My Enterprise 2.0 wish list
January 23rd, 2007 by Jason Yau
I alluded in a previous post to a list of the key features of a comprehensive Enterprise 2.0 knowledge management product. Note that I’m excluding file delivery (YouSendIt), RSS (Newsgator, Attensa), and other useful features that I don’t consider core to collaboration within the enterprise. What follows is that wish list of features. Bear in mind that this is only my opinion from having done a broad market survey, and those with different needs, workflow, and priorities are bound to disagree with me.
So far, I haven’t come across a product that has come close to implementing all of the features below. Most of the products I have seen to date are point solutions to the broad knowledge management problem. I’m not suggesting that it’s not possible to gain broad market penetration without a comprehensive solution. On the contrary, there is already plenty of evidence that businesses are willing to buy such focused products. Indeed, not everyone needs a product that solves the grand collaboration question. On the other hand, I believe a product that effectively ties all the pieces together may well be the key to making Enterprise 2.0 truly mainstream. SuiteTwo takes a few steps in that direction, but it’s still fundamentally a package of disparate products that can’t talk to each other. On with the feature list:
Core features:
- Blog - allow people to collaborate by broadcasting information inside and outside of the enterprise - i.e. iUpload, MovableType, blogtronix
- Document management
- Content-searchable
- Revisions and versioning - Confluence handles this moderately well
- Desktop integration - Getting existing documents from the desktop into a repository is still the #1 obstacle to adoption. Koral goes a step further and does an impressive job of tracking files and ensuring version consistency even once files have been saved to the desktop.
- Workflow/project management - i.e. Alfresco
- Rich document editing interface - Office apps in the web browser - i.e. Zoho, ThinkFree, iNetOffice
- Wiki - free-form, on-the-fly document creation in a loosely organized environment - i.e. Atlassian Confluence, Socialtext, Mindtouch Dekibox
General features that should be applied on a platform level:
- Universal messaging integration - let’s face it, Outlook is still the #1 point of entry for information in the enterprise, and moving information from there to any knowledge system needs to be easy - i.e. SugarCRM’s Outlook plugin. Integration with a persistent enterprise IM application (see Parlano, one of our portfolio companies), would make it easier to collaborate in real-time on information stored in the system
- Tagging - apply the classic Web 2.0 organizational paradigm to the corporate world to make locating information easier - i.e. ConnectBeam
- Auditing and compliance - today’s regulatory environment demands that companies have a clear view of where information is flowing
I would argue that wikis are the glue that should tie all the pieces together. For example, straight-up document management is a clunky legacy application that predates the web. Meanwhile, using an interface that looks like Microsoft Office inside a web browser is great, but it’s useless without a backend system for document handling and organization.
Now imagine dropping Powerpoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets, and PDFs into a rich, free-form page that has been created on the fly using a Word lookalike within the browser. The wiki puts all the moving parts together, and gives just enough structure to find information without constraining it to a tree/folder format. Confluence is the closest thing I’ve seen to putting everything together in this way, although their wiki part of the equation is far and away the most mature piece. I have heard rumors of Zoho and others working to bring a portfolio of products together under a wiki umbrella, but I haven’t seen anything concrete yet. If you’ve got a different idea of how everything should come together, I’d love to hear it.
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Jason, Yes! I strongly agree, the wiki is the glue, it provides narrative, a lose structure, and everything else ties into it. Confluence is by far the most comprehensive enterprise wiki, and the undisputed market leader. You may want to check out Brainkeeper, an out-of-the-blue “surprise”… seriously, they just launched and have quite a product, both in terms of functionality and UI. Oh, and they are East Coasties, too:-) The Zoho Wiki is out, here’s my review.
Hi Jason ,
I entirely agree to your opinion.
However , if build a Enterprise 2.0 service and package based on knowledge management model using separate services has to integrate seamless.
I think “people”, “place, “thing” which are common component of knowledge management model , they can be integrate seamless using mash-up API and knowledge reward scheme.
Anyway , Your opinion is greate..!!
I am developing the ThinkFree Web Office.
If you have any quiestion , send e-mail to me.
jhpark@thinkfree.com
thanks,
JH
Jason, great list of Enterprise 2.0 functionality. Have you tried Microsoft Sharepoint ? It actually does a good job covering a lot of your collaboration and doc management needs, and it is very well integrated with Office/Outlook… I think though, that excluding RSS is a big deal. Products you mention like Attensa’s Enterprise RSS Feed Server allow for filtering and tagging (integrated with del.icio.us) all this information — and also track your attention to understand what data in your organization you use most. All of these tools create RSS outputs, where an enterprise-level RSS solution can then aggregate the feeds into a dashboard based on your usage patterns.
Paul,
Good point. I probably should have mentioned Sharepoint in my post. The product has clearly come a long way, and works perfectly for many organizations. But, my understanding is that even with the upcoming release of Sharepoint 2007 and its “wiki” functionality, it’s still a heavyweight product and very document focused. The beauty of wikis lies in on-the-fly, free-form collaboration. Too many collaboration products (including some wikis and Sharepoint) still draw a line between information publisher and information consumer, which I feel is a limitation.
As for RSS, I intentionally left it off the list. I’ve written about RSS in the enterprise before and I believe it has many important uses. In terms of collaboration, as opposed to information aggregation and event-driven notifications, I think it plays a more limited role. I’d say that the collaboration aspect of RSS is limited to syndicating information to others - something that piggybacks on top of a more comprehensive information management system.