solid directional data at almost no cost. The poll question about joining a programming competition is spot on — you already have a group likely to participate and this can be a great way to get their input.

Now, I would lose my analyst card if I didn’t lob at least one stone at Microsoft and this one (at least for me) is a doozy. Look closely at the Apple and PC TV ad questions. Notice anything? Oh yes, they inverted the scale from one to the other, starting the Apple ad scale at “Hate it” and forcing people to keep reading if they don’t hate it. For the PC ad they start at “Love it” and head back the other direction. Subtle, but a MAJOR problem if you are looking for objective research! Then again, maybe the marketing guys were looking to show some success to management, in which case, carry on gentlemen.

All things considered this is one of the best vendor Facebook applications I’ve seen and it should serve as a pretty good model for others, even those selling B2B — know your audience, provide them some value, provide them an engaging experience, and keep it grounded in real business needs.

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I recently sat down for an interesting interview with Cath Everett at Computer Weekly on the topic of Enterprise 2.0 software. As the conversation wound its way around all the high-points of Enterprise 2.0 we eventually came to the inevitable question of adoption. Cath played a fantastic straightwoman and asked/stated something along the lines of: “Well, its all about user age, right? Adoption won’t really pick up until the employees turn over, and its all Gen Yers.” I hear this question a lot. The belief that older workers can’t be bothered to learn new tricks, and that new employees are chomping at the bit to get social is deeply and broadly held. I’ve heard this question consistently over the past two to three years and have developed a compact pithy answer. To my amazement that is not what came out of my mouth. Instead I calmly replied “Cath, if we replaced every employee tomorrow with a Gen Yer the average enterprise still would not be able to use Enterprise 2.0 to its full effect.”

Well crap. Now my mind was racing; what did I just say? Do I believe that? How could that be true?

Thankfully the more I think about it the more convinced I am that this is the case. First, let’s think about enterprise management. How many managers are truly equipped to manage to social, collaborative workers? We’re not particularly good at managing to team goals today. How would the average enterprise incent and compensate workers in a truly social enterprise? You clearly can’t pay by the Tweet. While I’m sure Andrew McAfee’s MBA students will be well equipped to manage to a new social enterprise, the infrastructure to do so is clearly not yet there.

Second, let’s think about the thousands of business processes already in place within the average enterprise. How many have any room whatsoever to incorporate social content, context, or feedback? Nearly all enterprise business processes will get a long look over the next three to five years as they are retrofitted to take advantage of a truly social workforce, but that work is forthcoming. Without social processes even the most game employees will struggle taking full advantage of Enterprise 2.0, and retrofitting will take some time.

Third, let’s think about the customers of the enterprise. When taken to its logical conclusion a truly social enterprise will incorporate the value and input of not only employees but also of partners, suppliers, and customers. While there are very encouraging signs that customers and experts are interested in taking an active role in enterprise value creation — the Netflix Prize comes to top of mind here — many firms are either not prepared to make use of those insights or do not have a ready supply of external folks ready or willing to help. This will change over time as firms become more adept at soliciting and using external value, but as of today its rarely possible.

So what do you think? Did I shoot myself in the foot? Would a complete transfusion of new blood into the enterprise – assuming you can magically transfer experience and skill – result in a truly “2.0” enterprise?

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My guess is you have heard the news by now, but if not it is worth pausing to note that SuiteTwo — the Intel backed Enterprise 2.0 offering that launched in 2006 — has officially closed up shop. All things considered this is not much of a surprise. While the joint venture between NewsGator, SimpleFeed, SixApart, Socialtext, and managed by SpikeSource was a big showstopper when it launched, the offering never realized its potential and died a mostly silent death. To be honest I can’t remember the last time I spoke with a company that was even considering the product.

The main problem was not the concept – the market has aggressively moved towards suites of blogs, wikis, RSS, and social networking – but instead the execution. Though Socialtext founder Ross Mayfield always disputed the label, SuiteTwo never became more than a ‘Frankensuite,’ a group of individual applications duct-tapped together. While I’m looking out for recession casualties, SuiteTwo clearly had bigger issues.

For the few SuiteTwo customers out there now looking for another solution my advice is to examine your firm’s use of the technology and reach out to the appropriate component vendors. Unless your firm has been inordinately successful at integrating the entire suite into your processes, you are likely making most use of just one or two features, while the others are mere accessories. Reach out to the vendor of that one killer feature first; all the vendors involved are still around and most have matured their product sets to a level comparable with SuiteTwo anyway. In all likelihood you should be able to replace your existing implementation pretty seamlessly with what is now better software.

As for NewsGator, SimpleFeed, SixApart, and Socialtext: I would be shocked if they weren’t already picking over the carcass. There may not be many customers to grab, but those that are out there should be highly profitable – they know the tools are valuable, don’t need training, and will have a very short sales cycle. Happy hunting!

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Updated: Dennis Howlett writes in to correct the list. ESME is no longer associated with SAP. See here for the gritty details.

I’ve been spending time with the SAP/Business Objects team and was recently sent a long list of SAP communities and innovation projects. Its easy to write off SAP as inactive in the Web 2.0 space since it frankly has not done a great job of messaging to its initiatives. This list below should help change that percecption, even if some of the projects — ESME comes to top of mind — are ill-conceived. (Full discolsure: I needed a place to keep the list. Hopefully you’ll find it useful as well!)

Main communities:

· SAP Community Network (SCN) – http://scn.sap.com

· SAP Developer Network (SDN) – http://sdn.sap.com

· Business Process Expert Community (BPX) – http://bpx.sap.com

· Business Objects Community (BOC) – http://boc.sap.com

· SAP Ecosystem Hub – http://ecohub.sap.com

· Enterprise Services Community – http://esc.sap.com

· CW (Collaboration Workspace for private community discussions) – http://cw.sap.com

Key functionality/capabilities:

· Blogs - https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs

· Forums – https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/forums

· Wiki – https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/wiki

· Article Library (sort-able by various criteria such as: topic, date, author, industry…) - https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/articles-topic

· Events (especially SAP TechEd and SAP Tech Tour) - https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/events

Specific topics and programs that may be of interest:

· InnoCentive (innovation) - https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/innocentive

· Emerging or fast-growth regions / languages (Chinese, Japanese, Korean…) – see language selector in header area at top of page / browser and also https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/category?categoryID=49&start=0 (China) or https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/category?categoryID=50&start=0 (Japanese) or https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/category?categoryID=51&start=0 (Korean) … Brazil (Portuguese) and others to be added in early ’09

· Social Media (Web 2.0) resources - https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/social-media

· Reputation management program (points for knowledge sharing) - https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/crphelp and https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/contributors-corner with sortable results by individual, company, date, subject area, etc. at https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/topcontributors

· Our work with the United Nations World Food Program to recognize the aggregate community contributions and give back to the global community described at https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/9999

· SAP Mentors (top contributors ++) - https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/sapmentors

· YouTube channel - http://youtube.com/user/SAPCommunities

· Docupedia (innovation example) - https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/u/44402

· ESME project (innovation example) – https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/10758 (Dennis Howlett ZDnet blogger) and https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/10080 (Dick Hirsch of Siemens)

· SAPlink (innovation example) – https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/4476

· DemoJam (innovation example) – http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=YIx_tsJ6IBQ

· SAP Developer Challenge (innovation example) - https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/wiki?path=/display/devchallenge/About

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As you may have noticed already I am an unabashed Google skeptic — at least when it comes to Google in the enterprise. They have yet to show me they are truly committed to the enterprise space, and the customers they have shown thus far have frankly been a bit disappointing; they are mostly small, techie, and or higher education. The pace of product innovation has been slow — how long has it been now since I lost my bet with Rob Koplowitz about GoogleGears? — and the numbers Google provides for the size of the business are dramatically skewed by the Postini acquisition.

Today Google announced a webinar with Genentech. The $12bn pharmaceutical will discuss its 12,000 employee implementation of Google Calendar. As best I can tell that represents the entire employee base for the company. Impressive. We’ll have to keep a close eye on how deep the Google apps suite works its way into the company — I’d like to hear that Google is running Genentech’s email, a truly mission critical app, but calendar is big step in the right direction. A few more customer examples like this and a lot of CIOs will look at Google with fresh eyes.

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