With the risk of sounding repetitive and stating the obvious...let me begin...by suggesting that this may NOT be a closed and sealed topic...And my recent interactions with business and IT leaders of some leading global organizations confirmed this point.

Right...we are living in an age where social networks play a big role in the rise and fall of political leaders, ideologies and institutions...we all vouch by the significance of this phenomenon in our daily life...we all have our virtual identity as our alter ego. But when posed with the question of Enterprise Social networking, Shakespearian style soliloquies and musings continue to live on in the minds of Senior Management..."To B(log) or Not to B(log)...that is the question..."

Is this too powerful to be contained within the enterprise? (Is 'contained' an old economy expression...That is yet another discussion). Does it appear to be too destructive (to the corporate fabric) and distractive (to the corporate citizens)? Is Enterprise 2.0 trying to wish away Social Networking - its very own bedrock?

May be it is time to take a relook into the whole phenomenon....

There was a time when Enterprise Social networking was all about throwing in a set of the so called "Enterprise 2.0 applications". We all have gone past those ages of infancy. We have started to appreciate the deeper facets and cultural hues of Social Networking and that is all to do with the way people communicate.

In this new paradigm of collaboration, an organization's "information fire hoses", transforms into "Channels of Expression". The seemingly casual, huddle formation but very relevant and useful exchange of information that normally happen at the water fountains now becomes the norm. Likeminded people flock together and start to express freely and Interesting topics attract user attention and people pour their hearts out. Discussions change course through the conversations...really interactive and participative. In this construct 'Organization' became incidental and the organizational hierarchy breakdown. Wear your creative hat for a second and try to visualize a day in this 2.0 Enterprise - You meet the CEO at the water fountain almost every day and even the newest employee get an opportunity to walk the corporate corridors. Right...in this world 'Personalities', 'Topics' and 'Need for Self Expression' take the center stage.

So let me go back to the earlier question...Does this appear to be too destructive (to the corporate fabric) and distractive (to the corporate citizens)? With all the perceived benefits around the "breaking down of Information asymmetries", "Employee Engagement" and "Knowledge Sharing" it IS in a way triggering off '"too many changes too soon". And this IS the cause of concerns for the wannabe Enterprise 2.0 CIOs. The organization needs to be primed to handle this cultural shift. The organization need to transition though a set of changes based on its state of affairs and priorities.

If we look at Social Networking or Enterprise 2.0 as a dynamic and synergic co-existence of 3 key entities - People, Purpose and Information (People, Intent and Content), on a framework that enables 'Self Organization' and 'Participation' the jigsaws suddenly falls in place.

Posted by Santhosh Adayikkoth at 6:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

3 years and a ton of learning & insights...a good milestone to take a pause, reflect on our experience, relook at the vision and rationale behind our venture and...get ready for the next dash. Yes..."Search & Insight Driven Computing" one of our prized incubations within the Information Management space turned 3 this year.

Now for the curious and the new entrants into this space, let me explain what this "animal" is

1. Search as a "technology" is revolutionizing the way Information would be Organized Managed and Used within an enterprise.
2. Search & Insight Driven Computing team is focused on leveraging this technology to build the Next Generation information Management Solutions.
3. We are one of the very first System Integration firms to have a set up full-fledged service line in this space and that way we are ahead of the curve in this area.

We started this incubation almost 3 ½ years back and now this Service line has successfully moved out of its incubation phase with a bouquet of case studies, multiple account openings and very strong GTM relationship with the leading product vendors in this space

Now, you may ask what led us into this...A few trends that we saw in the Information Management space, almost 4 - 5 years back, caught our attention and those and, in a way, formed the key rationale for the formation of the Search Practice.

Let me try to recollect them for you...

Trend 1: Organizations had started to realize the value hidden in the unstructured information

It is a known fact that 85% of the information within the firewalls of an enterprise is in the unstructured form. It is more interesting to note that most of the IT investments over the last 4 decades and the entire information management industry had been focused on building solutions to address the structured information. The opportunity and possibility to open the vault of unstructured information and unlock the insights from that excited us and we were thrilled to envision the possibilities that would open up for an organization like ours.

Trend 2: The enterprise boundaries had started to blur

We saw the "post dot com" world slowly crystallizing around "consumers". Organizations were (and are) trying to be more "consumer-centric" or outward focused. The concepts of Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 were emerging and with all these the information that is outside the firewall was becoming significant and there was a need to access and leverage that.

While these were going on there were some interesting development within the Enterprise as well

Trend 3: "Formation of Mini Internets within the Firewall"

Within the enterprise space, due to obvious reasons, we were witnessing the growing heterogeneity, replication and fragmentation of information. The enterprise information domain had started to behave like a "mini internets" within the firewall. For any information architect the challenge would be to see how the most relevant information can be provided to the business users comprehensively and at the right time.

And successful information management frameworks would be ones those are "aware of this chaotic situation and can address that"

Meanwhile on the Technology front a new kid had entered the block, changing the way we looked, accessed and managed information

Trend 4:  Technology Trend: Search has transformed from a keyword lookup mechanism into a contextual information integration engine.

We see this as a journey that would involve

1. Seamless Access to Information
2. Enrichment of Information and User Experience
3. Extraction of Insights &
4. Applications on top of that

Based on our perspective the potential impact this approach would have on the Enterprise Information Management space is very similar to what RDBMS created 4 decades back.

1. We look at Search as a unified information access platform that would lead the users to the right information
2. Search as a virtual data warehouse will help users slice and dice information in a rather contextual manner
3. Search can be your Knowledge Platform that would enrich information through contextual content association
4. Search will eventually be the gateway for all user interactions and will have a  pivotal role to play in user experience management

It is quite heartening to see how valid these thoughts are...even now and to move on with our onward journey

Posted by Santhosh Adayikkoth at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"How can we help people make the right decisions - choose the right options in this constantly changing world?" Sounds like a noble dream... a philosophical question...A good case for a modern age Sidharta to leave the royal pleasures in search of the answer...Well, almost...Last week 500 technologists, business leaders, analysts and psychologists converged at the fringes of the Arizonian desert to reflect on the same question...sharing their experiences, observations, opportunities and insights

The event - Discover 2011 - the annual User Conference hosted by Endeca Technologies, Inc., a search and business intelligence (BI) company featured dozens of customer-led sessions, that deliberated on how the simplicity of Search combined with the power of BI can transform their organizations by enabling business users, partners and end users to make better decisions.

The sessions opened with a bang with Paul Sonderegger (Chief Strategist & Ex Principal Analyst at Forrester Research) who set the right context to the event...He painted a picture of

• A world that is getting more digitized every day
• "Abundance of choices" and the resulting "Scarcity of attention" faced by fellow human beings in this Digital world
• The importance of sifting through the ever growing, abundance of data and to "Guide" the users in their daily decisions

This was followed by and that too quite seamlessly by another insightful talk on "How we take decisions". Jonah Leher author of best seller "How we decide" took the audience into the realm of neuroscience to explain the complex events happening in our own 3 pound supercomputer - Brain - during our mundane day to day decisions, like picking up a box of cereal from the store shelf... How the cognitive centers and centers of emotions work together in guiding us to our choices...

Let me take a pause here...Shouldn't the "Information workbenches" mimic or facilitate this process? Every application that we build thus becomes an information exchange that will help users to experience predictability in their daily transactions.

On the same note, it was quite heartening to see a world that we visualized...a strategy that we charted out almost 4 years back, turn out into reality. This approach called for a fresh look at information management and attempted to perceive next gen information management as

An art of intelligently delivering the most "relevant" information to the user for that specific context

• An infrastructure that can
• Connect with the User,
• Sense the potential intentions
• Predict and Persuade the users to the desired outcomes
• A realm of complete user empowerment, where the users interactively discover their needs and choices

Interesting isn't it...Now the questions in front of us will be, "Will this impact the IT fabric of an organization?" or "Will this change that way we design and develop applications?" The short answer is "Yes"

• The locus of control will shift from Information to the User and User experience will have to be addressed and managed comprehensively
• Analytics and Digital Channels will converge - The technology domains, those were kept in administrative silos rather artificially will come together to address the need of the Digital User, whether it is an employee or a consumer
• Next Generation Information management initiatives will call for even closer functioning of Business and IT
• Explosion of customer touch points will mandate organizations to develop "Seamless and Consistent" Customer Experience Management as a core capability

Posted by Santhosh Adayikkoth at 5:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Some time back I was catching up with an old friend of mine who is a self proclaimed branding guru. As the conversation progressed, we started jokingly making fun of each other's profession and in no time things got heated up. Finally he said "you techies should stick to coding and let us worry about branding".  Well, he may have said it in a fit of rage, but it made me wonder. Is there an impact of technology on the way branding is done, especially online branding?  Do the brand gurus need to be aware of where technology is going and also the other way around.

Take the example of online branding. Initially online branding meant having a unique domain name and website. But slowly organizations realized the value of unique branding on their website as more and more business shifted online. User Experience Design became a major ingredient of all website development and everything from logos to images to colors to information architecture was revamped to establish a unique branding for the website. All was going well for the brand conscious organizations, when almost suddenly technology pulled the carpet out from below their feet. In came search and feeds.

Search meant that users don't anymore spend hours browsing your website. They spend more time searching for what they need, look at the snippet and visit your site only if they feel its relevant. Feeds meant that they may not even visit your website anymore. They might just use a feed reader or a video player (depending on the kind of feed) to consume your site content, without ever visiting your site. This change in information consumption pattern blurred the concept of brand for the user. The same page might have content from multiple sources, and the most prominent brand will be of the feed aggregator or search provider.

So does online branding need to adapt? Yes, of course. The fundamental shift is in what is being branded. It used to be entire web pages, but now it is every small unit of information which can be accessed in an alternate way like search or feed or video. But how do you brand such small pieces of information?  Well here come some emerging standards to the rescue.

One such emerging standard is Microformats. It is already being used for business cards and calendars, and browsers have started providing support for it. A new microformat named 'hbrand' could be defined with maybe the logo, company website link, company information etc. which might be shown on the page itself alongside the content or as a tooltip on hover. HTML5 also provides support for similar concepts through Microdata specification which is evolving.

What is more, the consumer base for such specifications is also growing. Google has started supporting Rich Snippets where Microformat, Microdata and RDF tags are read and used to display useful information along with the search result snippet. Feed readers and video players could follow soon.

So organizations need not just worry about branding their websites. They will have to start ensuring that every piece of information they send out in the form of feeds or search results are also branded. But how do you ensure this? Maybe a branding gateway component which intercepts all content being sent out and tag it with the branding information defined as a Microformat or Microdata. Search engines, Feed Readers and video players will the start using this data to create a unique branding for the content wherever it is displayed.

So will technology revolutionize the way online branding is done? Maybe, as my friend said, maybe I should worry about coding and leave the branding to the likes of him.

Ritesh Radhakrishnan

Posted by Ritesh Radhakrishnan at 9:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Will Enterprise Mashups “mashup” the Enterprise?" »

Posted by Christian Schacht at 11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here is a blog entry from one of my colleagues - Ritesh Radhakrishnan

Continue reading "Hey, my website is on TV!! (By Ritesh Radhakrishnan)" »

Posted by Freddi Gyara at 3:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Website Wireframes have been always been an essential tool for capturing user interface requirements. They have been very effective in ideating, discussing and capturing the UI requirements for a new website. They have been an essential mode of communication for web designers to express their designs to clients and developers alike.  But over the last few years, the rules of the game have changed threatening to make the art of wireframing obsolete.

Continue reading "The Ancient Art of Wireframing" »

Posted by Amit Jnagal at 5:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Continue reading "Online Merchandising - Where "User Attention is taking over "Shelf Space"" »

Posted by Adithya Bhandary at 6:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Many times I am asked by clients the question what is the difference between a Portal and Website? What is a mashup ? What is a Rich Internet Application ? At a high level there are a few minor differences between portals and websites.  A Portal is a Website which provides a single entry point for information and applications and provides a capability of personalizing the end user experience. Not all Websites are Portals and not all Portals necessarily have to be Websites.  For example mostly all company websites are mostly static and are not Portals while all Consumer sites like Yahoo, Google, AOL, MSN, Amazon, eBay are Website Portals. We often use tools like Windows Media Player and iTunes which are examples of media portals on your desktop/laptop and organize digital media content for easier access. A Mashup is a application which provides valuable information/transaction capability by utlizing the services on the cloud. A RIA is Rich Internet Applications which provides richer and more interactive End-user Experience.

Continue reading "Websites, Portals, Mashups & RIA’s – What’s the difference?" »

Posted by Rushikesh R. Ubgade at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)