Adventures in home working

Standards Blog provides some useful information on the Workplace Office client.  The context is a series of articles looking at various ODF clients of which Workplace Managed Client is one.

I’m pleased to see that IBM are now picking up speed in their attempts to engage with their community through blogs and other direct to consumer communication channels which is good news as I have previously been a bit critical of their efforts. 

However there is still not much diversity of opinion.  In the IBM world there tends to be one information source and several commentators, which contrasts strongly with the Linux and Microsoft worlds for example where we see many independent people reporting the same thing and much more comment.  So its always useful see see independent posts like this, even if only the questions asked are independent.

When I work on desktop transformation projects I am continually amazed by the number of applications that we find installed in an enterprise.  It’s not unusual to find several thousand in a medium sized company, most of them used by less than 10 people.  However as Rod Boothby points out this is the tip of the ice berg, because once we go beyond packaged applications and include the non trivial spreadsheets, macro enabled documents and databases we find an order of magnitude more.

Now Rod thinks that these ‘Office’ applications will be displaced by tools like blogs, wikis and Microsoft’s Excel services.  I partially agree I think these tools will just complement the traditional Office applications and extend their reach beyond the desktop and the network file server.  Here are some (mostly Microsoft)examples:

1. Applications built by using custom searches, probably encoded in the URL, against Internet and intranet search engines.  Expect to see this particularly in situations where the search engines let you reach into databases and document metadata
2. Applications built using the incredible versatility of SharePoint custom lists and workflow
3. Applications built by combining InfoPath, Word, Excel XML documents with data selectively promoted from the XML into SharePoint lists
4. Applications built processing RSS data from all manner of applications and then mashing it up with other data, or pulling it into Office or web based analysis tools
5. Applications built using the next generation of web based 4GLs like DabbleDb and Coghead
6. Composite applications built by integrating portal components, including some or the above, like Intalio’s, built from Dabble DB, FeedBurner, FeedDigest Flickr, Google Analytics, LinkedIn, Technorati, WordPress,Zoho Writer.

This is the true long tail of software,  traditional office applications enhanced and integrated with web office, collaboration and line of business applications.  However lets not forget the humble desktop application.  Its had a bad reputation in the past – largely because of DLL hell – but as new classes of applications appear that don’t need to be installed in the traditional sense but can just be streamed down to the PC, cached and executed I expect that desktop apps will get a new lease of life in the enterprise. 

The graphic below provides a summary of the dynamics of the SaaS marketplace.  Naturally since SaaS have a lot of buzz right now everyone wants a bit of the pie and Gianpaolo Carraro provides a great description (and the image) on his blog of the different players and the most natural strategies that they can take to take advantage of the this growing market.

Whilst I don’t personally have a lot of involvement with active SaaS projects I recently took a look at a few areas where I have seen SaaS proving popular with customers that I work with and I saw an interesting trend. 

Lots of interest in SaaS during the early phases of the lifecycle, however once a products value was accepted in the enterprise and its usage grew substantially most of the SaaS services were brought back into the enterprise.  I am sure that won’t always be the case but it was surprising consistent. 

I guess such a lifecycle is not very surprising, however it does make me think that SaaS will be most successful where:

1. the SaaS supplier can deliver some value – beyond simply scale – from hosting multiple customers on the same Internet facing infrastructure
2. the service is by its nature shared,  with no single enterprise having ownership
3. an individual enterprises demand for the service fluctuates considerably
4. the SaaS application provides capabilities that are not available in enterprise products
5. the integration with other SaaS or enterprise systems is either not required or is simple

Rod Boothby has some useful comments on a list of the top 10 management fears associated with enterprise adoption of web 2.0 technologies.  Here are my comments on Rod’s comments!  in blue

Enterprise Web 2.0 Technological Barriers

1. How can I be certain that the information that is gathered and shared behind the firewall stays behind the firewall?

Blogging is part of the communication continuum – Instant Messaging, Email and Blogs. Your employees currently follow a policy to keep some information only “behind the firewall” when using IM and Email. They will need to follow the same rules when it comes to using and sharing information they find with your Enterprise Web 2.0 tools.

I agree with the key point,  but I also think its worthwhile questioning the amount of information that we keep behind the firewall, posting outside the firewall makes it much easier for customers and potential customers to interact with you and also helps build a community with other companies/individuals trying to solve the same problem.  Rod’s blog is an example how how hopefully his company has benefited from the discussion around the use of blogs in the enterprise.  If Rod had only blogged about enterprise blogging behind the firewall I would suspect that his thinking would have been less refined.

2. How do I control who has access to particular levels of information and databases?

Set up a simple 3 layer system. Everyone, Department Only, Project Team. For specific project blogs, set a default access level, and then make exceptions on an article by article basis.

Enterprise blogging tools like WordPress MU can dynamically re-draw pages depending on the viewers access control.

Setting up the read access lists is also fairly easy. The user experience looks like addressing an email.

Again I agree, but it’s worth mentioning that its not just about controlling access, but also about making sure that the people who NEED access actually get subscriptions pushed to them.  For example a Programme Manager needed to be auto-subscribed to the blogs of all of the projects in the programme,  a project manager to all the staff on his project and all his peers within a programme etc.

3. How do I protect the integrity of the information from malicious tampering by disgruntled employees or managers?

You use the wisdom of the crowd combined with audit trails and roll-back features. For example, say you are using Social Text as an enterprise Wiki to document policies and procedures. If an angry employee changed one of the policies, Social Text would keep track of who changed it, what changes they made and when. The group (aka the wise crowd) would be relied upon to catch the error. The employee could then be held accountable for their actions.

It should be noted that most companies have this problem today, but it is actually much more serious. There is no access control over most policy and procedure documents. The docs just sit there on a shared drive, available for hundreds of people to anonymously edit.

And, in today’s environment, there is an even greater risk: without the enhanced search and cross-linking features of blogs and wikis, most employees have trouble getting the information they need when they need it. The result is a high chance for mistakes because people are not familiar with the policies.

I have seen many companies start off worrying about this issue, only to find its very minor and that the mechanisms built into blogs and wiki’s easily provide self governance within the enterprise.

4. How can I be sure that information is being “tagged” properly for efficient retrieval later?

Social tagging works.

Just as the government does not have to enforce a proper price for beer or any other good or service in an open market economy, the knowledge management department does not have to enforce a rigid standard for how things are tagged. People will tag things as they want, and eventually, cultural standards will arrive. See Stu Downes Folksonomy in the enterprise for more proof.

Yes,  in fact as Stu states as the number of people who tag increases above 50 you quickly cease producing unique tags, and 50 people in a community is a viable number in most enterprises

Also, remember that things are not tagged on the open Internet, at least not according to any centrally planned taxonomy, and yet you can still find exactly what you are looking for. You use Google.

After you deploy your Enterprise Web 2.0 solutions, if you are still having trouble finding what you need, buy a Google Mini. The Google Mini doesn’t work all that well in Web 1.0 Intranets, but with all the additional cross-linking that will automatically happen in enterprise blogs and wikis, Google Mini should work just fine.

5. What kind of training do employees need before they can effectively use the technology?

Some employees will need no training. Generally, these will be younger employees and the 5 to 10% who already have a personal blog.

I have recently seen some research that suggests that people in the 35-45 age group tend to be pretty early adopters of many of these technologies. Within an enterprise – as distinct from an academic – context you often find that its this age group rather than the 25-35 group who are the blog and IM users.

Other employees will need fairly extensive training.

Enterprise Web 2.0 Cultural Barriers

6. How can I monitor the system to make certain that what individuals are saying and sharing reflects company policy?

This is less of an issue if you are dealing with Internal only deployments of Enterprise Web 2.0.

Today, you have to deal with this issue when if comes to emails, voicemails, phone calls, instant messages, etc.

The one advantage to Web 2.0 is that if someone puts up something offensive in a Blog, you can take it down. Once an email is sent, if can be forwarded on to millions.

This is also a cultural issue, many companies who allow blogging recognise that whilst there is a risk associated with employees not following company policy, that the benefit of allowing company policy to evolve in response to the opinions of their workforce, customers, suppliers and other interested parties can be very valuable.  Certainly within an enterprise this discussion and debate is even more valuable in a company that is culturally ready for it.

7. What are the legal dangers in saving and sharing so much loosely supervised input?

In some instances, there are serious legal dangers. In a consulting firm, if you promise the client to only share client information with the project team, that information better not be shared with the whole firm.

The best way to address this issue, is to develop a one-page set of rules for employees. Simple guidelines on what they should and what they should not post. The guidelines should be blunt, easy to read, and feel almost like Enterprise Web 2.0 commandments.

Thou shall not flame thy colleagues.

If the legal department helps with crafting the guidelines, along with input from HR, you should be able to minimize the implications of this risk. Note also, that this is a danger in today’s environment. Except you have little to no ability to see who read what on the company’s shared drive. The result is no accountability in today’s systems.

I’m no lawyer but I would imagine that the issues are already addressed in most companies IT acceptable usage policies for email and intranet use.

8. How do I distinguish “productive” use of the technology from horsing around?

How do you distinguish between productive use of email and horsing around? Or even worse, how do you distinguish between productive use of email, and CC’ing to CYA internal spam where co-workers fill each other’s inboxes with stuff they only ends up wasting time. “Just in case you might need to know about this in six months, let me re-cap today’s meeting”. That stuff can now be put on the blog or into the wiki, and found when it is needed.

Same comment as above,  this issue should already be addressed in an acceptable usage policy for IT.

9. How do I “manage” the gathering and disseminating of so much unstructured information?

This is like the tagging issue. There are tools out there, such as RSS that help.

However, I also believe that it is important, in the enterprise setting, to impose a little structure. Instead of having blogs, for example, have purpose specific blogs:

• People Work Sites can be a combo of resumes, current projects, contact info and personal blog
• Project Work Sites can list the client, include to-do lists, related docs, include updates, and have links to the people working on the project.

The right list of Work Site types (or purpose specific enterprise blogs) depends on the company, and like everything else, will probably evolve over time.

Hmm,  I think special purpose blogs are useful in an enterprise context, however think that an individuals contribution is best represented by an individual blog, individuals who need blogs would tend to be leaders and subject matter experts.  I also think the project blogs, programme blogs, department blogs etc are very useful, but they complement and don’t replace individual blogs.  Take as an example a project manager,  she might maintain a project blog, but her personal blog would have different content, maybe with some overlap.

10. How do I know if I’m getting my money’s worth out of the investment in technology?

What investment? This stuff is so cheap, you will hardly be able to notice the expense.

With customizations, hardware costs, integration costs and deployment costs, you are looking at less that $50,000 for an enterprise blogging system for thousands of users.

I agree, cheap.  I would start off though promoting the idea of blogs to people who will set a good example, subject matter experts, leaders, project managers etc and then let them encourage others by their example.

I believe that consumerization will have a big impact on the enterprise,  I for one gave up on the idea that my company would meet all my IT needs long ago, and regularly make personal investments.  In general I consider my personal tools to greatly enhance my productivity, way beyond the level that my company makes possible.  That said I don’t think it’s possible to take a top down approach to personal productivity and knowledge management as I know for certain by observing many highly productive people that there are many different approaches that suit different personalities.

The best companies will figure out how to blend top down enabablement with bottom up productivity and innovation.  It’s great to see Gartner recognising this at last, in the past Gartner’s TCO model for PC’s has promoted the idea of “stop users fiddling with their desktop”  now they seem to recognise that at least for some users that fiddling was actually productivity tuning and process innovation!  Here is an encouraging quote from Jeffery Mann, a research VP at Gartner:

When I talk with customers about how to achieve a high-performance workplace (HPW), one of the hardest things for them to deal with is the need to loosen up on some control issues, and how to do that without losing control completely. This is natural. For the past several years, CEOs and CFOs have been asking CIOs to reduce costs, reduce risk, ensure compliance and generally take tighter control of users. This has resulted in locked-down desktops, strict TCO and ROI procedures, and tight IT procedures all around. The result is that IT has collectively become “The Abominable No Man”’ in many organizations, better at refusing or blocking any initiative than facilitating it.
We cannot stay on this trajectory. The complexity of the business and IT environments is too overwhelming to pursue the myth of total control. There are too many variables and influences to permit anyone to control all inputs. Even if we could, that would be a bad thing. Real innovation is coming from unexpected and not totally understood areas, such as Web 2.0 and consumer-oriented collaboration facilities. To block access to these is counterproductive and, ultimately, futile. Increasingly, many users see access restrictions as similar to network faults: a minor irritation to route around.

Of course it’s not about no control.  In my view it’s about IT progressively withdrawing to managing only those things that are business critical and enabling security and connectivity services, and even then considering whether they need to manage applications and data or whether they can get away with just controlling a standard web service, RSS feed, or email feed.  In Gartner’s words:

Does this mean we should throw open the doors to every virus-laden, spyware-filled download we can find? Or post sensitive information on any blog site we care to? Of course not. Loosening control does not mean giving up all control. It could mean enabling four or five different products in a particular technology area instead of just one (but not any). Innovative IT managers are experimenting with virtualization to shield experimental trials from sensitive corporate processes. In some cases, it will mean trusting employees to do the right thing, something businesses are accustomed to doing in other areas (like contract negotiations or travel expenses), but not done often enough within IT policies.

I like the idea that Jeff presents here of providing a choice of applications,  as this fits very well with my opening point about the different ways that people like to work.  As we see more applications that can interact with standard web services like RSS in a predictable way we will be able to move in this more flexible direction.

A few weeks ago I had a planning session with Microsoft where we discussed requirements for the version of windows to follow Vista.  During that meeting I used newsgator as an example of my ideal service, it embodies in principle – and increasingly in execution – all that I see as good in the new world of service enabled software.

I thought it would be useful to describe some of the characteristics of the newsgator approach:

• A loosely integrated client and services platform
• The services platform only asserts itself when it can add value to the user,  otherwise it gets out of the way and lets me get on with the job
• An eco-system of different client software optimised to address different platforms, user-types and user preferences, some supplied by newsgator but others just integrated with the services platform using their APIs
• Different installations of newsgator online enabled software are aware of activities on the other clients, for example my work client is aware of what I have already read or subscribed to at home
• Each installation of a client can optionally have a different configuration, so my work client could be configured differently to my home client if that’s what I wanted 
• A complementary web interface for when an optimised smart client is not available, or for when a web interface is the optimised solution
• All of my configuration data is held by the services platform and be easily extracted and moved some place else, in fact other systems can use it in place as it is all url addressable
• All (actually nearly all but they are moving in the right direction) configuration data is held by the services platform, so that once I have authenticated to it from a freshly installed client it seems like my environment again
• Higher performance than would be possible with a client only approach

In summary, the approach provides me with considerable freedom of choice, great performance, optimisation without sacrificing flexibility and openness, pretty inspiring!

Now if Microsoft can do the same thing by utilising Windows Live to make the experience of multiple personal PC’s, work and personal PCs, a household of PCs, PCs and Mobiles, multiple identities, sharing data, PC migrations and upgrades etc more seamless and deliver freedom of choice, great performance, optimisation without sacrificing flexibility and openness then I will be very impressed. 

It’s interesting that watching Ray Ozzie perform at the Financial Analyst meeting recently he definitely seems to have a newsgator-like vision for the eco-system of Microsoft products and services, and some of his recent innovations around the use of Live Clipboard and RSS and Simple List Extensions seem to indicate that he sees the value in delivering these innovations using standards so there may be hope.

The only thing I really need to round off the newsgator experience is for every bit of configuration data to persist server side (flags, snippets, saved searches etc) and applications that stream down to my new PC automatically with no possibility of conflicts with other applications and no administrative rights to run or install, for that I guess we need them to be .Net ClickOnce applications or wait for Microsoft to build Softgrid like virtualization support into their operating systems and Softgrid like streaming into their packaging approach and yes I do know that Microsoft has just acquired Softricity!

This would be a vision for Software as a Service that would really appeal to me!

I keep hearing people describe IT as increasingly commoditized and they are often discussing PC’s and office products at the time.  This gets me frustrated because in my experience these particular technologies are anything but commodities.  Although there are very many definitions of commodity I used to think that Peter Cochrane was getting close when he said:

It seems to me that we find commodity items and services useful by definition! But when the price has fallen sufficiently, we no longer value them. That is, we tend to take things for granted and at some point consider their availability as good as free. Water and electricity are two good examples. We turn on the tap for a drink and flick a switch for light without even a second thought.

However I now think this style of thinking takes us to a dangerous place, its very similar to thinking about the purchase cost, rather than the total cost of ownership.  I think a much safer definition of commodity goes as follows:

A commodity is something that has a total cost of replacement that is very close to the purchase cost of the replacement, ie ownership has no value and ceasing to own has no penalty.

Now this definition might seem a bit too subtle,  but let me give you some examples of commodities and see if it works:

I can switch electricity and telephone supplier in the UK simply by making a short phone call.  I can replace my fridge by unpacking it, sliding it out of the kitchen and sliding in another one and re-packing.  These seem to fit my definition is commodity pretty well.

Now lets look at my PC, which is often referred to as a commodity,  unfortunately by my definition we have a problem,  the replacement cost is very considerably greater than the cost of replacement,  not only might I have compatibility issues to resolve but I will have data to transfer, application licences to find, media to find, software to install and configure etc etc.  Whilst the hardware might be a commodity the working system is anything but.  When looked at in this way commoditization looks like a great way to go though,  I would love to replace my PC and for all of the “state” to just transparently restore itself to the device.  With enterprise management software we are getting closer to this situation,  but we are a long way away from it in the home.  As data volumes increase and the state definition becomes increasingly complex I also think we will also continue to struggle in the enterprise.

I recently had a discussion with Microsoft planners about requirements for Windows beyond Vista and this issue was high on my wish list.  In fact I said to them that my high level requirement was for Windows to meet my definition of commoditized, and for loss and upgrade events to cost me little more than the purchase cost of the replacement device.  A more concrete suggestion was to be able to treat everything like data, ie I can just copy my PC to another PC, or to a USB memory stick and ironically Microsoft’s acquisition of Softricity might be one of the stop gap technologies that makes this more practical.  However I think the long term solution will need a lot of work by the whole industry, Graham also comments on this. 

In a previous post I described the fact that for many people you can describe their IT needs in terms of 4 layers,  this is important because it means that if you try to provide a new IT system that meets a need in layer 4, when the persons needs in layers 1 – 3 are not already met then you will struggle to motivate people to use it, because their focus will continue to be on meeting their needs in layers 1–3.

If this is true then this model has important implications for how you meet needs in the lower layers.  Let me explain;  you really need to meet needs in layer 1 in a way that makes it easy to then meet needs in layer 2 and you need to meet needs in layer 2 in a way that makes it easy to meet needs in layer 3.  You may think this is so obvious that its not worth mentioning, however, obvious though it may be – over the last 10 years we have consistently failed to do this in the enterprise deskop services management. 

To illustrate lets consider some examples:

About 10 years ago the industry invented the idea of a standard desktop environment for all,  with a locked down standard image delivered to a small range of PC’s with a small range of approved peripherals.  Software was delivered to these devices from a central repository using remote software distribution technologies.  This was a good solution to the tier 1 need, ie:

Initialy a person is motivated to get access to a computer and software that is reliable and has good connectivity.  Until they achieve this they achieve this they are unlikely to worry too much about anything else

What we didn’t consider was the fact that as soon as we met this Access need all of our users would rapidly move on to want to meet their tier 2 need:

Once they get access to a reliable computer they will seek to maximise their personal productivity, which will often express itself as a desire to control their IT environment, customising it, installing additional software, and generally making investment decisions that match their personal priorities.

Oh dear, we solved their tier 1 needs in a way that minimised the control they had over their environment, therefore forcing people with very diverse business requirements and personality types to all use the same standardised environment.  In some businesses even the monitor size and resolution was standardised.  In addition whilst we had good software delivery tools the cost and lead-time to get a new software product evaluated, tested, packaged, purchased and deployed was so long and painful that many people gave up before they even started.  What happened, a whole load of frustrated employees who either left the company, started to use their home PC’s, started buying PDA’s, or bringing their laptops into work etc.

So what did we do next, we decided we had solved the needs of individuals and needed to move onto solving the needs of teams, where I contend our users were actually focussed on Personal Voice! 

their priority will start to turn to control over their personal voice, ie how their contribution is seen by their managers and peers and other stakeholders.

How did this happen,  well – we failed to listen to the users and listened to our customers, and many of these customers were strongly motivated to focus on managing the costs that they controlled and in many businesses that didn’t include the lost opportunity costs associated with delivering end-user productivity.  So not only did we fail to fully deliver personal productivity, but we skipped completely the need for Personal Voice and went straight to addressing team/knowledge management needs.

Then we hit a problem,  the team/KM systems didn’t get used very effectively because the people who were meant to be using them were focussed on trying to sort out their personal productivity and were concerned that if they put all of their effort into making other people a success their personal voice/contribution would not be heard.  Had we done things in the right order it should have gone like this:

Once people feel they have control over their personal voice, their priorities will switch to the success of others, or to the teams of which they are members.

In my next post I will provide a rough sketch of how to address each of these layers in a way that considers the needs of the other layers.

Brian Madden provides some useful insights into the affect of Microsoft’s intention to acquire Softricity.  I for one believe this is a really big deal as it will bring virtualization technologies into the mainstream.  One of the things that has held virtualization back is the fact that every enterprise has had to package it’s own applications.  With Microsoft behind Softricity it’s likely we will see a good proportion of enterprise desktops with the Softricity client installed and once that happens we can expect software developers to provide Softgrid packages as a matter of course and this will be a very big deal indeed.  Mainstream use of virtualized applications will mean that applications will increasingly be seen as similar to data, ie we will be able to copy them from machine to machine as we upgrade or move offices, it also probably means that we will hopefully see some innovations around licensing, with more applications being linked to the individual than to the device.

I am really excited about the prospects because whilst Java and .NET also promise easy application provisioning/installation, minimise dependencies on the client operating system and don’t affect the integrity of the operating system we still have tens of thousands of legacy applications around which are crying out for Virtualization.  Until this announcement by Microsoft virtualization was just not a big enough market for many of these legacy application suppliers to take notice of.

Softricity also brings some great management products to Microsoft, in particular their streaming and Internet facing software distribution and metering technologies.  These will be great solutions for enterprises that need to deliver pre-configured applications to un-managed or partially managed desktops and we may well see software developers streaming their applications directly to users, and automatically maintaining them with the latest patches and upgrades, a sort of thick client version of the previously only web based Software as a Service trend.

Brian Madden doesn’t think this is too big an impact on Citrix as a company,  but I do I think it will drive Citrix into an even smaller niche as enterprises see client side virtualization as meeting some of the needs that they currently use Citrix Presentation Server for and of course it disrupts or kills Citrix’s own virtualization product.  The comments on Brian’s blog post provide an excellent discussion on the impact.

A few weeks ago I was raving about Altiris and their SVS product,  now I see SVS having a very limited life.

One final point is that this is great news for Microsoft provided they aggressively drive adoption as widely as possible because it will greatly simplify the application compatibility issues that hold people back from deploying new operating system versions, it will also reduce the testing lead-times for Microsoft.  This dual affect with probably increase adoption rates, re-invigorate windows as a platform and provide Microsoft with more time for innovation.  It also probably means that Microsoft could provide many of its own applications (Office 2007 etc) as a service.

I work in desktop out-sourcing, and am feeling increasingly uneasy as I see the rise of web 2.0 companies.  The capabilities are increasingly compelling and new concepts like the live clipboard are starting to show how the integration benefits provided by the traditional desktop can be extended to the web.  I still believe that the traditional portable and desktop have a role in business (for some users),  but I strongly believe that server based approaches to application delivery will play an increasingly important role in the integrated user experience we need to create. 

On the whole I am excited though, because my focus is on the user experience,  or how we deliver capabilities that make a real difference to the way people work and live, and as the capabilities get richer, more flexible and more integrated that just enhances our ability to make a difference!