Friday 12 September 2008

Up and coming enterprise social computing tools need to plan for enterprise features now

Obviously there is a lot of excitement about Yammer as the enterprise version of Twitter. But in this post, Mike Gotta is discussing the emergence of enterprise microblogging tools and the importance of addressing corporate issues, like security, audit and records management. However, IMHO the same issues apply across a lot of enterprise social computing space:

"These requirements might “ruin the party” about how people foresee microblogging taking off within the enterprise – but better to plan for such features now, and push vendors to deliver those functions, than ignore some basic blocking-and-tackling issues that inhibited rollout of enterprise instant messaging.

These requirements might “ruin the party” about how people foresee microblogging taking off within the enterprise – but better to plan for such features now, and push vendors to deliver those functions, than ignore some basic blocking-and-tackling issues that inhibited rollout of enterprise instant messaging."

This is a serious issue - don't forget that even today some organisations are still debating the value and risks of instant messaging. How do I know? Well, time and time again over the years I've found myself at the front line of educating users and explaining to decision makers why they really are valuable business tools.

Unfortunately, from a technology architecture view, microblogging is not quite the same as instant messaging. Interoperability is the exception with most enterprise instant messaging platforms, but for the generation of new Web 2.0 inspired enterprise microblogging applications, interoperability and extendibility needs to be built in from the ground up. Just don't forget we still need stability and have to meet our compliance and legal responsibilities too. Delivering both, in the immediate term at least, might be a tall order for vendors with legacy code bases and also the new players alike.

Incidentally, I was reading the other day about Content Management Interoperability Services (CIMS) - maybe this is the interface we need to allow interoperability between enterprise social media and enterprise content management?

What do you think?

BTW I can't tell you yet what Yammer is like first hand, unfortunately I've had problems registering my work email address in order to create an account. The Yammer guys are currently looking into it...

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