Axero Pulse » communication

Social Networking – The Near Future Of Business Software

Tim Eisenhauer — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 13:00:23 +0000

Collaboration Networks will be to Enterprises
what Social Networks are to Consumers

It’s always great to read a view point that’s so close to your own thoughts that you can’t say it better — and that’s exactly what happened when I read Padmasree Warrior’s post on the CISCO blog “5 Predictions For The Future Of Collaboration“. Her first prediction echoes what we’ve been seeing as more companies turn to social networking software to enable their internal and external collaboration requirements. The prediction is “Collaboration Networks will be to Enterprises what Social Networks are to Consumers”

Padmasree says in the post:

“At Cisco, we believe that the rigidly structured silos that were traditionally put in place in most enterprises will give way to more fluid, ad-hoc communities of experts. Increasingly, companies will rely on Collaboration Networks that bring together “clusters of experts” to get critical projects completed. These groups will form dynamically to achieve a shared outcome. This self-organizing cycle repeats itself on an ongoing basis, as the need arises. It’s both efficient and effective, in part because experts are drawn to projects and are thus motivated — rather than being “assigned” in a top-down fashion.”

Social networking software architecture is ideal for creating a collaboration network platform for businesses. Every business has its own processes and its share of custom requirements from their software to blend in perfectly. Social networking software provides that flexible basic framework that allows for communication and interaction between people online. With its open nature, it acts as a set of tools for employees to leverage in their daily work — and provides the perfect platform to encourage participation and collaboration without having management impose a software on them (as the Padmasree blog post points out).

If the rapid adoption of general social networking sites is any indication of things to come, collaboration networks will go the same direction as a natural extension of this framework for business needs. Just as social networking platforms like Facebook are now the broader structure within which other activities using software such as games, auctions, e-commerce, content sharing and more happen, we are likely to see applications such as CRM, document management, spreadsheets, customer service modules, and more all within the confines of a collaboration network login.

We already have customers building on a social networking platform and customizing it for their employees and departments by adding components such as stock tickers, sales performance dashboards, and RSS news feeds to equip them with more than the basic collaboration functionality. Given that platforms such as Communifire are geared towards customization and enhancing features, is it too hard to imagine that in the near future, a sales person in an enterprise organization logs into his/her internal collaboration network and has access to the company CRM data?

What is certain, is that we are still at the early phases of social software for the business — and the future is bound to see this technology find its way to the core of businesses computing. It’s already happening.

Social Networks Vs Email For Business Communication

Tim Eisenhauer — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 13:00:36 +0000

Is Social Networking Software Pushing Email To A New Role In Business Communication?

This is more a personal observation than a researched study, but it seems that the role of email is changing constantly in the business communications environment as social networking software advances to play a greater role in this space. It was just a short time ago when email was the backbone of nearly all external communication with customers and those outside the office — and instant messaging, along with email is how we would communicate internally.

The best way to really understand the change that I’m talking about is this: a few years ago when you stepped into your office or workplace, what was the first few windows you would have opened on your desktop? For most of us, that would be Outlook or our web mail accounts — which we open like a ritual since this was the channel of all communication and the application that connected us to everyone else. Now, think about what the first few windows or applications you opened as you started your working day today. How many of those were social networking based applications or sites?

Social networking software is increasingly becoming the backbone of business communications. Just looking back to how I started this day and how I connected with others and communicated since the start of today is quite different from only email and instant messaging. 1) There was logging into our own internal community and checking for new discussions and updates to previous conversations. 2) There was checking our shared calendar for calls and meetings scheduled for the day.

Accepting some connections on Linkedin, followed by replying to some internal messages, and answering some interesting questions around social software in one of the groups. Adding my name to the attendees list on a Wiki for an event next month what the next thing I did. Then, replying to a number of direct messages and tweets on Twitter. As the day continues, I’m sure I will end up connecting and having conversations with several others before the day ends — and a lot (if not all) of these conversation will happen outside my email account.

Todd Famous did a post not too long ago on the CISCO blog on new forms of communications and collaboration and said:

“I used to get emails from friends through email but I now get almost all my non-work “email” via Facebook. My legacy email account has turned into an inbox for electronic account statements and alerts from social media platforms.”

This is something I can relate to completely, as a bulk of the email I receive during the working day are now notifications for updates that happen across other social networking sites and communities. The inbox is working more as a place to monitor these various conversations across different locations rather than being the actual place where the conversations themselves happen — and that’s a significant change.

As we move towards using social networking and collaborative sites for more of our collaboration and communication needs, how do you see the role of email evolving within this new environment?

Social Software Collaboration – Addressing Todays Business Communication Challenege

Tim Eisenhauer — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 22:01:07 +0000

How Social Collaboration Software Can Take Us Towards A More Transparent Business Environment

The economic crisis and global recession that brought economies the world over to its knees may be showing signs of improvement, but it’s impact is far from over. While the mood is slowly turning positive, the recession has left people more skeptical or more cautious over the financial system and the way business is done, irrespective of where in the world they are. With support from the media, there is a very strong resolve among people everywhere to instill change in business practices and ensure disasters of this scale don’t happen in the future. The millions of people who have felt deceived by the large banks and financial companies will feel this way for quite some time, despite the worst being over for now and for businesses everywhere the challenge of winning the confidence of their shareholders and people in general is going to be one they need to face.

The challenge of being able to create a more transparent, more accountable work environment is a universal one. Having transparency in day to day functioning builds confidence both internally within the organization as well as externally among people — which is why businesses have to seriously evaluate how they can move to a more transparent system of working. Whether it’s your sales team working with customers, management working with employees, management communicating with shareholders, company buyers evaluating purchases, or project managers working with customers, if you’re communications are transparent and there for others (who have some association with the work you’re doing) to observe, then everything is being transacted in plain view and the scope for large scale scandals, frauds, and misuse of position is reduced.

A similar challenge was highlighted in a case study involving Canada’s trade association for airports when they were evaluating a collaboration solution which would help them work with the several member airports. They were geographically scattered and there was no visibility into the business proposals and deals being made, as most of them happened through email discussions which were privy to the parties and it was easy to exclude people from being cc’d. While document sharing and collaboration helps to an extent, documentation is one part of business communication. Social software based collaborative networks offer a better more well rounded solution as they can centralize the documents around a deal or discussion and also provide a transparent platform for the communication and working that goes with it. In a collaborative networking environment, unlike email, people interact within groups, shared documents like wikis, forums and so on, leaving a clear record of the working process — which is there in plain sight for anyone to see.

Business communications need to be more transparent and corporate culture is slowly being driven by peoples need for more accountability towards being more open. There is a lot we can take from social networking and collaboration software technology there. Trade associations, governing bodies, governmental agencies, and businesses can all benefit from developing a better, stronger collaborative communication process which makes everyone more accountable and brings back the confidence to all involved. That is a change that can bring us all one step closer to better business practices in the future.

Moores Law And The Evolution Of Social Software

Tim Eisenhauer — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 20:11:18 +0000

Remember those days not too long ago when we used to stay on the edge of our seats in anticipation of the next processor that would roll out of Intel or AMD that would make the last generation of pc’s and laptops look like snails? Or when storage companies would launch the next drive that would seem so huge that we would wonder if we could ever fill them up? Moore’s law has reigned supreme in 1965 and the prediction that the number of transistors on a chip will double about every two years is remarkable. Till more recent times that is. Gordon Moore is probably surprised to see how difficult it’s become to keep at that rate in recent times, in which chip manufactures are hitting a slowdown of sorts. We’ve always depended on hardware advances to carry us through the huge growth in information that has become so much a part of our everyday lives — and now many believe we’ll have to turn some of that focus towards the software.

Social software in particular seems to be going through much of the same path as hardware did in the earlier days and at the same mind boggling speed. The need to have a virtual “space” or software that aids in collaboration has been around much longer than most would believe. As long back as the 1940’s with the Memex as Christopher Allen’s insightful article “Tracing the Evolution of Social Software” points out. According to the article:

“A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.”

Since then we’ve seen hypertext, information exchange, groupware, business suites, forums, discussion boards, web portals, blogs, and the social networking sites that almost every one of us is on today. Through every phase from the start, what has been consistent is the growing number of users that have adopted these technologies with every passing year and the immense growth in the volume of content and information that is exchanged and consumed through this software. Considering that Facebook had crossed 100 million users last year, and then taking into account how many of these users use the platform for over an hour a day, the amount of data the software has to support is immense by any standard. What’s interesting to note is that it’s not just social networking sites like Facebook that need to keep up with the growing demand. Businesses all over the world, with employee strengths ranging from a few hundred to tens and hundreds of thousands are relying on social software for their business communication and collaboration infrastructure — and the information being exchanged is growing rapidly every year.

Now, considering that the hardware technology is not growing at the rate that Moore was confident will continue through the end of time, a lot of emphasis will fall upon the developers of social software to carry us through the evolution of information exchange, amidst the hardware, that will soon seem to become a limiting factor. All this is well and good on a macro view, but how does all this affect the average social software buyer or user?

When we buy or decide to use social software for our businesses, many of us tend to make decisions that fulfill our current requirements, ignoring the trend at which our information needs are advancing — and ignoring how Moore’s law also applies to social software. We tend to forget that although a particular software works well now, it may have to be customized and tweaked to support what’s expected of it along the way and into the future. All of the large scale social networks have been overhauled and modified considerably from time to time to scale with the growth — and the same applies to even the smaller networks.

Service-oriented architecture, or SOA, which software platforms like our own Communifire is based on, is seeing an increased support among developers who understand the need to leave room for enhancements and new components to be added on in the future. Back in 2005, InfoWorld published an article titled” IBM exec: Impending death of Moore’s Law calls for software development changes,” where the company emphasized SOA and said:

“Continuing with IBM’s SOA push, Booch introduced a demo of “SOA Integration Framework,” which is intended to provide for a set of services at the developer’s disposal when building an SOA. Still a research project and not an actual product, the framework generates a WSDL for a service and allows the developer to search for appropriate business components.”

While we continue to use social software we need to learn from its evolution, and remember — even software can become obsolete quickly. It’s important to think ahead and consider the factors that offer you room to scale in the future. Users will continue to grow; usage of social software is also going to continue to grow, as is the immense volume of information that will need to be handled.

Is your social software up to the task?