Conversationware

It’s too grand a title, and too big a conversation. But things ARE changing on the Interweb.

Blogging, multimedia presentation, Google Adwords, RSS - this is the web marketing future. This company called Pepperjam does several things that most other companies don’t find natural.

They walk the talk.

The founders video on the front page tell you so much more than just the content - its the passion, the attitude and its the dogs doo-dahs.

Yes it’s a little in your face, and Brits might find this a little unsettling but even they’ll (we’ll) get the hang of it sooner or later.

 The web isn’t new, but Pence Per Click Management is.

PepperJam’s growth rate of over 450% last year, and 550% this year shows that.

But I’m betting this growth isn’t just the service they give their clients, but that they live their dream in public.

Wordpress open source software used to be just for building blogs, but now its more than good enough to have your website built with.

You should.

For all my friends in small businesses, here’s my reasons.

1. Wordpress can be used to create a website from scratch with no coding (with a little reading)
2. Anyone can add pages, and this means more content, and more updates (no charge)
3. Search engines care very much about content levels and how often a site is updated.
4. Content is preserved, even when changing the look of the site (Thats what this Wordpress Content Management System actually does)
5. Change the look, and all pages are updated, there’s no hard-coding. A website can live and breathe.
6. Thousands of developers are working to simplify all sorts of advanced capability - e.g. Search Engine friendly stuff, statistics management! audio and video embedding, database and e-commerce functions.
7. If you get stuck, any Wordpress contractor can pick up where you left off - easily
8. It is a major bonus for a website to support RSS and blogs, for marketing, and with Wordpress, such rich functionality is built in of course.
9. Websites are tons better when interactive - positive customer comments build trust and credibility and will increase conversions from visits to contact.
10. It’s free to use

Forget the word Blog - just think of this as a way to replace that old website that looks like a brochure and to start a conversation in your marketplace, and hit those search engines.

Although Unified Communications is great, you do know where this is going don’t you? 

Yes, we now have convenient and quick ways to get in touch, and to get our stuff done.

But it’s only going to mean even more conversations (work), in probably less time than we have now!!

So - whilst we still have only one set of ears and one mouth, we’re going to have to bite this bullet properly and ’go asynchronous’. Electronically.

If we don’t, then Presence, or Availability as I prefer it,…… they won’t mean much because we’ll be neither present nor available any time soon. We’ll be in more meetings.

Just in the nick of time, with chest stuck out and pants outside it’s trousers, this new Social Software has been showing us a bit of what’s possible. So do wiki’s, so do blogs, so do readers.

A real taste of that, and it’s “No more email thanks”, if its all the same to you.

Please don’t CC me on everything, I’ll just search through your multimedia conversations if I think I need to.

You know, we could really do with a way to keep a track of all these conversations.

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The reason I go on about this (again) is that I saw just a glimpse of all this in a demo with Traction Software.

The Traction (and Newsgator) case study with the NHS in Orkney intruiged me, being a new media software solution being first adopted by a traditionally IT follower organisation.

But, after having all too short a demo with Jordan Frank, I can tell you this isn’t your normal Web 2.0 stuff - it has ‘Enterprise’ written all over it.

The best description of how and why being an Enterprise solution matters is in one of traction’s latest blog posts.  Delivered by their own technology, naturally.

So, whatever ends up giving us this ability to more perfectly replicate group conversations - I’ve joined the seemingly general gut feeling that it will transport us all ‘rocket like’ through the stratosphere of group productivity.

There’s a cusp around here someplace.

Possibly I got it from the ability for everyone to contribute, even down to a paragraph level, and ‘build’ a definitive conversation around any subject, in fact spanning several subjects if necessary. Big steps indeed.

This technology could be so devastingly different to the systems that we use today.

–

However, I’m reminded of a great line from a film - “I’m drowning here, and you’re describing the water”. A Jack Nicholson special class line delivery.

What’s the betting that the people who discover this new great technology are SO clever,  they find it hard not to desribe it in an incredibly intellectual way.

It could just mean the secret stays in the bag just that little bit longer.

Lets face it people, calling new technology blogs or wikis is probably something that overly clever people would do. 

The last time, in 1985, that we were transported through the productivity stratosphere was when someone coined the phrase ‘desktop publishing’. Descriptive genius.

Perhaps when we find new technology a new name, we can get to do it again.

–

Only one problem for me. That is that if we work for different people and we want a conversation, then who’s place shall we have it in? Yours or mine?

I thought it would be a good idea to look for Sharepoint success stories.

An old colleague - sorry Roger, the phrase nearly works both ways - was fired up about the capabilities of Sharepoint 2007, and so I wanted more evidence.

Google search for ‘Sharepoint success story’ and the first result is from HP, a re-assuringly titled ”

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server Success Stories

First in the list? Alberta Pensions Administration Corporation (APA)

The result?

Pants. Not available….are they using Sharepoint? See below

Sorry, we were unable to find the Enterprise Library page you were looking for.  It’s possible that this page is no longer available.

The Enterprise Library provides the most current Enterprise marketing content available.

To make another Enterprise Library selection, click here

The second link is available - but doesn’t mention Sharepoint, and the third doesn’t exist at all (webpage not found) and so on.

I spotted a familiar UK name example at the bottom of the list, Wiltshire Constabulary, - but that link puts me through to an index of case studies….which doesn’t include Wiltshire Constabulary. Grief.

Perhaps there could be an arrest warrant issued soon…please?

In the interests of balance, there is the Microsoft customer evidence site - but there is a large amount of will do, plans to, intends to - type language.

I’ll be interested to see what transpires in this, the third incarnation of Sharepoint. How much longer will companies wait for the finished article.

Lastly, I saw this post from collaboration loop, which seems to ask many of the questions that I also have - without too many answers yet.

The questions:

Is SharePoint a Web 2.0 platform? Is SharePoint a content management system? Is SharePoint a workflow manager? Is SharePoint a social computing platform? Or is SharePoint a portal to other applications?

(I’m not sure why I link to Collaboration Loop, as comments don’t seem to be published on their site anymore. It’s a bit like being lectured instead of having a conversation :-))

Anyhow, The Answer:

Well…the answer to all of these questions is a conditional “yes.” SharePoint does have the capabilities to function in all these roles.

But - the article’s point then extends to the fact that it isn’t best of breed in any area, and is partnering with best of breed in multiple disciplines to deliver the goods. For how long will that last, and how does a customer company make a decision. I wonder.

Encouraging your employees to use Facebook?

That’s bucking the trend wouldn’t you say? It is being reported that up to 70% of UK’s employers are banning access according to the linked article.

In that context, there is a great interview from the CEO horse’s (Jeremy Burton of Serena) mouth, over at the ‘For Immediate Release’ podcast site. When getting to the site, scroll to the player for 16th November. (24 mins)

 At ‘face value’ (sorry) it sounds like a very ‘new age’ ‘new media’ thing to do, but actually, the interview does enable Jeremy to put things very succinctly, articulately even, and it does make sense.

Mostly.

The situation first came about by banning emails on a Friday, a practice I haven’t experienced personally, but applaud none the less. And having banned (internal?) email, staff found a way around it and thus, experiencing a richer form of communication and relationship bulding, the ‘missing link’ was discovered by all.

It’s no suprise that almost anything enables better relationships and conversation than does email, but I still have this feeling that Facebook is merely a signpost, rather than an eventual destination. This year’s Second Life, if you will.

The vital question of things for me, ‘Personal versus Business communications’ was discussed briefly, but despite the answer “that it gave the CEO something to talk to the despatch guy in the lift about”, I don’t think that this subject has been put to bed yet.

Have a listen though, a few decent pointers to be had

Serena looks like an interesting company. Mashups are this year’s workflow?

I posted a video around the public safety of facebook a few days ago, and I’m still not convinced that donating your information to that particular medium is beneficial.

Linked In is also fairly new to me, although now I think probably it’s more mainstream than I originally gave it credit for - having been around before such things were referred to as ’social networks’.

Incidentally, a colleague told me he treated it as a rainy day thing, so that struck a chord. Thus, I was willing to put a little more effort in - being much more acceptable to me than that facebook for business purposes.

The thought of any future employer or customer being able to search through fluff, stuff and nonsense just makes me want to keep my private networks private, and my business networks businessy.

However - this interview post, a 15 mins thing with one of the most active users - 4200 contacts, was an eye-opener this evening.

I can see this stuff is still in its infancy, but I ‘get it’ better now. Many thanks Chip.

Any other Linked In stories will find me listening?

We’ve had communications Vendors telling us for months that;

• Voip is Unified Communications
• Unified Messaging is Unified Communications
• Sending an SMS from a database event is Unified Communications

All very irritating for everyone (ok, that would be me), but probably even more so from an analyst point of view.

The good news that someone sensible from the analyst community got involved, and Melanie Turek, tells it like it is. Bravo

The CURRENT guestimated market size is very interesting indeed, less than $10M.

I’m sure that’s about right given the (correct) definition

However, Vendors have all promised their investors that there is gold at the end of this rainbow. The land of Unified Communications will deliver prosperous and wonderous times.

So, how long will it take to get there?

VOIP (red) vs ‘Unified Communications’ Search trends (blue)

Having figuratively left Reading Town a few months ago, my guess is that we’re only up the road in Newbury, the natives look pretty similar, and the emperors new clothes are still only just getting worn in.

There is a broader point

Until we define things properly and without fluff and nonsense, then the interest in unified communications won’t hit the heights that vendors want to see.

(More diagrams after the jump for RSS readers)

(more…)

I stole this from Dan York’s blog.

Whatever you put up on the interweb is no longer your own Dan.

Thanks You tube

I guess this is a modern take on the public information films of our childhood.

Remember Charley says?

High Availability and Disaster Recovery are different you know.

And I found out recently that there is also a third term - Continuous Availability.

Or at least, I now understand better what it means.

The ability to fail over an application server to a backup, so seamlessly that users don’t notice, between servers on different sites is pretty amazing. And, if you have over 99.3% uptime, you can claim Continuous Availability (Gartner’s term), as well as the other two.

It’s important I know this, because Avanquest now have distribution of Neverfail (such a brave name) - which provides Continuous Availability for the following

• Exchange
• Lotus Notes
• SQL
• File Server
• IIS
• Blackberry BES
• Rightfax

It can also run on VM Ware, leading to some very nice supplementary capabilities.

An excellent independent endorsement is here at it-director.com, a review

This is a Massive subject, even worthy of a capital ‘M’, and extremely topical with all my VOIP friends.

A few even go as far to say that failover is the only reason that their voip systems are selling so well.

With more and more communications capability becoming software applications, delivering Continuous Availability without those massive SAN and clustering costs will give a Competitive Advantage.

Backup servers are useless without knowing what the application is doing.

We are now availing our channel partners with these capabilities, with all the normal value added services wrap around of course.

Here’s a Neverfail customer video illustrating the point

Sometimes, the internet throws things up that make you laugh, for all the wrong reasons.

Proudly displayed on this website - Microsoft and Avaya’s great big advertising links alongside a very thin (to be kind) article about the vulnerabilities of Unified Communications.

You couldn’t make it up could you?

In case it gets taken down soon (UPDATE, the Avaya advert got removed) - the text includes things like

“One cannot ignore the seriousness of attacks against unified communications systems. At best, such an attack might disable your company’s phones. At worst though, a unified communications-based attack could allow an attacker to steal or modify data, or eavesdrop on voice or video calls”

and

“Unfortunately, I would have to write a good-sized book in order to cover all of the known exploits and countermeasures related to unified communications systems”

and worst of all

“Conclusion

Unfortunately, there is no easy way to secure your unified messaging systems. Some vulnerabilities effect virtually all unified messaging systems, regardless of make or model, while other vulnerabilities are specific to certain brands. Until traditional firewalls and IDS systems evolve to the point that they can detect unified messaging based-attacks, your best defence is to monitor the various web sites that I have mentioned in this article, in order to arm yourself with the latest security information.”

This last one is the richest of them all. I have never come across a Unified Messaging vulnerability in my 13 years of supplying them. That’s either from AVST or the competition. It’s just ridiculous.

It’s nice to be safe, however, you don’t need VOIP to get Unified Communications. But, if you do go that route, it can all sit nicely behind your firewall without opening any extra ports whatsoever.