Meet IBM 2010 - Effectiveness and Efficiency

Breakout session: Efficiency and Effectiveness

Jan van der Sypt BPM specialist IBM

Despite the proven benefit and value, BPM projects tend to be very costly and take much too long. The promised ROI evaporates before any result is obtained. Although typically there are many good intentions to collaborate, the failure to transpose business requirements to a technology implementation is driven by the difficult communication between line of business people and the technology people. A BPM project requires the business to be in the driving seat, and any requirements need to be shared without losing any detail with the implementation teams. What is needed is a platform that will simplify the BPM approach to facilitate business people to provide the needed input, that will enhance collaboration between all parties involved, and that will shorten the cycles between new or changing requirements. This is what WebSphere Lombardi edition has to offer: a complete BPM solution that is covering the whole lifecycle, from modelling to optimization and monitoring, with one single product. All the different oles inside an organization will find a way to make their work smarter using this platform.

Product or Business Proces? 

The session is very product focused. I realize that this conference is very customer focused, where a lot of conferences and sessions which I attend from Microsoft are much more partner focused. Well they are people focussed as I mentioned earlier, but that is translated into User eXperience. The presenter tries to adress the business needs, but very poor.

He misses the point in my opinion. The results of a effective & efficient BPM project is NOT depended of the supporting tool. He mentioned the business is crusial, but still presented a tool focused presentation.

The Themes
Themes mentioned are indeed very important to take in consideration and base of a well designed business supporting proces:

• simplicity
• engagement
• repeatability

Well I do not know if simplicity is the right word. Business and Technology should have a common language to discusse requirements, changes to these demands to ensure the result ìs the implementation of the solution both agreed on. That is NOT simple.

Engagement is indeed a crusial element to ensure success and effectiveness of the end results. In perception of the business it becomes their system.

Repeatability should help to become more efficient, but there is more than just an object in a tool. Best practices in how organisations can be helped to analyse the business problem and what sort of solution helped simular organisations before. It is not as suggested repeatability on the level of the tool itself.

Meet IBM 2010 - See IT differently

Remember
It's a strange feeling. It has been a few years since I attended a IBM business / technology conference. Nowadays I attend mostly to sessions about the same subjects seen in the perspective of Microsoft technology. When I came across this event and checked out the program I became interested.

Today there are not a lot of familiar faces, but interesting subjects. Time to look at the same subjects that interest me everyday, but from another perspective and also with another market aproach.

Host of the day Roelof Hemmen.

A vision - smarter planet
Core in the IBM vision is Smarter Systems in a Smarter World. The world is getting instrumented, interconnected and more intelligent. Kees Donker opens the event with his vision on the changing and more demanding world. He just scratched the surface of the trends where technology is used to support change, connect different fields in the communities to become more smart. IBM is using a more technology driven approach. (Microsoft is more People focused, but also uses the work smarter concept in essence).

Kees Donker is asked by Roelof Hemmen a few times when the developments described by IBM will be practically adopted and used by real people. The answer was not given, no timeline, no roadmap. Well I do support the idea that things has to change in this world. I do think lot's of technology can implement the technology to fullfill a lot of needs. Still I wished IBM had the nerve to make a good guess of what is happening when.

Also the examples are just mentioned. A trafic information system, a system at the Schiphol that processes the luguage more effective and efficient. These examples are more than just an experiment, they DO mean something to efficiency. The Smarter System is heavily supported by technology. Technology developed by IBM. The barcode, an idea of B. Silver first adopted by IBM is now evolved in RFID (IBM is one of the driving forces, making the technology affordable). This is typicaly a strong element of this company, pitty they do not magnify these investments and the measurable effect on our everyday experiences.

The vision Instrumented, interconnected and more intelligence are translated in the more practical themes:

• Insight & Action
• Efficiency and Effectiveness
• Managing risk
• Empower people
• Agile organization

These themes are the structure around the subjects of the breakout sessions during the event.

Today I try to capture the simularities and the differences in the perspectives of these to companies in the fields insight, collaboration, contentmanagement etc

The Future of Productivity - Small and Medium Business #li #il

Entrepreneurs in the area of Small and Medium Business are constantly looking for opportunities. There is no room for long lasting research and development projects. Invested money has to return to the business as soon as possible. Still a lot of innovations are rooted in Small and Medium-sized enterprises.
A lot of these companies where run by hand till during the 80's the bigger enterprises developed the competence to build their own information systems. It took a long time to figure out how to capture the business information logistics into these systems. The information and communication technology industry realized the processes where structured a lot alike and developed the BIG configurable enterprise systems. Business grew huge.
We still remember the problems that came with it. Implementing these systems was not a walk in the park. It took some time till less complex systems where introduced and implementation of these systems could fit the needs of the small-sized enterprise.
Meanwhile other systems where developed. They targeted specialized information processes like finance, or less structured objects as 'the market' or 'the customer' instead of the amount of products in the warehouse. It is not easy to capture information about these more organic processes and objects. Tasks to manage this area are carried out by a team and rarely at the same time.
The support of the information logistics needed has changed. The 'C' in the ICT of the 80's has to support Communication as well as Collaboration. Information is less structured, we call it Content and the information worker has to be able to Create it. The co-worker has to be able to access this Content, when needed at a location of choice, preferable with a device of choice cross the platform.
These developments are particularly evident in the large companies, but are these also adopted in the medium-sized enterprises? Has the economic crisis supported adoption and are Small and Medium-sized Businesses prepared to change their way of work? If the 'I' in ICT became less structured and the 'C' in ICT has changed, what happened to the 'T'?

T is still Technology

Technology is complex or is it? Well when building an information system, you need technology to create, store and access the information. You build this technology on a stack starting at the bottom - electric wires and iron. When we reach the top of the stack we discover the application that provides us with the functionality needed to implement the technology into our businesses in order to boost productivity.
Recent developments are showing that the underlying technology is becoming less important to explain. These developments are compared a lot with the development of electricity power stations. In the beginning the large companies build their own power station, which was then deployed more efficiently by sharing the central. The same development is going on within the ICT industry. Data centers are shared. It becomes less important to deploy and manage the tactical cost center and is becoming an utility.
These developments are bare technology, still no productivity in the sence of creating and sharing content. When we take a look at the top of the technology stack where the functionality is provided, a broad set of platforms become visible attempting to get you choose for the product. It would take too long to deal with all the available platforms and products. I will try to explain two sites and some of the developments of the productivity platform. I choose in this case for the products and aproach of Microsoft, because in my experience they provide the most complete vision and set of products to fullfill the need:

• Server site
• Client site

Productivity server platform

Last Fisical Year of Microsoft was a year full of new releases in the server system area. A small but not exhaustive list encompasses:

• Windows server 2008 R2
• SQL server 2008 R2
• SharePoint Server 2010
• Exchange Server 2010

Soon to be released is the product Office Communication Server (OCS) 2010. These products are part of the classic on premise server products of Microsoft. Again it would take too far to explain all changes here but I will try to explain some of the changes most important to the set of functionalities that implement productivity.
The server products form an application infrastructure that implement a broad set of functionality. SharePoint uses SQL server as an underlying database infrastructure. SharePoint hosts sites that support team collaboration. Content can be created within a BLOG. A BLOG is a way to write an article like I am doing right now. If you like the content you can react to it, link to this BLOG, create a feed so new articles show up in your outlook. New functionality in SharePoint is that you can very quickly react by push a button 'I Like' and rate an article. This will affect the relevance of an article when searched. Besides of the supported enterprise tagging system, users have the possibility to add their own index. This again influences your interests and eventually the relevance and search results of your most close contacts. These mechanisms also apply to documents. These are also stored in the content databases hosted on the SQL platform. By implementing your organizational structure into a directory structure (DNS) and using groups a relational network is established. This structure is used as a base to 'calculate' the relationship with coworkers or social distance. This together with the former discussed mechanism provides a base for building a user centric knowledge driven productivity system. This system is self-providing when used.

In combination with OCS the platform is promoted to a communication system, which helps the user to choose the most effective way to contact someone and share information or collaborate. Presence will show the best fit or will take you to the best next candidate to ask your question and get your job done. This presence is available within all information objects, so lists, documents, emails, chat sessions etc.

Imagine now these information and collaboration is about a development and sales process, supporting the meetings needed to analyze the requirements, develop the product and services, the release of a quote and the preparation of a contract. For the right customer information the CRM system is leading and integrated as well as the information needed for the product information. These kinds of processes can take a whole lot of conversation, meetings a lot of paper exchange. Supported by a platform that support online meetings and presentations, exchange of the documents under version control within a project collaboration environment can take care of a lot of coordination en will speed up high quality collaboration and team productivity.

Productivity client products

This one is relatively easy and familiar for the most of the companies. Microsoft has a broad set of distinct applications in the office suite on top of the Microsoft Windows operating system. Well there are a lot of developments in this area. The functionality in the last two versions has become very rich. Especially the Office 2010 developments are very much focused on productivity.

Most famous of course are the products Word, Excel and Outlook in this suite, but there is a lot more. In the combination with the server functionality the real power is unveiled. The new meaning of 'C' in ICT is provided by these applications. Outlook for instance supports the information worker with an aggregated view on all communication and shared activities with coworkers. Even information sources from outside the limits of the company can be used to unify the insight accessed by this view.

When trying to contact the content owner for more information the system has the capability to help you choose the most appropriate to get in touch. Even if this colleagues is not available who will most likely be the best to contact instead. Sounds like the future of productivity? Well no this future is now!

So where is the utility part of this client side solution? Can I have this functionality without the burden of technology? Yes you can! Since last Office release these products are available as web products. No need to install these on your laptop or desktop computer. Much but not all functionality is available by accessing the application with a browser. It is of virtual no importance where or when you attempt to access the information, even not with a smartphone or a Macintosh computer the application is available. You can contact and collaborate with colleagues or coworkers from outside your company with a total freedom of choice.

The future of productivity and The Cloud

Most valuable is the developments that implement the vision of Microsoft. Every server development is designed with the possibility of an online deployment in mind. The most important server platforms are already available in a cloud version. Microsoft is delivering their products in a software as well as a service version. This is the case for server platforms as well as client products.

Microsoft believes in the Software and Services approach. Delivering software as a service is not only about a cloud deployment. It also means a whole different business model. During the old model Microsoft sold licenses, which are owned by the customer. The hardware underneath the software was also owned by the customer. Much like the electric power plant 'owning my own power production' this computing power is moving to a utility. Power is available and used whenever needed for whatever use and payed for by use. This same business model is now part of cloud computing.

Microsoft calls the freedom of choice - three screens and a cloud, delivers software + services and is All In on this.

In the last years I witnessed the shift to more focus to the online deployments and I think this will be the end goal. It will take some time however to make this available to everyone and to change this industry.

Productivity is NOT about Technology

So the technology seems to be no limit anymore. So why not start immediately? The future of productivity is not about technology. It is a mindset, the courage to start to build a vision and take the first step into this future. To gain advantage of these first steps and invest these first revenues back into this future.

If we should have learned something from the last big information technology implementations and the impact on our organizations, it is the change needed to reach the predicted results. Too often system integrators didn't prevent organizations for mistakes in the estimation and the effort needed to prepare an organization for the new way of working with the system.

Know where you stand as an organization, how mature is your organization. Know where you want to go, have a clear vision and strategy for your productivity goals as part of and fitting in your overall business strategy. Know how to reach the goals you aim on; be sure you have a clear roadmap and understanding of the impact of every step before taking of.

These are open doors, but whatever big or small implementation - do not underestimate the importance of these rules of thumb. These are very worthwhile the effort and will ensure a much better return on your investment. There has been a tremendous development in the consulting methodology and tools to estimate the maturity, provide organizations with a clear roadmap and a broad set of best practice change interventions. For those organizations who are interested or are looking for a consultancy practice that has a fit with the Microsoft vision and technology stack, checkout the Impuls and Impact methods and for instance the Factor4Index tool to estimate maturity and provide an organization with a set of interventions.

New Way of Work not yet adopted by SMB

Developing a vision, adopting and implementing a new way of work and the technology needed to support that will take time. Investing time will cost money. Time is scarce and valuable. In this time of economic crisis the business has to go on more than ever. On the other site a crisis creates opportunities for the future; it is a turning point, a prelude to a new time.

The cost of the investments in a new technology or 'just' a new way of deployment can be calculated. The revenues of choosing for computing as a service instead of the tactical cost center too. Changing to a new way of work is a lot harder. We all know this change will take a lot of energy - mind the experience of the implementations of the ERP in the 80's. That took a lot more change in the way of work of the organization as was estimated and forecasted by the system integrators.
So what is a wise approach for the Small and Medium-sized enterprise? Adopt the developments now, or should investments be postponed? Is the focus on cutting cost more important than taking care of the future of productivity of the company?
In my opinion the technology is ready to take every size enterprise to the next level. The last developments and a few to be released in the very near future will enable the future of productivity within the small-sized businesses very naturally.

First steps needed are not about very big investments and organizational changes, but well-chosen smaller steps can make a big difference in the way these organizations are able to connect, share and collaborate or provide them with the possibility to engage with their existing or new markets. New deployments changing tactical cost centers into computing utility will enable these companies to reach out to much more distant markets, never imagined to be accessible.
The new way of work (NWOW) or 'Het Nieuwe Werken' (HNW) is a concept used by a lot of platform, solution or consultancy vendors. Some of them actually claim to be the inventor and owner of the name. Every vendor has its own definition of NWOW but are all trying to explain the same essence. It is not about technology it is not even new. It is about being productive and being able to be productive in this ever changing environment. Well we use technology to support the productivity, to be able to connect, to create content and to collaborate in an effective way. Most of all it should be fun, being able to choose your way of working at a time that suits you and with the means you choose.

Being able to choose the way a technology as a mean is deployed and functionality is consumed is a huge difference. The organization can invest in the change of the organization instead of rewiring the infrastructure and have to wait about a year for new functionality to be able to react to the ever changing environment.

A new way of work does not mean that employees of a company are given more freedom in the form of time, but that a company as a team has the ability to organize the work in a better balance with the private lives of the employees. A better fit in the value chain where a vendor or a customer is not your neighbor down the street by definition. The result is a better motivated employee, happier customers in which you can invest time and deliver high quality products at lower cost. Together, you, your company and your partners and customers.
So my advice is to take these developments into consideration and invest in the first steps of the future of productivity. Have fun.


If any questions arise please feel free to contact me. I'll be more than happy to help you out or arrange the contacts you need to get your questions answered or problems solved to your satisfaction.

ard.van.someren@ricoh.nl
@avsomeren

The future of productivity - Roadmap announcements BPOS

Wave 14 to The Cloud

This year Microsoft is releasing the last new versions of their Wave 14 program. Lot's of their major server and client products have been updated with new functionality. More important ALL of them have been redesigned and developed with The Cloud in mind.

With the launch of Exchange, SharePoint and Office 2010 earlier this year, Microsoft began to work to update BPOS* with the new capabilities that these products deliver. Microsoft started with their biggest customers. They have dedicated cloud deployments and now are fully deployed on the 2010 wave products.

In the next update, Microsoft will bring decades of on-premise innovation to the cloud for the multitennant SKU as well. Functionalality will get very close to parity with our server solutions.

WPC10 announcements

During the last Microsoft World Partner Conference in Washington DC a few announcements were made about the Online Roadmap. Microsoft did not provide exact dates for these releases. Buzz is that a preview of the new BPOS offering before the end of this calendar year. I wonder if that will happen...
More accurate and a bit more likely is the estimated timeframe of the delivery of the updates to each of the managed services and new online platform capabilities within this fisical year (Jul '10 - Jun '11).

Microsofts call for action to partners and cutomers is to get ready for this wave and the 'online tranistion', to focus on Business Model transformation and getting customers ready and deployed.

What functionality to expect?

A Lot of sessions at the WPC covered cloud services and next wave BPOS (codename 'Union'). These slides from the slidedeck of session 'CLD09 The Future of BPOS: Next Generation of Microsoft Online Services' provide insight in the updates to come.

SharePoint Online
The functionalities in this slide give insight in what to expect, check the original deck for the detail slide or drop me a note.

Office Communications Server '14' Online
OCS on-premise will be released this fall. Most functionality will move to the online services during 2011. Do not expect to be released in the first update.

Exchange Online

These are three of the most important server products that will add a lot of functionality to the Microsoft Online offering and great opportunities to extend the business solutions that support productivity. Mind that all this functionality is delivered in a total productivity suite and combined with the office 2010 client software provide a great experience in a familiar environment for the end user. Office 2010 (Web Apps) is also part of the Online offering.

* BPOS (Business Productivity Online Services) or Microsoft Online Services is a proposition of Microsoft; Enterprise class software delivered via subscription services hosted by Microsoft and sold with partners

First Recap Microsoft World Partner Conference #wpcdc #mspartner

Sitting on the couch I try to kill my jetlag and recap the 2010 Microsoft World Partner Conference in Washington DC of last week. At this moment not all content is online jet and in my opinion we lack the keynote video of Kevin Turner COO of microsoft the most. I will cover that part later. For those who want to take a peek, read the transcription.

 

Last year WPC09

The wpcdc was usefull but not as spectacular as the one last year in New Orleans (WPC09). Every event is produced different arround a theme. The theme of last year, in the middle of the worldwide crisis was about change. Kevin Turner and Steve Balmer talked about the worldwide reset. - chack out the last year videos of these keynotes.

 

It was not only the change resulting the crisis that hit us all, but it was the enormous opportunity and the energy how it was brought to the stage last year. Kevin Turner had a five point game plan back then.

1. Be realistic about the causes of our challenges - environment vs strategy
2. Prepare for an unknown length and depth of downturn
3. Deepen and strenghten our customer and partner relationships
4. Grow our marketshare and compete to win
5. Response with a sense of urgency

Also last year there were a lot of realy changing new products to announce by Microsoft. Wave 14 is implemented since the 2009 WPC. This means that the most important products of Microsoft like Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft server 2008, SQL server 2008R2 and of course the new release of SharePoint 2010. Just a few products from the wave 14 have to be released in the next few months.

 

Last but not least the new partner program was announced at the last WPC in New Orleans, 12 months ago now. So just 6 months to go.

 

What happened last year?

The Wave 14 product released are a big succes for Microsoft, no doubt. Never experienced such a big demand in the market with a new server product like SharePoint 2010 so soon after it's release. Clearly the market picked up the possibility's this new version delivered to the market. Never met such a confidence in a new release from the perspective of the market as we experience now with SharePoint 2010.

 

The change in the partner program is implemented in a few fases. I mention two with impact for us Microsoft Partners:

• Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)
• Competences

 Measurement of the customer satisfaction is now obligated to meet the partner competence requirements. when reenrollment is necessary this customer survey must be carried out. The competences itself are changed recently. Other names, other requirements, some competences are new. In this fase this will have just a limited impact on the partner status.

 

Most obviouse result is that the Partner status will change in the new Microsoft Partner Network. Microsoft Gold partner will change.

 

The biggest Buzz last year and still very hot is the cloud. Microsoft is ALL IN.

 

Does Microsoft meet the expectations this WPC10?

About 13.000 attended this event. That is a lot!

 

This year Kevin Turner presented his game plan. 4 this time.

 

1. Leading with the cloud
2. Driving Windows 7
3. and Office 2010
4. Growing share by competing to win

The wave 14 products are released, just as expected and doing very well. The announcements of the release of a few products left in the wave 14 are confirmed nothing more. Not spectacular, but most products are released just a few months ago. We all knew there wouldn't be to much new in this corner. Take a look at the points of Kevin Turner. Ofcourse the opportunity of software renewall of Windows and Office is HUGE and betting BIG on cloud can be found on the first place... Still not spectacular. 

 

In the partner program some things changed. The titel on the Microsoft partner badge is changed from Microsoft Partner Network to just Microsoft Partner. Well, partners are partners, not a network. Most spectacular was the announcement a very little while before the start of the event that Allison Watson will be succeeded by Jon Roskill as corporate VP worldwide partner group. She was still all over the program. Well her name was and the name of Jon not... Check out the transcription of her latest speech at the WPC10.

The change to Jon Roskill was downright disappointing. He will be great I guess, but till now I did not see that. Everyone I spoke, felt the same I am afraid. He lacks the energy of Allison, looks like he has no confidence and is not able to fascinate the audience. At the beginning of his carreer he looks upon a huge challenge. The challenge to lead Microsoft and it's Partner Network to the next and last fase.

 

The last thing happend this year is the cloud. We are all in is what Steve Balmer, Kevin Turner and all other excecutives shouted. Betting big on Cloud. Well I believe that BUT, it is very disapointing that we heard nothing about the renewall of BPOS the current name of the current online business productivity proposition of Microsoft. I expected the BETA release would be announced at this event. It looks like this will not happen till Q1 2011.

Ofcourse Microsoft announced the Azure Appliance, but that's about all folks. A small ray of hope is the fact that this means that Microsoft CRM Online will be in the same release pace as the new BPOS wave...

New Way Of Work (NWOW), more than teleworking?

With the title

Het nieuwe werken, méér dan telewerken (New Way Of Work, more than teleworking)

an article(*) in Drive a magazine of LeasePlan about mobile technologie in new ways of work is opened.

In the first paragraph, the words at the heart of the goal, but also directly the biggest obstacle of the thinking behind the new work stresses: the total flexibility of the old and rusty 9 to 5-culture.

Culture

Culture often is defined as:

• An integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning
• The set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group

Cultural change

Cultures are subject to change and internally effected by both forces encouraging change and forces resisting change. Cultural change refers to the dynamic process whereby cultures are changing and adapting to external or internal forces (globalization, advances in communication, transport and infrastructure improvements, etc).
Technology can be a driving force of change. In a bigger picture medical technology has contributed to demographic changes. Technology can contribute to changes in globalization and the way information is transported for instance.
Technology however is not the only driving factor of cultural change, as the definitions of culture make clear the human factor (knowledge, attitude, belief and values) is the one most important.

This human factor is influenced by the global surroundings and can by guided by the organisation that embrasses the New Way Of Work. Providing the technology, taking away some seat and reducing the capacity of the parkinglot will not lead to the desired changes.

The roll of employer

The employer has to change his goals, the way these goals are translated to measurable results and the way employees are rewarded. When I read the conclusion of the article(*) that states that espacially the employees object to teleworking I ask myself. Is it the objection to the new way of work,or has the employer some work to do in his implementation of the concept?

In the case of 38% of the employees who are afraid to take the necessary responsibility and feel that being seen on the job (30%). In my opinion this has to be solved by having a very transparant way how this vision of teleworking is implemented.
Missing the interaction and collaboration with collegues (42%) and the contact with colleques (27%) can actually be supported with technology, but well organised and supported minimal fysical contact by the management can help to make this figure much better.

The role of the organisation and it's management is changing with the change of the culture. Implementing teleworking as a part of new way of work, means other management style, technology can only support the succes of these changes.
(*)The article refers to a survey (Dutch) of TeleworkForum and Novay. They conclude from their survey that the biggest obstacle of teleworking are stated by the employee.
Without the details of the survey I can not explain this conclusion. For instance the opinion of the employer is missing.

Social Media and business productivity - use in the enterprise and for B2B in a immature community

Social Media is all around us today. If you want to learn about it and are in the opportunity to take the time to investigate the subject you can choose from a lot of seminars, lunch sessions and roundtable discussions. The use of social media is not very mature in the most organisations. However some organisations are experimenting seriously with tools that support employees to communicate and collaborate with social media.

That these tools are slowly addopted by organisations is shown by the fact that best practices are developed. Not only the technical infrastructure is available, but also the means to help implementing these tools into the corporate communication is developed.
Developments and addoption rates of tools like twitter, yammer, socialcast and microblogging implementation into SharePoint (OfficeTalk) and the use of microblogs in LinkdIn show that these communication and collaboration infrastructure are more important today.
The development of ESM3 by Tessa van Doremaele and Gijsbert van der Sleen (Dutch) show on top of that, use of these technology is taken seriously by the community and the enterprises that are part of these community´s.

So in what situations these tools are used.
What I learned in my last few sessions is that there seems to be a difference between the use of social media to optimize our internal communication and to provide your employees with a collaboration platform and the use of social media to get involved with or engaging your customers.

As Wilco Turnhout concluded in his summery of the second Enterprise Social Media Roundtable #esmr, the use of social media for B2B purposes is an other story. A conclusion of that session was that the client was missing from the ESM3 model. Maybe, the engagement of clients or the the ´value chain´ can be defined as the next step of maturity.

During another roundtable session on social media the viewpoint of the B2B was discussed as focus with Kees Mulder of Kodak. Kodak ´a very technology driven company´, implemented social media in there B2B strategy. Other starting points mather in those cases. Main goal of internal or enterprise social media is to provide all members of an organisation with a communications and collaboration platform. When social media are used for B2B purposes the goals change. Still communication and collaboration as a platform is an important issue, but only as a mean to gain engagement with the customer. Goal is to take part in the discussions about your brand, learn from it and be able to react in the most transparent way possible. Even more important than when using social media inside the organisation is the governance of these engagements, reactions and discussions captured form this social channels. The logistics of this information, who is collecting, where are these questions routed and who is responding to the community is a challenge. At Kodak they established a dream job for these role´s - Chief Listener and Chief Sender - traffic control in charge of the information logistics of communication in the social media channel.

Something is changing #il

Yesterday June 22nd I was one of the speakers on the third SharePoint and Storage session at Microsoft NL organised by Ricoh. In between we organised a roundtable discussion on the same subject at our headquarters in 's-Hertogenbosch.

Since quit a long time now I'm advocating the possibility's the Microsoft stack with SharePoint as platform can come available for your organization. In the last say three years I build the competence at Ricoh and in the last two years the productline Ricoh Document Store has been build.

I personaly had a special experience during the seminar. We used some surveys to measure the 'mood' of our public. Last November and December generaly the public was not convinced of the document management capability's of the SharePoint platform. Now about 9 mounth later and a lot of talking, some major developments and last but not least a new version of SharePoint released last Mai 12th this mood has changed dramatically.

The public was convinced of the possibility's and was looking for the reallife cases and best practices to use it now and with the upcomming changes in the SharePoint 2010 platform on premise and ofcourse the promisses of SharePoint online based on the new funtionality's.

Opportunity's for us ISV's and Integrators. We finaly can concentrate more on the functionality that adds the most vallue to the business processes and productivity of our customers.

The content of the seminar can be found on the YouTube and SlideShare channels of Ricoh.

Lots of tweets lost in cyber space; social media #fail

A few days ago june 14th I discovered the loss of about half of my tweet count and history. Social media is increasingly used by enterprises for there communication. Communication within the firewall, but also outside of it. To communicate with colleagues but also with customers or the public. Using twitter as a microblog platform has it's drawback... No contract, no SLA, no garantees and no backup.
Keeping this in mind is necessary when considering adopting microblogging as a tool to implement a social media communication platform. In my case loosing my tweet history is not a disaster, still it is not what you expect from the platform and I do check on that history now and then. As part of coporate communication one can not afford to loose this history. Sometimes even it is legaly necessary to keep this communication history in a archive and deal with it as a record.

Bill Clinton Guest Speaker at Microsoft World Partner Conference 2010 Washington DC #WPC10

Last year Microsoft World Partner Conference was in New Orleans. I loved that city, loved this BIG event. Last year I bumped into Jesse Jackson at the Hilton near the Ernest N. Morial convention center while drinking a beer at the bar.
This year the guest speaker at the conference will be Bill Clinton. Well I'm VERY currious what this former worldleader can tell and learn us about working together in this rapidly changing world of information.

Google kan het weer niet laten

Grappig om keer op keer optredens en publicaties van Erik de Muinck Keizer tegen te komen waarin hij zijn verhaal voornamelijk als tegengeluid naar Microsoft brengt. Deze keer claimt hij in een interview in Computable het pure Nieuwe Werken. Terecht ook dat hij door deze opstelling dan weer eens op de vingers wordt getikt indien hij weer eens wat feiten vergeet te vertellen zodat het hele verhaal in het juiste perspectief wordt geplaatst. Waarom is Google niet gewoon trots op dat wat ze op dit moment hebben bereikt en waarom geen solide onderbouwing voor de 'cloud only' keuze waar Microsoft dat wel helder voor haar 'cloud en services' proposities neer weet te zetten?
Inderdaad is de ervaring dat een pure cloud benadering ook haar nadelen kan hebben, getuige het optreden van Erik zelf tijdens een ICT~Office event in Utrecht even geleden waar hij zijn presentatie niet helemaal kon afronden ivm het ontbreken van een (snelle) verbinding. Als ik me niet vergis is in het vergelijk dat daar door Gartner analist Jeffrey Mann ter afsluiting van het betoog van Google en Microsoft is gehouden nogal helder aangegeven wie op dit moment het meest volwassen in de markt staat.
Het is en blijft een keuze van de klant. Het is hij die bepaald of hij waarde hecht aan lokaal werken, zekerheid of flexibiliteit en in welke verhouding deze geleverd moeten worden.
Naar mijn mening werkt het beter om vanuit eigen kracht toegevoegde waarde aan te tonen een transparante houding en vertrouwen vormen daarvoor een basis.

Negen miljoen voor een digitale boekenkast is wel erg veel geld...

Maandag 7 juni publiceert NU.nl het volgende bericht over investering in het digitaliseren van de Nederlandse bibliotheken:

DEN HAAG - Demissionair staatssecretaris Marja van Bijsterveldt (Cultuur) trekt dit jaar 9,1 miljoen extra uit voor bibliotheken, die daarmee op internet hun collecties en diensten beter kunnen presenteren.
Dat maakte zij maandag bekend.

''Steeds meer informatie komt in digitale vorm beschikbaar'', aldus de bewindsvrouw.

''De functie van de openbare bibliotheek verandert hierdoor. Met deze subsidie blijven bibliotheken bij de tijd.''

Landelijke bibliotheek

Uiteindelijk moet er één landelijke digitale bibliotheek komen. ''Bibliotheken transformeren langzamerhand van gebouwen met boeken en tijdschriften naar multimediale instellingen'', schetst een woordvoerder van Van Bijsterveldt.

''Via de stichting bibliotheek.nl wordt het mogelijk om vanuit huis te zoeken in de digitale catalogus, boeken te bestellen en te beschikken over een schat aan informatie.''

Het ministerie van OCW werkt samen met de bibliotheekbranche, de gemeenten en de provincies aan de opbouw van deze landelijke digitale openbare bibliotheek.

Het karakter van dit bericht vind ik persoonlijk nogal conservatief. Ben ik het dan niet eens met de beweging, digitaal beschikbaar maken en breed ontsluiten van informatie? Jawel maar het bericht en de motivatie van Van Bijserveld om hier publiek geld in te steken geeft de huidige ontwikkelingen niet juist weer naar mijn idee.

Het is niet de digitalisering van de biblotheken die de rol van het instituut veranderd, de veranderde rol van informatie en snelheid waarmee deze door de maatschappij gecreerd en geconsumeerd wordt maakt dat de rol van de bibliotheek moet veranderen. Ja digitalisering van informatie maakt het mogelijk om de vraag logistiek in te vullen, maar vormt daarin een eerste stap.

De mogelijkheid bieden om te kunnen beschikken over een schat van informatie en te kunnen zoeken binnen een digitale catalogus geeft mij ook niet direct het warme gevoel dat nodig is voor een bibliotheek om bij de tijd te blijven.

Wel ben ik blij met het getoonde initiatief om informatie die in al deze bolwerken opgesloten zit als een onderdeel te zien van een landelijke multimedia instelling. Veel succes en creativiteit in het vinden van de juiste logistieke kanalen naar de afnemer!

Enterprise Search as part of Business Productivity 2 - Seminar Amplexor (B)

Yesterday june 3rd I attended at a Seminar organised by Amplexor in Diegem near Brussels airport Belgium. Amplexor profiles itself as a pure Content Management company and provides their customers wih services on ECM. In the opening presentation of Eric Pieters (CEO). The ECM offering of Amplexor is devided amongst four quadrants: Web Content Management, Document Management, Intranets and COllaboration and Information Architecture and Search. The later was the subject of this seminar.

I was not the only Dutch attendent. Sjoerd de Valk of Winvision, who I met at the Las Vegas SharePoint Conference last year, came to hear the story too.

In my earlier blog I explained that I was triggered by the description of the content of this seminar. First by stating that Enterprise search projects very often are started with a high ambition. In the session of Paul Hermans this was explained on a lively manner.
In my opinion the common mistake to start with a under estimated complexity should be taken even more serious. Before starting to implement a enterprise search infrastrucure, be sure you have a vision and a strategy on information. That's an important start indeed. Next do not start to implement the Search infrastructure before you have a Access and Authentication infrastructure you can use to implement the search upon. True, but not that easy too! Third do not try to implement this huge one interface, this single user experience for all users or rolls in the entire enterprise. Build applications on top of the search infrastructure layer. Last but not least pay attention to the user, manage the change and build trust.

Not a bad apporach. In my opinion it is smart to devide the information demand of the enterprise into smaller chunks. When this is done in the 'envisioning fase' where the vision and strategy of the information access is build, the implementation of different information goals can be split up. More smaller projects, building the total enterprise search ambition over time.

The experience of Amplexor in this field wasn't illustrated with a lot of customer cases. Overall a nice session. Thanks Paul.

The last parts of the seminar the technology and functionality of the search infrastructure was presented by two people of Microsoft. Both former FAST employees; Wolgang Mederle and Hilde Rietveld. Most of the stuf I've seen before on SharePoint or other Microsoft conferences and events. Important to notice is that the promises of Microsoft and FAST in 2008 when FAST was acquired by Microsoft are fullfilled in the new product versions of FAST and Microsoft SharePoint 2010.

Important additions as advanced people search as part of knowledge managment, facetted and federated search, ranking and search advise are now available in the new products.

Nice work FAST and Microsoft.

There are some good comparison sheets available on the Microsoft Technet side. For example the poster were the product specs are compared:

• SharePoint Foundation 2010
• Search Server 2010 Express
• Search Server 2010
• SharePoint Server 2010
• FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint

 Another nice source in Thechnet is the Getting Started with Enterprise Search in SharePoint 2010 Products and  SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Search, FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint

So are there some examples that use these technology's. There were some demo's based on real life enterprise search implementations:

Scirus - a scientific database /try flu. By filling in a search query you get results in body. On the left bar there are two main sources for the results: journals and other web. These are facets. You can refine your search by choosing journals or the federated other websources. On the bottom there is another part that can help you to refine your query with advised keywords.
Times online - by opening a topic (search) a newspaper site is composed. A topis is realy a composition of related articles post on the same position of the page. Again you can recognise the facets and federated search results on the left. On the backend of this site Times has implemented a business model. Content of Times itself is sold for further reading.

Some other examples:

• Wolters Kluwer
• Read Elsevier (MOSS and ESP)
• NXP
• Thomson Reuters

Enterprise Search as part of Business Productivity

Tomorrow - June 3th - I'll attend the Enterprise Search Seminar organised by Amplexor in the Pullman Diegem (B). High expectations given the program. I hope they manage to meet my expectation. The first session planned will set the stage. The approach of this session helping businesses to succeed by aiming on a realistic goal is interesting.

The second session however has my biggest attention. Search as part of the Microsoft vision in the field of Business Productivity supported by a single search platform. If they manage to show some cases to support the scenario they will meet my expectation.

Why my interest? Well Business Productivity is key for businesses. In the competence cluster needed to establish the functionality in an organisation that will be able to optimize the productivity, the development of Search will play a very important roll.

The technological developments due to investments are enormous. Microsoft made a big leap forward with the acquisition of FAST in 2008. I remember the session of Zia Zaman (VP Global marketing FAST back then, now CTO LG) at the soldout SharePoint conference in Seattle (2008) where he showed the FAST product that now is incorporated in the SharePoint 2010 platform.

In that session he explained how the market was devided. Google as the biggest one on the internet (the other approach in the Microsoft vision) but more important the field of enterprise search dominated by Microsoft and FAST.

I loved the longtail slide in his presentation back then. I have to look it up and will add it later.

June 3th:

Oké found it. This picture tells us how the market is (March 2008) devided between the big three and the rest. On the left the Big three devide 30% of the information access market. Most of these search query's are based on internet search scenario's. On the right most of the 70% of the search query's are about Enterprise search data access (ESP). This part is dominated by FAST. Now two years later Microsoft has adopted and integrated a lot af the FAST search capability's in there SharePoint 2010 platform. Picture the total of the Microsoft market and the ESP market (the business productivity part) in the long tail together. That's a very big chunk of the total, but more important: the money is on the right side.

Onderwijs in het groter sociale geheel

Onlangs kwam ik voorbij een blog" van Jeroen Spierings waarin verwezen werd naar de Conferentie voor Onderwijsvernieuwing en ICT. Het beeld wat ik bij onderwijs in Nederland heb op dit moment is een omgeving waar nog veel te winnen valt. Dat beeld verschilt niet heel veel van veel andere sectoren overigens. Dat laatste is dan weer een qualificatie die (ook) toe te schrijven is aan de volwassenheid van de ICT sector denk ik.

Technologische ontwikkelingen en de adoptie in het onderwijs lopen niet synchroon natuurlijk. Veelal is het beeld dat de jonge generatie sneller toegang vindt tot en gebruik maakt van de mogelijkheden die deze ontwikkelingen bieden. Mensen die zich de laatste jaren verdiept hebben in deze ontwikkelingen en de ontwikkeling van de nieuwe generatie kennen de aanduiding generatie Einstein ongetwijfeld.

Neem als voorbeeld het toenemende gebruik van sociale media. Ooit begonnen in de tijd van MSN (of eigenlijk al daarvoor) en het meer algemeen geaccepteerd gebruik van chat als communicatie middel. Nu uitgegroeid naar hele platformen (of tools die samen een platform kunnen vormen naar behoefte), waarbinnen diverse communicatie middelen de moderene 'sociale' mens elkaar kunnen vinden.

Elkaar vinden. Dat is wel de kern van deze sociale media. Elkaar en dat wat ons op dat moment interesseerd. Of dat nu is voor onze hobby of voor ons werk. Nog een grens die lijkt te vervagen, werk ik nu (schrijven van een blog thuis op het terras in de zon) of zit ik op thuis op het terras in de zon (en schrijf een blog)?

Het beeld dat ik de laatste jaren heb ontwikkeld bij de jonge generatie is dat het gebruik van de sociale media hoog is. Kijk maar eens naar het aantal contacten dat deze jongeren 'onderhouden' in hun Hyves netwerk (16 jaar en een paar honderd contacten is heel normaal). Email zo roepen wij professionals, specialisten in deze ontwikkelingen is iets uit de voorgaande eeuw en jongeren gebruiken het niet meer.

Het beeld wat ik hier schets is vrij algemeen. Zijn deze ontwikkelingen dan ook terug te vinden in het onderwijs waar deze jongeren onderdeel van uit maken? Anders gezegd: Scholen en instellingen zijn onderdeel van een groter geheel. Dat groter geheel omvat voor de jongeren zelf nadrukkelijk ook hun privé. Waar de grenzen tussen werk en privé vervagen, geldt dit voor onderwijs en privé ook. Ontwikkelingen als de brede school en discussies om ook 3 jarige al te laten starten met hun kleutercarriere (naar een nieuwe kleuter periode) geven aan dat deze ontwikkeling doorzet.

Bij onze zuiderburen is het al heel gebruikelijk om vroegtijdig kleuters te ontwikkelen.

Ik stuite op een onderzoek dat in België is gedaan naar sociale netwerken en onderwijs, dat in december 2009 is uitgevoerd. De resultaten van 1 maart 2010 (meer dan 900 reacties via digitale kanalen) zijn door Bram Faem in een presentatie gepubliceerd. Het onderzoek probeert een beeld te krijgen bij de vraag hoe het onderwijs staat tegenover het gebruik van sociale netwerken. Maken docenten daar bewust geen gebruik van, of passen ze deze bewust wel toe om de mogelijkheden van het onderwijs te verrijken?
België heeft te maken gehad met een aantal maatschappelijke incidenten. Vriendschappelijke relaties tussen docenten en leerlingen zijn een taboe en onethisch. Het onderzoek maakt niet duidelijk welke invloed dat de angst die hieruit voortkomt heeft op het inzetten en uitbuiten van de mogelijkheden. Wel doen de resultaten vermoeden dat deze maatschappelijke incidenten hierop van invloed zijn. Niet geheel onverstandig is er voor gekozen om nadrukkelijk geheel anoniem met de resultaten om te gaan.

De groep van respondenten die aangeeft zich bewust niet in sociale netwerken te begeven is 34%! Bijna 80% voegt nooit huidige leerlingen toe. Daarmee is de adoptie binnen deze groep van deelnemers nagenoeg nihil te noemen. Pas als de leerling afstudeert accepteerd 46% van de docenten deze alumni in hun sociaal netwerk. Tot zover de angst die regeert.

Aan de positieve zijde van het onderzoek, de vraag of een sociaal netwerk kansen biedt in het onderwijs, ontstaat het beeld over de mogelijkheden die door het onderzochte lerarencorps worden onderkend. 7% geeft aan nut te zien en het ook als dusdanig in te zetten, terwijl nog een 56% aangeeft wel nut te zien, maar het niet in te zetten. Dat biedt perspectief zou je zeggen.

Het onderzoek bekijkt vervolgens nog of het stellen van regels verandering in het gebruik zou veroorzaken. Van deze groep van respondenten geeft 41% aan dat regels gewend zijn. Frapant is dat vervolgens van die scholen waar wel regels ingesteld zijn, een lager percentage sociale netwerken gebruikt of inzet. Je vraagt je dan ook direct af wat deze richtlijnen proberen te reguleren.

In de samenvatting van de Conferentie onderwijsvernieuwing en ICT die Mark Timmermans publiceerde in zijn blog merk ik op dat ook bij ons in Nederland 'maatregelen' getroffen worden om de risico's van sociale media te beperken. 'Gebruik van Social Media tools is nog vaak “verboden” binnen onderwijsinstellingen. Veiligheid boven alles maakt de adoptie van deze middelen niet waarschijnlijk.

In de samenvatting wordt overigens ook aangegeven dat de Generatie Einstein niet bestaat. Nu ben ik wel heel erg benieuwd naar de achtergrond waarop deze stelling is geponeerd. Wat ik niet helemaal (helemaal niet) kan plaatsen is de stelling 'Studenten hebben niet zoveel met Social Media. Docenten kunnen hun onderwijs wel efficiënter maken met Social Media'. Feit is dat vooral jongeren veel gebruik maken van deze middelen. Feit ook is dat de adoptie in het onderwijs domein nog niet heel hoog is, mede door de angst voor misbruik. Mag ik daar dan uit afleiden dat het begrip van het onderwijs domein als het gaat om het gebruik niet heel hoog is? Immers docenten en leerlingen bewegen zich niet in dezelfde sociale netwerken. Het tweede deel van de stelling heeft een parallel naar het onderzoek uit België en stemt me hoopvol.

Zelf sta ik vrij liberaal tegenover het reguleren van sociale netwerken, in het onderwijs en zeker in het bedrijfsleven. Naar mijn mening leidt dit tot bestrijding van het symptoom, niet de oorzaak. Beïnvloeding van gedrag en ontwikkeling van maatschappelijk begrip bereik je met transparantie, niet met strenge regels waarmee excessen onder de radar verdwijnen.

busy but balanced

Last week I've been busy. Still glad that people I met noticed I was relaxed. I felt that way to. Why? Well lot of stuff going on but still managed to keep the balance with my personal business.

When thinking about how to support businesses and more important the people who work with and whitin those businesses to regain the balance, taking time to reflect about your own behaviour is valuable.

The effect of taking control over that balance last week resulted in delivering my support in a flexible and agile way. Information I had access to because of my knowledge or the knowledge of the people I know was delivered in the right format and at the right moment. A collegue of mine was able to finish a well thought-out proposal in record time.

The quote of Danah Boyd twittered by Peter de Haas last week was typical for what happened. "Information is power, but intepretation is more powerful," - Danah Boyd, speaking at the at the O'Reilly Gov 2.0 Expo -

This is what I meant when I made some changes to the Wikipedia entry 'informatielogistiek' when preparing a college on this topic (Dutch). Interpret information leads to knowledge.

Thinking over a lot of these things was done at home and I could put them together within my minimum fysical presence. Left me some time for my self too.

Good results, busy and well balanced.

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 server - NEN2082 gecertificeerde implementatie [QNH] bij Gemeente Nieuwegein

waar zijn we nu helemaal mee bezig?

Even geleden heb ik al eens melding gemaakt van de pre-release installatie van Microsoft SharePoint server 2010 door QNH bij de Gemeente Nieuwegein. De implementatie van het DMS/RMA is door de ECB geaudit en NEN2082 gecertificeerd. Dat is bijzonder!
Bijzonder knap om te beginnen in een markt die in het midoffice segment sterke vertegenwoordinging kent van spelers als BCT, Cirkel en een aantal andere partijen. QNH is met hun oorspronkelijke IBM practice en de wat later ontwikkelde Microsoft practice vooral bekend als specialist op het gebied van Business integration. De gemeente markt is - zeker in het DMS/RMA domein - nieuw.
Bijzonder om dat het gaat om een implementatie die samen met Microsoft voor de officiele release van SharePoint 2010 op 12 mei 2010 is gerealiseerd.
Wat ik nu vooral bijzonder vind is dat ook de collega gemeenten in Nederland (ca 400 in het totaal) met grote getalen deel hebben genomen aan het seminar dat rondom deze case is georganiseerd in Nieuwegein op 19 mei j.l. Dat daar op dat moment het succesverhaal is gepresenteerd door Pieter van der Hoog van de gemeente Nieuwegein zelf en dat het NEN 2082 certificaat door Dick Marijnen van het ECB is uitgereikt aan de burgemeester.

Een kort uitreiksel van het verslag van een aanwezige toehoorder:

Ik heb gisteren een congres (voor gemeenten "only") bezocht waar 2 cases zijn behandeld van de gemeente Nieuwegein en de Gemeente Venlo. Onder de titel "waar zijn we nu helemaal mee bezig?" is de stand van zaken omtrent e-Dienstverlening in Gemeenteland aan de orde geweest, en meer specifiek van de gemeenten Nieuwegein en Venlo. De partner die het Document management systeem (DMS) en het Records management systeem (RMA) heeft ontworpen en geimplementeerd, is QNH. Er zijn een aantal unieke kenmerken die mij opgevallen zijn aan deze cases:

De aanleiding en het NUP

De keuze voor een volledig op Microsoft technologie ingerichte front en mid-office van CRM-ERP
Een gecertificeerde DMS en RMA archieffunctie.

De aanleiding:

Zowel Venlo als Nieuwegein zijn gestart met het herinrichten van processen en systemen vanwege een aanstaande verhuizing naar een nieuw stadhuis, respectievelijk in 2013 en 2011. Voor Venlo gold nog een extra argument, namelijk dat de dienstverlening aan burgers en bedrijven op een onacceptabel laag niveau stond. Dit heeft allereerst geleid tot een forse reorganisatie waarbij een hoog percentage ambtenaren uitstroomden (30% werd genoemd), en een even fors percentage op basis van geschiktheid (competenties) weer instroomde. Omdat e-Dienstverlening afdelingoverstijgend is (dienst overstijgend, en niet dienst/afdeling centrisch) is een herinrichting van processen en systemen noodzakelijk. Verder speelt een belangrijke rol dat men geen ruimte, en dus geld, wenst te besteden aan het papieren archief in de nieuwe huisvesting.
De projecten die onder de paraplu van het NUP zijn gedefinieerd zijn niet de dominante factor geweest. Dit beeld werd bevestigd door meerdere vertegenwoordigers van gemeenten waarbij het niet opleggen van echte sancties leidt tot een gedrag van "het zal mijn tijd wel duren".

2. De keuze:

De belangrijkste argumenten om zowel de front en midoffice technologie van Microsoft te omarmen zijn:
Geen problemen met systeemintegratie, alles van 1 fabrikant en 1 leverancier.
Geen problemen met leveranciers die naar elkaar wijzen als systemen niet naar wens werken, en de klant als pingpongbal gebruiken.
Alleen de interfacing naar externe partijen (databases) moet ingeregeld worden.
Lange ontwikkeltijd voordat het 1e product live kan (bijvoorbeeld "parkeervergunningen"), snelle doorlooptijd voor de volgende producten.
Door de toegenomen transparantie en de ontsluitingsmogelijkheden gaat de frontoffice (KCC) steeds meer taken van de mid-office overnemen. Doelstelling is dat 80% van de vragen die men krijgt door de front-office beantwoord en afgehandeld kan worden.

3. Certificering:

De inrichting van het DMS en de RMA zijn conform de NEN2082 specificaties gerealiseerd. Het European Certification Bureau (ECB) heeft dit certificaat overhandigd (En heeft ook de audit uitgevoerd). Nieuwegein is de 1e nederlandse gemeente die met een gecertificeerd sharepoint 2010 platform aan de slag gaat. Een gecertificeerde DMS/RMA platform is de eerste voorwaarde waar men aan moet voldoen om toegang te krijgen tot de overheidsmarkt.

Wat verder opviel:

Marktsituatie:
Een veelgehoorde karakteristiek als gesproken wordt over de gemeentemarkt en haar leveranciers (op het gebied van DMS/RMA), is dat deze markt volledig dichtgetimmerd zou zijn met leveranciers als Circle, Decos, BCT, Hummingbird, Alfresco, etc. Opvallend is dat QNH een relatief nieuwe partij is (opgericht in 2004, 500 werknemers) en met een concept dat volledig gericht is op de Microsoft product suite, toegang heeft verkregen tot in ieder geval 2 gemeenten. De belangstelling is echter groot. Er moesten (op het congres) stoelen bijgeplaatst worden vanwege de grote belangstelling van collega gemeenten. Ik schat dat er ongeveer 120-150 bezoekers waren. Dit suggereert ten minste dat e-Dienstverlening kansen biedt voor nieuwe partijen.


[met dank aan Gerard Schuckman voor het waarnemen]

It has been busy, get used to it.

Last month or so it has been a very busy period. I visited an Executive briefing of Microsoft in Redmond where we discussed the Microsoft Online and Cloud propositions. I visited an EBC about this theme about a year ago and back then a lot of promisses where made.
Well the Microsoft Cloud Azure is released and it seems this will become a real succes. Still a lot of development is needed to make this technologie and functionality available for the masses. In the end IT infra will become a utility.
The biggest promise was made towards the Microsoft Online community. Business Productivity Online Services or short BPOS has become codename Union. The name BPOS wasn't exactly sexy or appeling. Well the speed in the online market is enormous and that surprised everybody, even the marketing of Microsoft. But what's in the name. Well there are a lot of changes to be taken in mind.
Today it is not posible to deploy solutions with custom code on the Microsoft Online environment. So for 'us' ISV's and other Microsoft partners the added value opportunity's where somewhat limmited. Well suspect this to change. Microsoft is still a company that sells licences (on-premise or as an online utility) and depents on added value thrue it's partner channel.
When this issue is solved, whit it a LOT of functionality will become available. For instance SharePoint 2007 has evolved to SharePoint 2010. A big change with lot's of opportunity's. There's a lot of material out there to help you compare the different versions. BPOS today is based on SharePoint 2007, the server version or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS). But as discussed a lot of functionality is not available in the multi tennant Online version BPOS. When UNION will hit the market (and me personaly expect it won't be that long to happen), a lot of the new SharePoint 2010 server functionality will be available ONLINE!
So what can I tell you about the changes... Not a lot NDA I'm sorry. But think about the goals of SharePoint (one place to SHARE your thoughts, the informaton or better the knowledge (tacit information), think about the developments in the social media tooling all arround us), take a look at the new functionality of SharePoint 2010 and you can imagine what will be subject of change yourself.
I can also explain what I do not like about SharePoint 2007, or what in my opinion is laking in that version. For instance SharePoint 2007 was still siloed. It was hard to make it one place to share your information. Searching information acrose a collection of sites was hard, maintainn the same enterprise structure for your meta information is not provided automaticaly in SharePoint 2007.
What do you think about the wiki functionality in SharePoint 2007? Well I love wiki's, but hate the poor suport in the SharePoint 2007 version. Ever tried to ad a picture? or a link? In Sharepoint 2010 wiki is everywhere, every page is a wiki and of course the tooling fits with a great user experience.
What do you expect from an online information and collaboration platform? Well you expect it to integrate with your onpremise environment if needed. You expect to be able to collaborate despite of the virtual wall between departments, but what about your company as an boundary object? You build extranets to reach to a higher business productivity even between company's, even if it is a very small company of one person who has some project business with you for a very short time and want to log on anonymous.

Well you can picture this for your self.

When? July the Microsoft World Partner conference will take place. Take a look at the keynote's of Steve Balmer about Online and Cloud strategy We're all in - is the new slogan. Given the growing attention IT utillity is given from the midmarket business my answer is soon. It is going to be busy!

Ook Ricoh levert oplossingen op basis van Microsoft Online diensten #li

'Wanneer u online bent kunt u via Outlook zien wie van uw collega's bereikbaar is, en heeft u altijd inzicht in agenda's. Ook kunt u videovergaderen, en uw bureaublad delen op afstand. U heeft bovendien altijd de laatste documenten binnen handbereik - óók als u niet op de zaak bent.'

Dit is de belofte zoals op de nieuwe site voor Microsoft Online diensten staat geschreven. Ricoh Nederland levert al meer dan 10 jaar aan haar klanten. De laatste jaren - als Microsoft Gold Partner - worden oplossingen op basis van SharePoint gebouwd. Deze oplossingen zijn inmiddels door ontwikkeld naar producten als de Document Store van Ricoh. Hiermee wordt een verbinding gelegd tussen de wereld van het papier en de digitale informatie.

Documenten spelen een belangrijke rol als informatiedrager binnen bedrijfsprocessen. Enterprise Information Management, Informatie Engineering en de logistiek die deze informatie op het juiste moment in de juiste vorm op de juiste plek brengt zijn specialismen die in de oplossingen zijn terug te vinden. Specifiek voor een aantal processen zijn hier frameworks voor opgebouwd en geven templates invulling aan de behoeften. Zo kent iedereen de vraag en de daaraan gerelateerde problemen om een factuur van een leverancier efficient door een organisatie heen te begeleiden.

Het besef dat het klassieke Document Management slechts voor een deel de huidige bedrijfsprocessen ondersteund wordt steeds groter. Denk aan de ontwikkelingen waar Microsoft in haar nieuwe SharePoint 2010 release de mogelijkheid biedt om documenten in een set te verzamelen. In de overheid kennen we deze relatie tussen documenten en informatie als ´een zaak´, in de verzekeringswereld of de advocatuur wordt wel gesproken over een dossier of een case. Ricoh heeft deze functionaliteit in haar Frameworks opgenomen en biedt de mogelijkheid om naast het document ook de hele set van gerelateerde documenten als een dossier te behandelen.

Steeds vaker komen documenten in digitale vorm binnen en de integratie met deze digitale stromen worden steeds beter. Feit is dat in de huidige wereld nog steeds erg veel informatie in een ongestructureerde vorm op papier wordt aangeleverd. Postkamers hebben nog steeds een zeerbelangrijke rol in het verzamelen van deze binnenkomende stroom en het voorbewerken en afleveren van deze gegevens op de juiste plek in het bedrijfsproces. Efficiente en effectieve verwerking is de eerste stap in de besparing in het informatielogistieke proces. Door een deze informatie stroom te digitaliseren en te integreren in een digitale postkamer waar verschillende informatie kanalen (digitaal en analoog) samenkomen wordt dit proces in gang gezet.

Lang niet elk bedrijf ziet het beheer van de ondersteunende informatiesystemen als taak. Men ziet op tegen de complexiteit en de kosten die de investering met zich meebrengen. Ontwikkelingen die de laatste tijd beschikbaar komen geven een antwoord op deze behoeften. Al een aantal jaren is het met de grote beschikbaarheid van grote bandbreedte via het internet heel goed mogelijk om (een deel van) een systeem buiten het eigen bedrijf te plaatsen. Een voorbeeld van deze ontwikkeling zijn de online diensten van Microsoft. Ricoh investeerd in deze ontwikkeling en brengt haar oplossingen naar deze online platformen. Naar verwachting zullen in hewt verlengde van de release van het Microsoft SharePoint 2010 platform 12 mei 2010 al vrij snel de online varianten beschikbaar komen.

Voor die bedrijven die graag van hun beheer af willen, maar de infrastructuur en de data binnen het eigenbedrijf willen houden is een appliance een oplossing. Een combinatie van server, software matige oplossingen en het beheer in één. Direct beschikbaar.

22 juni 2010 organiseerd Ricoh haar vierde seminar over SharePoint in het auditorium van Microsoft Nederland in Schiphol. Er zijn geen kosten verbonden aan deelname.

Microsoft Excecutive Briefing Center visit about 'Cloud' with a special event at the end: 'the ASHcloud'

The 13th of April me and my collegue took a plane to Seattle. We planned our trip back to The Netherlands on the 18th. Well... The volcano 'Eyjafjallajökull' on Iceland changed the plans of a lot of people depending on the 'Cloud'. It took us some extra days to get back to Europe.

Cloud was the theme of the Microsoft Excecutive Briefing. Azure and BPOS. These developments at Microsoft are huge. Major investments in this area. Checkout the -We're All In- statement of Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer at his keynote at the University of Washington.

During this briefing the latest developments were unveiled. We had the opportunity to take a look at the investments in datacenters all over the world. More important is the evolution in the way the datacenters are build, a different level of utilizing 'flexponsive' computing and storage.

This is the layer 'Azure' is build on. Eventualy most of Microsofts products will be ported to this platform in the cloud. At this moment BPOS is not yet build on the Azure platform.

BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite) is the name of the suite that includes Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Office Live Meeting and Office Communications Online. This package with this terrible name has been given the code name 'Union' and will be rebranded. Expect this to happen at the WPC10 (Microsoft Worldpartner Conference) in Washington DC July this year.

The functionality set of Union is much, much more comprehensive than the functionality available now in BPOS. The first step is the launch of all wave14 developments (Exchange2010, Office2010, SharePoint2010 etc). One of the biggest complaints in the market (partners and customers) was the problem that the SharePoint part of BPOS lacked the possibility to be customized. Well you have some possibility's to make changes, but no custom code in the multi tennant BPOS environment. A single tennant environment (dedicated version) is available from 5000 seats. This is all going to change.

The pricing per seat per month has been changed since the introduction about a year ago. In the Netherlands you can have the functionality of a total set for just €8,52 pppm. So you get a Mailserver; a collaboration site where you can store your documents, share information etc; one can setup online conversations and even choose to do so if a person appears to be available (presence). Think of the infrastructure needed to build and maintain this in your own datacenter!