The People Part of Enterprise Collaboration and Virtual Teams

• Google talked up the benefits of cloud-computing to collaboration at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston this week. “Where Chandra sees the differentiator is in collaboration. He argued that the old way of working — one person has one job and completes only his or her work — is fading fast. “Today the world is not about individual productivity,” he said. “It is about team or group productivity.” In come cloud-based enterprise applications, allowing multiple users to create and share and collaborate on information and documents from anywhere and in any language. Chandra framed the need as a natural symptom of a global environment.“
• Osborne Technologies credits the use of a Socialtext wiki with some major improvements in its business: increased service-oriented revenues, new media training for staff, collaboration on a redesigned web presence, more effective ISO quality management system, and better internal processes. “The workspace has become a de facto business planning tool. All plans are current and relevant. All plans draw on the experience of cross-functional teams of employees. The planning process is open to all levels of the organization. As a result, Osborne’s plans have become true “living documents.” Internally, Osborne uses three main workspaces: 1) the ROOT, their knowledge base; 2) the COOT, daily communication and announcements; and 3) General Management, a workspace where the leadership team experiments with workspace management techniques.“

The Technology Trends of Enterprise Collaboration and Virtual Teams

• Socialtext announced Socialtext SocialCalc, a wiki-based spreadsheet. “The new software is based on WikiCalc, an open-source spreadsheet created by Dan Bricklin, the co-creator of the original spreadsheet, VisiCalc. SocialText acquired WikiCalc in 2005. The new software extends WikiCalc with Ajax, sharing, tagging, version control, and enterprise-level security and permissioning. The company expects that the software will find primary use in the four markets that SocialText has been focusing on – participatory knowledgebase, collaborative intelligence, business social networks, and client collaboration.” See the Socialtext Press Release.
• AvePoint released Version 5.0 of DocAve, its backup and recovery tool for SharePoint. “Core to DocAve 5.0 is the exclusive business criticality matrix, which automatically classifies SharePoint content according to business criticality, predefined by site owners and business users, as well as the content’s usage activity. This allows SharePoint administrators to optimize their storage and system resources and execute rule-based backups based on real-time item level data analyses. DocAve 5.0 is the latest release of the DocAve software platform, a fully-distributed “mix-and-match” modular infrastructure solution suite for backup and recovery, replication, migration, administration, archiving and compliance for all Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies.“
• Awareness Inc. released the Summer 2008 edition of Awareness, its enterprise social media platform. “The Awareness Summer 2008 platform release allows for the creation of communities that broadly connect people and content through new enhancements that include Microsoft SharePoint integration, advanced social networking functionality and portable widgets that extend Awareness-powered Web 2.0 communities to any website and third-party services such as iGoogle and Facebook. In addition, administrators of Awareness communities now have more advanced self-service reporting and metrics functionality to more clearly understand and manage community activities.“
• MailSite released MailSite Fusion 9, a mobile email solution. “MailSite Fusion 9 features an ActiveSync server with DirectPush that gives users e-mail and collaboration capabilities, such as calendaring, via a single-server platform. It’s compatible with the Apple iPhone 2.0, Windows Mobile devices, smartphones connected to Microsoft Exchange 2007 ActiveSync and even Research In Motion’s BlackBerry devices.” Available immediately.
• The best client for calendaring that’s CalDAV-compliant is Mulberry. “While there’s plenty of CalDav compatible programs out there our server-team judges are firm: Pizazz and setup wizards won’t get you anywhere if you can’t correct that meeting time or properly notify others of the change. If you want strict specification adherence in a cross-app & cross-platform thick-client: Our winner is Mulbery for Linux, Windows, & Mac. In addition to being a Swiss-army-knife of protocols, it’s also Open Source.” See Mulberry.
• AvePoint announced that the next edition of DocAve Deployment Manager is coming, to streamline the deployment of SharePoint. “DocAve Deployment Manager is optimized to support the deployment of a wide spectrum of platform-level components within a SharePoint farm during the development, test, and production stages within the implementation lifecycle. It enables efficient and flexible movement of complex server configurations and custom solutions, effectively cloning an entire multi-tier environment for each phase of the release process, mitigating any risk of breakage during deployment or upgrades, while minimizing service disruption to an organization’s production environment. By automating low-level and time consuming tasks, DocAve Deployment Manager changes the way administrators deploy and manage SharePoint, allowing them to focus on higher value activities.“
• K2 announced K2 blackpoint, a workflow tool for SharePoint. “With K2 blackpoint, drag-and-drop tools and a Microsoft Office-style designer allow even non-technical business users to create new business processes that span libraries, sites, server farms and organizations; manage approvals; and route documents and list items. In addition, users can assemble applications from information that already exists.” Available in beta later in June.

Insights on Being Productive and Effective as an Individual

• Jason offers a video DVD on Making Things Possible. “We’ve cut through all the theory, philosophy and lofty ideas to give you the cut to the bone, razor sharp, no frills, no-nonsense 15 Most Powerful, instantly doable, simple tips tricks and techniques that WILL give you 15 minutes more Each day for every tip you implement. That’s more than 3 hours a day saved. No lofty promises, no jargon, just the power tools of productive engagement as only Jason can explain and make as simple as hitting Delete.“
• How do we make effective use of laptops in business meetings? Jeff has 7 ideas … (1) make sure there’s a point, (2) put one person in charge of the designated laptop, (3) explain why you are using a laptop, (4) use some discretion, (5) turn down the bells and whistles, and more.
• Don’t spend all of your days in front of the computer. Pursue offline interests. Celine writes “For me, the most important aspect of pursuing offline activities is the sense of fulfillment. One of the causes of the trend to telework is our need to spend more time on ourselves and the things we value in life, rather than just the work we do for income. Knowing that you have other activities and interests to spend your time and efforts on can be rewarding, especially if your choice to web work was driven by the need to control your own time.“

Other Noteworthy Insights

• CIOs weigh in on requirements for the iPhone to make it enterprise-ready.
• Apple Mac OSX 10.6, or Snow Leopard, will ship in mid-2009. The focus will be on streamlining performance.