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Editor's Note
Welcome to the April 2004 issue of the Inside Collaboration
Newsletter. "Spring has sprung, the grass has riz, I wonder
where all the collaboration is?" This month In The
Guru’s corner" I talk about the pain of transitioning from
one collaborative tool to another, and talk about some research
we are just starting on "Critical Factors for Enterprise Adoption
of Collaborative Technologies."
The Guest
Editorial this month is a first...an e-meeting
appliance. That's right a hardware box for secure e-meetings from
NetScreen (soon to be part of Juniper Networks). My interview with
Andrew Harding, the product manager is wide ranging and very revealing
about the future of collaboration and focuses on the trend towards
pushing collaborative functions into the infrastructure.
This month we have added a new vendors/products to our Technologies
to Watch list. Interwise's new ECP Connect which offers unlimited
Audio/Video/Data conferencing for the extended enterprise for a
fixed cost, and NetScreen's Secure Meeting Appliances which are
discussed in detail in the Guest
Editorial.
.Over the last few months we have expanded our news and announcements
section into two sections. The first section "Quick
Hits" covers much of what happens in the collaboration
market in a very concise format with just the news headline and
a URL for more information. News and Announcements
on the other hand takes a look at some of the more pivotal announcements
that occur each month in more depth and also include the CS analysis
of the event.
CS Collaborative Technologies Taxonomy
Collaborative Strategies has revised its functional
taxonomy in 2004 as you can see we are seeing some profound changes
in the technology landscape. We see a convergence around the
DPM/Virtual Team and Process Tools area (middle box) and we see
that more and more some of the functionality of collaboration is
being driven into the infrastructure layer. This is not only being
done by larger vendors like Microsoft and IBM/Lotus, but also by
smaller vendors to help leverage their departmental deployments
into enterprise deployments.
If you are a vendor of collaboration technologies
and you have not briefed us in the last 6 months please get in touch
with us ASAP and bring us up to date on your collaboration tools.
While technology plays a critical role in terms of how organizations
collaborate today, technology is, in general, an en abler of the
interpersonal interactions that comprise collaboration. Economics,
corporate culture (behavior), and internal politics (leadership)
also significantly impact the efficacy of such implementations.
Most news events in the e-collaboration and KM spaces focus on products
and services rather than the more complex human issues associated
with these tools. We believe that a true ROI for collaborative technologies
requires a holistic or systemic approach and need to examine three
areas: people, process and technology.
CS Publications and Services
CS has a program for ongoing industry and customer research and
has produced reports on several of the functional technology markets
identified here.
Reports that are currently available include:
Refer to the CS Web site (www.collaborate.com)
or call (415-282-9197) for more details on these reports, or to
give us feedback on this issue of Inside Collaboration.
CS Service Offerings:
CS currently has three types of service offerings
for collaboration vendors:
- Strategic Engagement: This is often how we get started working
with a collaboration vendor, and is a short-term engagement that
focuses on one specific issue or problem.
- Selling Collaboration: This is a longer-term engagement focused
on the creation of specific sales process content for a vendor's
sales force to be able to use immediately for qualifying prospects,
identifying the economic buyer, controlling the sales conversation,
establishing credibility and closing the sale.
- Partnering Program: This service is for those organizations
that want to leverage CS's knowledge of the collaboration market,
technology expertise and relationships. This knowledge and relationships
can be used to help create marketing partnerships, develop sales
channels, or for M&A. This program is longer term and is based
on a small retainer with a performance bonus.
CS is currently working on service offerings for end-user
organizations. If you have suggestions on services you would like
to see from us, or are interested in any of the services listed
above, please contact Mike Dressler at: miked@collaborate.com.
Technologies
To Watch:
CS analysts are always getting briefed on new collaborative products,
releases and services. In addition we are working on the TAXONOMY
PROJECT to map the collaborative space (over 1000 vendors). Once
in a while, we see some new or emerging technology that we think
is exceptional, either in concept or implementation. We decided
to start a list of these vendors and products, and the May, 2003
issue of Inside Collaboration, lists the charter members
for the TTW list. Since then we continue to add one or two vendors
each month, that show us technology interesting and unique enough
to make the list. If you believe your company or software should
be on our TTW list, please contact me directly to set up a briefing
with one or more of our analysts at (davidc@collaborate.com).
- InterWise ECP Connect, unlimited Audio/Video/Data
conferencing for the extended enterprise for a fixed cost. See:
www.interwise.com
- NetScreen Secure Meeting Appliance -
an e-meeting in a box! Focus is on security and cost reduction.
See:www.netscreen.com
- Conferencing- Intranets.com, A very slick integration
of real time functionality into an otherwise asynchronous collaboration
vendor that is focused on SMBs. See: (www.intranetsmeeting.com)
- Meeting Edition 1.0- Raindance- a sophisticated
integration of audio and video conferencing with sophisticated
access rights and features like "follow talker." Offering
a free 1-to- 1 service to start. See: (www.raindance.com)
- ShareITNow- Encounter Collaborative- Like Glance.net,
this is a simple approach to web/data sharing for e-meetings (www.encounter.net).
- Accolade 5.0 from Sopheon - a very thoughtful
approach to the problem of new product development (www.sopheon.com)
- First Virtual’s Conference Server 7.0 - interesting
integration with MS Server 2003 (www.fvc.com)
- Séance Software - elegant integration
with PBX for e-meetings
(www.seancesoftware.com)
- Kubi Software- e-mail oriented collaboration
(www.kubisoftware.com)
- Hyperwave - eConferencing Suite - moving into
the e-meeting space
(www.hyperwave.com)
Imanage - WorkSite - an interesting combination
of asynch/synch collaboration
(www.imanage.com)
- SiteScape- the addition of process oriented
templates/modules to the newest version of this e-meetings tool.
( www.sitescape.com)
- Truereq - Thoughtful collaborative requirements
gathering tool for project management (www.truereq.com)
- Collaboration CONTROL!- DYS Analytics provides
an interesting management tool that takes the next step in the
collection and reporting of data and metrics for Domino and Exchange
management. (www.dysanalytics.com).
- EReview - By Web4 is an elegant document, review
and markup program that meets many of the CS e-meeting criteria.
(www.ereviewonline.com)
- Ever want a really simple screen sharing solution? Glance's
minimalist, but well thought out approach, is also reflected
in their commodity pricing,900 customers in six months, and profitability.
For more information, or a free trial see (www.glance.net).
- BrainEKP 3.5- helps you to create, manage,
and find content in a graphical, relationship-oriented metaphor.
See: www.thebrain.com
- e/Pop Web Conferencing by WiredRed, takes a
presence-oriented approach to web conferencing and offers good
audio and video support; see: www.wiredred.com
Options For Sponsorship:
After two years Inside Collaboration reaches about
7000 interested readers. We are looking for some vendors that
might want to sponsor this newsletter. We believe this to be a
cost effective way to reach a very targeted audience.If interested
we can provide you with newsletter demographics. Sponsorship will
also include a chance to be part of our guest editorial, as well
as your logo on the newsletter. We are looking at a trial sponsorship
that would involve 3 sponsors for 3 months. if you are interested
please talk to David Coleman, the Inside Collaboration editor
at (415) 282-9197 or davidc@collaborate.com.
Broadband Summit, Ronald Regan International Trade
Center, Washington DC, April 19-20 See:
http://www.broadbandsummit.com/email5.htm
PDF 2004 Orlando, Disney Coronado Springs Resort,
Florida, April 21-24, 2004 see:
www.pdf2004.com
EMC's Technology Summit (ETS), Orlando,
Florida , April 26th - 29th. See:
http://events.emc.com/ets
Centra Summit 2004, Boston, May 11-14, Westin
Copley Hotel Boston,
See:
www.centra.com.
INFOCOMM 2004 June 8-11, Atlanta Track on Collaboration.
For more information see: http://infocomm04.expoexchange.com/
Virtual Communities, The 7th International Conference,
June 14-15, Crowne Plaza Promenade Hotel, The Hague, The Netherlands.
See: http://www.infonortics.com/vc/vc04/vc04.announce.html
SUPERCOMM, McCormick Place in Chicago June 20
– 24.
see: http://www.supercomm2004.com/
5th International Conference on Information Communication
Technologies in Education" , July
2004, Greece
See: http://www.ineag.gr/ICICTE
National Conference on Artificial Intelligence
(AAAI-04) July 25-29, 2004, San Jose, California, see: http://www.aaai.org/Conferences/National/2004/aaai04.html
Distance Learning 2004, 20th Annual Conference,
August 4-6, Madison, WI
See:http://www.uwex.edu/disted/conference/
Organizational Effectiveness through Collaborative
Excellence, September 27-29, Fort Worth, Texas
See: http://www.workteams.unt.edu/conf/Fall2004/Call-for-presenters-2004.htm
VIACK's VIA3 Version 3 Offers IM Archiving and Excel Integration
and NetSec Testing Finds VIA3 Secure.
See: www.viack.com
York International Deploys Documentum for Global Document
Management, and Documentum Acquires the aAskOnce Business Unit of
Xerox Corporation for New Virtual Repository Solution and Delivers
New Web Compliance Solution. Documentum also Announced e-Room Enterprise
7.2.
See: www.documentum.com
Centra Joins Forces with HyperOffice to Provide Learning
Management and RTC Solutions to the French Market
See: www.centra.com
OPEN TEXT AND IXOS TO UNVEIL ROADMAP STRATEGY TO CUSTOMERS
At LinkUp 2004 Conferences in London, Paris, Munich and Offers Livelink
Discovery Server Version 9.0 to Advance Enterprise Searches as well
as offering Enterprise Instant Messaging for Livelink
See: www.opentext.com
Avistar Technology Facilitates Inter-Enterprise Video Communities
for Financial Services Industry and Completes $3.6M Private Placement
with Fuller & Thaller Asset Management, Inc.
See: www.avistar.com
SMART Board for Flat-Panel Displays Used By Mars Mission
scientists for planning and analysis and also Launches Next-generation
Sympodium Interactive Lectern
See: www.smarttech.com
SONEXIS BECOMES FIRST PREMISES-BASED AUDIO CONFERENCING
PROVIDER TO SUPPORT WIDEBAND PHONES
See: www.sonexis.com
Interwoven and DoubleClick Partner to Offer Comprehensive
Marketing Content Management Solution
See: www.interwoven.com
NetScreen Offers First Secure Meeting and P2P Appliance
See: www.netscreen.com
Encounter Collaborative Changes Product Names to ShareItNow
Plus/Exchange/Conference
See: www.encounter.net
Microsoft Releases Office Solution Accelerator
for Sarbanes-OxleySee: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2003/dec03/12-17SoxComplianceQA.asp
Entrieva,PensEra and Interwoven Named to KMWorld's Top
100 Companies
See: www.entrieva.com
, www.pensera.com , www.interwoven.com
Spanlink Introduces Concentric Solutions Version 5.0 and
is Recognized by Cisco Systems as IPCC Enterprise 5.0 Advanced Technology
Provider
See: www.spanlink.com
Arel Communications & Software Expands European Presence
Through Agreement with VITEC Group In Germany
See: www.arelcom.com
WiredRed Licenses the secure IM and presence For Mitel
Networks IP-PBX phone systems.
See: www.wiredred.com
IntraLearn Expands Middle-market e-Learning with Microsoft
MBS Partnership See: www.intralearn.com
Business Engine Plans Acquisitions and European Expansion
See: www.businessengine.com
Niku Introduces Clarity 7.0 with Portfolio Planning, Process
Management, Application Consolidation Capabilities
See: www.Niku.com
Former Advanced Technology Executive to Run Oracle's Collaboration
Suite See: www.oracle.com
| News
and Announcements
(Based on the CS Taxonomy and additional analysis) |
Collaborative
CRM (Customer Relationship Management) |
Yahoo and BT Offer Yahoo Messenger Call
Management
Yahoo! Inc. and British Telecommunications plc announced that the
companies are creating a next-generation call management offering
based on the Yahoo! Messenger platform. This agreement represents
the first time that a major Internet company and an established
telecommunications company have come together to build an integrated
call management offering, including voice over IP, for the mainstream
consumer. www.yahoo.com
Interesting turn of events having mainstream consumer technology
for a call center. My guess is that AOL and MSN will also offer
similar solutions with Sprint, MCI or AT&T. This is all part
of what we at CS call "collaborative convergence (see new taxonomy
slide). This issue is full of collaboration functionality that is
moving down into the infrastructure layer from the application layer,
and this is another data point in that trend.
| Tacit
Knowledge Management, Intellectual Capital |
Convera Announces Five New Industry Taxonomies
Convera, a search and categorization company, announced five new
industry-specific taxonomies. The new offerings include: Genetics,
Finance & Business, General Enterprise, Technology and U.S.
Government. These taxonomies contain industry standard thesaurus
content enhanced by Convera linguists and taxonomists to optimize
the quality of information discovery in government and commercial
applications. For more information see: www.convera.com
.
The goal here is to make information and document search and
retrieval easier. Since we at CS believe that most of the collaborative
and KM technologies will have to have a more specific industry and
process focus (or risk getting pushed down into the infrastructure
layer) we see this as a good direction for Convera. We hope to see
Convera's search and retrieval tools become embedded in more collaborative
applications in the near future. A good target would be finance,
which is one of the taxonomies listed above and is also a strong
adopter of collaborative technologies.
| Portals
and On-line Communities |
FileNet Announces Team Collaboration
Manager
FileNet, a content management company, announced the Team Collaboration
Manager solution. Team Collaboration Manager integrates content
management with collaborative processes and business process management
capabilities. It provides discussion forums, Web meetings,
and interactive polls to facilitate knowledge sharing and guide
structured and unstructured processes. FileNet Team Collaboration
Manager is designed to promote more effective and efficient group
decision-making by removing barriers between people, data and processes.
FileNet Team Collaboration Manager provides the contextual framework
and collaboration tools, including discussion forums, live meetings,
and interactive polls, to enable group members to share information
and participate in processes to facilitate group decision-making.
These tools help organizations speed time to market, reduce costs,
and enhance employee productivity and customer satisfaction.
FileNet Team Collaboration Manager captures all related content
and streamlines processes to promote knowledge exchange and improve
decision - making, and enforces corporate-best practice execution
and regulatory compliance. Team Collaboration Manager can help your
organization: Increase team interaction through the capturing and
sharing of ideas, issues and comments from team members; Shorten
exception/resolution cycle times with complete record of decision-making
process; Increase project speed; Provide audit trails to support
decisions.
FileNet Team Collaboration Manager is based on the FileNet P8 platform,
which offers enterprise level salability and flexibility to handle
the most demanding content challenges, the most complex business
processes, and integration to all your existing systems. FileNet
P8 is designed to easily integrate with other enterprise applications
and provides a scalable framework for functional expansion for managing
enterprise content and Web publishing challenges, and provides greater
process control and consistency across your enterprise. For
more information see: http://www.filenet.com/English/Products/Team_Collaboration_Manager/
It's about time. Over a year ago we talked with FileNet about
collaboration, and they only saw it from a workflow point of view.
The Team Collaboration Manager tool has been positioned by FileNet
as "the first Web-based, out-of-the-box solution to include
BPM." So they still have a process focus, which CS does not
see as such a bad thing. It uses the common FileNet P8 repository,
and offers both synchronous and asynchronous collaboration features.
It is our hope that FileNet or some of it's partners will take this
a step further and offer collaboration within specific processes
(like new product development) in a template form, so that NPD organizations
only have a small bit of customization and optimization to do to
make this tool of high value.
| Collaborative
Document/Content Management w/LMS and LCMS |
Interwoven Introduces
Innovative Deal Management Solution
Leading Financial Services Companies Decrease Deal Closing Times
by 40% and Double the Number of Transactions Over 18 Months With
Interwoven
Interwoven Inc.the world's next-generation enterprise content management
(ECM) company, today announced the Interwoven Deal Management solution,
a comprehensive software solution for managing proposals, contracts,
negotiations, and correspondence, particularly e-mail, that comprise
today's high-value transactions.
The solution enables deal teams distributed around the globe comprised
of enterprise professionals -- bankers, account executives, financiers,
brokers and dealers -- to collaborate on document-intensive deals
from inception to execution. By increasing deal team efficiency
and improving client management, leading companies like Bear Stearns
and Rothschild Inc. have dramatically accelerated the deal cycle,
increased employee productivity, better-leveraged organizational
knowledge, and met regulatory compliance challenges.
Meeting Today's Corporate Deal Management Challenges According
to a recent IBM Business Consulting Services survey, 83% of CEOs
are refocusing their organization's energies on top-line revenue
as their primary objective over the next three years. Yet given
the corporate downsizing over recent years, revenue growth will
require significant increases in sales force efficiency and in the
process to conceive, develop, process, and execute corporate deals.
The Interwoven Deal Management solution is designed to deliver on
this promise by enabling deal teams and management teams to realize
value in several ways:
• Accelerating the Deal Cycle: The Interwoven solution
accelerates the deal cycle by increasing the efficiency of the fundamental
way deal makers work -- in dynamic teams that ebb and flow during
the course of a transaction. Together, deal teams comprised of bankers,
sales executives, analysts, administrators, lawyers, and executive
management -- both within and outside an enterprise -- can work
off the same set of documents, capture critical e-mail, set group
milestones, drive review and approval workflows, and maintain absolute
security of process and information. One example is a leading enterprise
in the commercial mortgage industry that has cut its deal cycles
by 40% simply by improving their team collaboration around their
document-intensive deal process.
• -- Increasing Employee Productivity: While team-based
productivity is essential to the overall deal process, individuals
will not adopt new technologies if it means that their days get
longer or their tasks become more complex. The Interwoven solution's
focus on driving individual productivity, whether by leveraging
e-mail as a primary basis for getting work done or by the market-leading
usability of the system, leads to rapid adoption across the enterprise.
• Interwoven's personalized interface provides individuals
juggling multiple deals simultaneously with a deal dashboard that
indicates deal status, deliverables, and new actions taken by their
colleagues to push the deal forward and provides management with
deal status report to better enable prioritization of actions. At
Rothschild, the real estate and asset management organizations adopted
the solution after seeing success in the mergers and acquisitions
practice.
-- Leveraging Organizational Knowledge: Organizations do not gain
market leverage by re-inventing deal knowledge and processes with
every new transaction. Deal teams need access to standard documents
and specialized industry, sector, or transaction knowledge and documentation
to improve not only the efficiency, but also the decision-making
involved in structuring, advancing, and executing a deal. Further,
at the conclusion of a transaction, team members can reciprocate
easily by publishing key final documents to corporate knowledge
bases. The result is an organization than can better standardize
its deal processes and leverage important information to improve
their competitive position. One Interwoven customer example is a
leading private equity firm utilizing the solution to create and
maintain industry sector research to guide investment and asset
management decisions.
-- Meeting Compliance Challenges: In an era of corporate scandal,
every significant transaction represents a potential liability for
today's enterprise. The Interwoven solution allows enterprises to
standardize deal processes and retain and archive all critical documentation
contracts, proposals, financial models, and e-mails, and all their
versions -- at the conclusion of a deal to meet key compliance challenges
and drive down the risk of non-compliance. An example is another
leading investment bank, which utilizes the Interwoven solution
to standardize its deal process and meet critical SEC guidelines.For
more information see: www.interwoven.com
What we like most about this is that it targets a specific
process in a specific vertical market and provides a clear benefit
(ROI). Investment Banking is a numbers game (pun intended) and if
the software allows you to create a virtual deal room, and cut deal
cycle time by 40% that is a big benefit in several ways. The longer
a deal takes the greater the chance of it not closing, but cutting
cycle time for the deal you give it a greater chance of closing
successfully. In addition you improve deal team member productivity,
so that then can handle (juggle) more deals, and thus have a greater
chance of one or more of their deals closing successfully. With
the fees for many of these deals in the millions of dollars, the
ROI here is very clear and probably could be measured in either
months, or the number of deals that closed successfully using WorkSite.
| Distributed
Project Management and Virtual Workplace and Process |
Dralasoft Debuts Workflow 3.0 For Web Services
Dralasoft, Inc., a developer of Java™ technology for
e-business and enterprise application infrastructure, announced
the release of Workflow 3.0, the newest version of its well-known
Business Process Management (BPM) software. Leading the improvements
in Version 3.0 is an extensive new SOAP interface that can be used
to invoke Workflow Engine as a web service, enabling business partners
to seamlessly collaborate in mission-critical workflows via the
web.
Web services are increasingly seen as the next—and possibly ultimate—use
of the Internet to realize business process efficiencies. Whit Andrews,
research director for Gartner, says in his report “Predicts 2004:
Web Services”, “…the service-oriented architecture (SOA) that Web
services enables will provide an ideal setting for a new class of
business applications called service-oriented business applications.
By using service-oriented business applications, SOAs can, in turn,
use Web services so that business processes can occur in real time.
This will be a boon for enterprises that want integration with business
partners to be easier and faster.”
Workflow 3.0 capitalizes on its SOA capability by enabling business
units and/or trading partners to integrate common workflow technology
into any major production situation. Document management, task management,
claims processing, e-commerce, and supply chain management are just
some of the ways in which Workflow 3.0 can save time, manpower,
and cost in distributed environments.
Dralasoft Workflow is comprised of three modules: Dralasoft Workflow
Engine, the runtime component; Dralasoft Studio, a drag-and-drop
design interface for workflow development; and Dralasoft Workflow
Manager, the application's reporting and analysis tool. In addition
to their existing support for Java, XML, LDAP, HTTP and JDBC, the
three modules now fully support SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol),
making them suitable for Windows .NET implementations as well as
other kinds of web services.
Also new to Workflow 3.0 is a new process for creating web forms,
the class of online interface that includes order forms, claims
documents, employee benefits information, and other fill-in-the-blank
data entry. In the past, designers wishing to add a form to a BPM
routine had to build the form outside the application, then map
it to Workflow Engine. With Workflow 3.0, designers can now describe
the form within Workflow Studio, after which the module automatically
creates and maps the form to the engine.
The last major improvement to Workflow in version 3.0 is enhanced
salability through the use of replication and clustering techniques.
By supporting greater salability across a wide range of business
processes, Workflow 3.0 can handle a greater number of users and
a more sophisticated level of BPM than ever before. For more information
see: www.dralasoft.com
Graphically oriented workflow products like Dralasoft that
take advantage of Java, SOAP and Web Services will make it easier
for collaborative solution vendors to drop this type of workflow
into an application to make a more complete solution. We expect
to see Dralasoft (and other workflow vendors) and their partners
to start to offer more specific process solutions that target specific
industries. Having a workflow of BPM template that gets you 80%
of the way there for your specific budgeting process, and a graphical
tool that allows the end user to easily modify the template for
their specific organization is what many organizations have been
waiting for. Coupled with the fact that it is browser based and
through SOAP can get access to ERP data, makes for a winning recipe.
Real
Time Collaboration:
Audio/video/web conferencing and Virtual Classroom |
Department of Defense Awards Blanket Purchase Agreement for First
Virtual Communications' Click to Meet Rich Media Communications
First Virtual Communications, Inc., a provider of infrastructure
and solutions for real-time, rich media communications, announced
that they have completed an agreement with the Department of Defense
(DoD) to provide their Click to Meet software product licenses,
software subscription service, help desk support and training to
the DoD. The Army Small Computer Program and the U.S. Army Contracting
Activity awarded the Collaborative Tools Click to Meet (CT-CTM)
Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) Number W91QUZ-04-A-1001, open to
all DoD, their direct support contractors, the U.S. Coast Guard
and the intelligence community, to First Virtual, effective March
2, 2004.
First Virtual's Click to Meet offers an easy to use, yet highly
scalable, communications platform for delivering high-quality multipoint
audio and video with web collaboration tools, all within a single
web browser interface for truly interactive, real-time, rich media
communications. This provides the government with the ability to
improve access to people and information, regardless of their location.
Click to Meet's tested and proven standards-based architecture,
commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) availability and industry-leading
interoperability meets the requirements of today's transformational
government.
Click to Meet has a strong, proven track record in mission-critical
DoD applications, with over 10,000 ports deployed as part of the
DoD's Defense Collaborative Tool Suite (DCTS). First Virtual's Click
to Meet Conference Server is the interoperability standard for the
DCTS multi-point audio and video solution. First Virtual also participates
in many other programs and testing laboratories, including the Internet
Voice Distribution System (IVoDS) program for the NASA Marshall
Space Flight Center; Battle Video Teleconferencing (BVTC) program
for the US Army Fort Monmouth, NJ; and the Joint En-route Mission
Planning and Rehearsal System Near-Term (JEMPRS-NT) program for
Joint Forces Command (JFCOM). For more information see: www.FVC.com
One of the bright spots in collaboration purchasing last year,
and now this year is the federal government. In many areas, like
the DoD and intelligence communities, collaboration has been mandated.
So it was just a matter of time for these groups to sort through
the myriad of technology offerings to see what would meet their
requirements and fit their security needs. Congratulations to FVC!
| Unified/Wireless
Messaging and Collaborative Infrastructure |
POINTONE DEPLOYING NEXTONE SESSION CONTROLLERS FOR GREATER FLEXIBILITY
IN VOIP INTERCONNECTIONS
NexTone™ Communications, a provider of session controller technologies
for the secure peering of packet networks, today announced that
PointOne is deploying NexTone's industry-leading session controllers
to enhance the flexibility of its voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP)
network. With the NexTone solution delivering FlexControl traffic
management end-to-end across the network, PointOne gains greater
control over its advanced routing capabilities between domestic
and international networks.
PointOne has deployed the NexTone Multiprotocol Signaling Switch
in the core of its softswitch network. The NexTone solution delivers
FlexControl, a suite of advanced session-control capabilities that
enables PointOne to more simply and cost effectively route, manage
and control real-time traffic over its IP network. FlexControl includes
FlexRoute and FlexPolicy, enabling PointOne to route and manage
authorized traffic to optimum points. The eventual result for PointOne
will be simplified interconnects for its largest customers.For more
information see: www.pointone.com
This is the second piece of collaborative hardware in this
issue. This one focuses on VoIP, NetScreen's is a secure meeting
server. What this all points to, is the inevitable trend that collaborative
functions are being rapidly pushed down into the infrastructure
layer. In addition, we have all been pleasantly surprised by the
more rapid uptake of VoIP (this year) than expected. CS expects
VoIP to be a standard part of the collaboration toolset (or infrastructure
if you wish) by 2007-2008 timeframe. Many RTC vendors like Centra,
Interwise, FVC and others offer VoIP now and some of these vendors
wisely allow seamless integration of VoIP and PSTN so that you can
use whatever audio technology you have for the audio portion of
your collaborative interaction.
Another area where we (CS) sees a lot of growth is in the VoIP
area. Not only have we seen more RTC vendors adopting this technology,
and the technology getting better, but VoIP is starting to be adopted
by major service providers around the world. In 2003 Nortel
Networks shipped the most Class 4 and Class 5 ports under softswitch
control.
Many of these providers have already initiated, or announced
plans to deliver local and/or long distance voice services,
based on softswitch technology, to business and/or residential
customers. InStat MDR (www.instat.com) estimates that the total
softswitch market in2003 grew by 42.4%. CS expects
this market to maintain high growth rates through 2007-2008 as major
service providers worldwide expand their VoIP networks. As a result,
CS estimates the softswitch market to reach $2B by 2008, with a
CAGR of 60 -65%. Right now the U.S. is providing the highest growth
area, bolstered by major purchases by both Sprint and MCI. We expect
other major vendors to move more aggressively into VoIP either this
year or next, but by 2005 most major switch vendors should have
at least 1/2 of their class 4 &5 switches under softswitch control.
With the handwriting on the wall we expect many of the RTC
vendors, especially in the IM, Chat and Presence detection area
to either OEM these functions to the switch vendors or be acquired
by them.
 Collaborative
Stickiness: And What Drives Adoption of Collaborative Technologies
It's all about pain! The cost to transfer content
from one collaborative tool to another, and sometimes the cost is
so high, and the pain so great, you say, “OK, I guess I will stick
with this old collaborative tool, cause it is too painful to move!”
Back when I worked in product management at Oracle we knew this
about databases. Give it to them for free; once they put some content
in it, it is too hard or painful to get it out and into some other
database tool. You got them! But how do you drive adoption? Will
only the initial group to come in contact with the collaborative
technology be the only group to use it? How do you insure that it
will spread throughout the organization?
Here at CS, we are always playing with new collaborative tools
and technologies. We are analysts (and mostly geeks) and often get
off on these technologies. But sometimes there is just so much pain
involved you throw up your hands and decide it is not worth it.
Disappearing TCP/IP
I remember one case where were seeing a demo of some new collaborative
software which worked over some sort of VPN. When I downloaded this
(beta) real time collaboration tool as part of the vendor demo,
it wiped out my TCP/IP protocol stack. I could not see my network,
connect to the Internet, nothing. The vendor apologized, and of
course the demo never proceeded. After trying to recover the protocol
stack for an hour or two, and calling Microsoft Support, I eventually
decided to roll back the system. I nice feature in XP Pro, that
allows you to create a rollback point (which I do now before installing
any new software), where it takes a snapshot of the systems for
you, and when you roll back, it goes back to the system settings
at the roll back point. All well and good, and I was able to roll
back my system (the TCP/IP stack worked fine before installing the
new software) and off I went with out losing too much time or work.
In this case the collaborative vendor was at a loss, but fortunately,
Microsoft had a great feature that allowed me to recover with minimal
amounts of pain and loss.
The Pain of Content Migration
I had a recent experience and an ASP vendor of collaborative tools
set up a new account for us so we could try their tools and new
services first hand. After a few of the analysts here played with
the tool, they said it was superior to the tool we were using, and
we should move our content over to the new tool. So we divided up
the work. One analyst moved the database/contact list and group
calendar over. I got to move the documents and files over.
The first day I was assigned this task, I went through the files
we had in the old tool, and look at what was current and created
a file/folder structure in the new tool documents section that paralleled
the structure in the old tool. So far so good! Then I started moving
files, which consisted of downloading the file from the old collaborative
tool, to my desktop and then uploading the file from my desktop
into the new tool. Fortunately, it was drag-and-drop to move the
files down to my desktop and up to the new tool (no I could not
drag files, folders or documents directly from the old tool to the
new one). Ok, so I spent an evening doing this and managed to get
about 100 documents into the new tool.
I then talked to some members of the management team of the company
with the new tool and they told me about web folders, and the ability
to create them. Because this new tool supports WebDAV so well, it
did make it a lot easier to move both the files and folders over
to this new collaborative environment.
Soon after I talked with these folks, a support person called me
and walked me through the creation of the web folders. I first tried
dragging files to my desktop and then could drag them over to the
appropriate folder. Since this was going so well, I got bold and
dragged some folders (filled with files and documents) onto my desktop
and then tried dragging the folders into the new tool. This did
two things for me: 1, it was much faster, and 2, it preserved the
folder hierarchy. That all went well until I started getting error
messages saying that not all of the files in the folder had been
copied.
OK, so now I was in limbo (a state that requires the most energy
to stay in) some documents in the old tool and others in the new
tool. I tried going back a step and just dragging and dropping one
file from a folder on my desktop into the new tool. Same error message,
so now I am really worried. In addition, I also tried to create
new folders in the new tool, and drag some files into those. Everything
went smoothly except the new folders did not show up when I went
back to look at the hierarchy. When I tried to reload the files
into those folders, the new tool told me that the files were already
there… but I just could not see them. At this point I had exhausted
my ingenuity and decided to yell for help!
I made another telephone call to support for the new tool vendor,
to see if they had seen this kind of behavior before. However, before
we could get a call back we began to see notices that we were out
of space. The lesson we are learning from this is that nothing ever
goes as smoothly or as easily as the vendor promises (or you expect).
What might have been more graceful is that the tool would have let
us know when we were within 10% of our storage limit and presented
us with some options, rather than having us figure out what was
going wrong by ourselves.
Now that we had found out what the (suspected) problem was, I called
the marketing VP at the new collaborative tool vendor and got our
space increased and I continued to move content over the next week.
Moving content is kind of like spring-cleaning. You look at everything
very critically and say, “Do I really need that?” We decided to
move whatever we did not need immediately onto our corporate server
for storage.
Database Migration
The other analyst that moved the database over only had to exported
it as a tab-delimited file and then imported it into the new tool
in an existing DB structure for Sales activity tracking that was
already available from the new vendor. He was given an interface
to map the field names. Out of 850 records he had 10 records with
errors. He went back into the original tab-delimited file and fixed
e-mail address and other corrections in the records, and then re-imported
the file successfully.
Strategies for Success
As the process of moving content wore on, the initial excitement
and novelty of the new collaborative tool began to wear off. The
other issue was to get everyone to move over to the new tool. One
strategy was to make that the only place they could find the content
to use. Checking the content on the new site and then deleting it
from the old site did this. We hoped this would eventually force
everyone on to the new tool if they wanted access to the content.
A second strategy was the “more functionality” appeal. To see if
we could get some of the people here interested in using the new
tool based on functions the old tool did not have. Like, it has
a group calendar, or it will synch up with your PDA, etc.
Critical Factors for Adoption
Whatever the strategy it is unclear what the critical factors for
adoption of collaborative technologies are. I believe about 10-20%
of it is the technology, but the other 80-90% is people and process.
Collaborative Strategies has recently launched into some new research
looking at just this issue. Several of our analysts are currently
interviewing both collaborative vendors and end-user organizations
(both kinds: where the collaborative tool is being used in a group
or department but did not spread throughout the organization, and
companies where the collaborative tool is used throughout the organization).
If you are either a vendor or end user and would like to be part
of this study please contact me immediately ( davidc@collaborate.com
)! All information will be kept private, and we will derive
trends and best practices from the aggregate of interviews we do.
Those participating will get an executive summary of the results
of the survey.
David Coleman is the Founder and Managing Director of Collaborative
Strategies. This column is his ideas and comments and do not necessarily
represent the views of all of the analysts at Collaborative Strategies.
If you wish to contact David directly please e-mail him at davidc@collaborate.com
 E-Meeting
Appliances; Overcoming the Fear Factor!
In the past we have talked about one of the major trends we
have seen in collaboration over the last year is the ability of
vendors to drive collaborative functionality into the infrastructure.
NetScreen offers a great example of this in their new Secure Meeting
Series, which are a line of e-meeting appliances. I have interviewed
Andrew Harding Director, Marketing and Product Manager for this
new appliance line, and our wide-ranging discussion focused on everything
from RTC trends to sales and marketing strategies for this e-meeting
appliance ...David Coleman
Collaborative Strategies makes every effort to bring you timely,
accurate information on collaboration and knowledge management.
However, we are part of a rapidly evolving market ourselves and
events occur during the publication of this newsletter every month
that we do not become aware of or that happen post-production. If
you know of such events, please contact David Coleman at Davidc@collaborate.com
so we can note these key events in the next edition of this newsletter.
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