The People Part of Enterprise Collaboration and Virtual Teams

• Dennis argues that Forrester is thinking wrongly in its projection of $4.6 billion for Enterprise 2.0 by 2013, especially about the inclusion of collaboration. “It is when Forrester strays into the collaborative workspace that I believe they’re over reaching. They make the implicit assumption that major players like IBM and Microsoft will subsume Web 2.0 software into existing collaborative offerings. They argue that a combination of factors such as commoditzation, legacy and the marketing muscle of the incumbents will serve to make Enterprise 2.0 products “fade into the fabric of enterprise collaboration.” Apart from the difficulty in getting adoption, to which I have referred elsewhere, I believe this is solving the wrong problem.“

The Technology Trends of Enterprise Collaboration and Virtual Teams

• Central Desktop announced that it can import collaborative work from Basecamp for customers wanting to migrate to the Central Desktop service. “If you are a current Basecamp user and have been considering switching to Central Desktop, we now have the ability to do a full import of all your Basecamp Projects. Tasks, Milestones, Comments, Messages, Users, etc… will be completely imported.“
• Colligo Networks reported huge growth in sales of its offline (and online) SharePoint client. “The Colligo for SharePoint product line played a significantly role in the overall growth. Revenues for Colligo Contributor in the first quarter increased 55 percent over the previous quarter and over 2000 percent year-over-year. Colligo Contributor is client software that has proven to increase SharePoint user adoption by providing an intuitive user experience that better integrates SharePoint into the way users work on their desktops. Over 160 organizations, large and small, purchased Colligo’s desktop applications for SharePoint in the first quarter.“
• Microsoft is apparently looking into an acquisition of Xobni, a startup that offers an add-on to make Outlook better. “Given that Xobni will have to go after corporate users to make money from its product, selling out to Microsoft may not be such a bad option. It won’t have to raise gobs of additional money to fine-tune its product, which is still in beta and has some issues (read: bugs) to work through. More importantly, it won’t have to deal with the intricacies of managing sales to large enterprises. On Microsoft’s dime, it can continue to finesse its offering, and Microsoft can help find Xobni an eager audience in its 400 million-odd Microsoft Outlook users.“

Insights on Being Productive and Effective as an Individual

• Stop wasting your energy on things that are not important. Scott offers a pivotal question: Will I care about this in five years? “You will save a lot of time, energy and stress if you stop worrying about things that aren’t important. Don’t waste your energy on things that won’t make a difference in five years. While the idea of ignoring the unimportant seems great, it can be tricky to put into practice. Many of the things that don’t matter, feel incredibly important. How do you separate the critical few from the useless many?“