Technologies that enable collaboration — in every corner of the enterprise — have made frequent appearances in pundits’ “Top Ten” lists for 2009. Here’s another example, from industry analysts EMA:
The politics of collaboration will reach well beyond finger pointing to higher levels of automated diagnostics, process automation and shared access to information that will in turn reduce IT operational costs.
Amber Naslund, Director of Community for Radian6, has started lots of discussion with her post on the “Social Media Stalemate”:
Why do companies trust their employees to answer a phone, but not to blog or get on Twitter? … Once again, we’re at this place of what I’m affectionately calling the Social Media Stalemate.
Addressing this challenge is critically important for companies of all kinds — if we believe that conversations are markets, then it’s obvious that companies can’t ignore their markets.
Prescription for reluctant companies? Go slowly. Listen first. Engage without selling.
Once again, industry watchers are predicting a confluence of technologies in the Prequent, Inc. wheelhouse.
SOA will start to link itself more and more with cloud computing.
Prequent, Inc. recently moved its email hosting to Google Apps, in part to benefit from GMail’s IMAP setup and easy iPhone integration. Resultingly, we’ve inherited all of GMail’s benefits (great spam filtering) and curses (threaded conversations). Even threading proponents concede that the threading “feature” is widely disparaged:
That said, I realize my opinion isn’t the most popular. Yahoo and AOL Mail are more popular than Gmail and each employs the “old” display style, suggesting that users prefer that over Gmail’s style.
via What Gmail does better than its competitors | Webware – CNET.
Obama’s White House has moved quickly on the new media front. Just after the inauguration, Macon Phillips, the Director of New Media for the White House, posted to the administration’s new blog.
One of the first changes is the White House’s new website, which will serve as a place for the President and his administration to connect with the rest of the nation and the world. …
Americans are eager for information about the state of the economy, national security and a host of other issues. This site will feature timely and in-depth content meant to keep everyone up-to-date and educated. Check out the briefing room, keep tabs on the blog (RSS feed) and take a moment to sign up for e-mail updates from the President and his administration so you can be sure to know about major announcements and decisions.
One thing I knew about cloud computing in 2008 was that there were an awful lot of people using that term to mean an awful lot of different things. Dave Rosenberg agrees, and makes some predictions for 2009:
Besides providing some of the biggest technical innovation of 2008, the cloud also wins the award for most amorphous product definition. Few people define “the cloud” or “cloud computing” the same way, leading to market noise and a wealth of misinformation.
Huffington Post has a thoughtful piece on media trends in 2009. One difference between Rosenbaum’s “curation” function and traditional editing is the source of the material processed by the editor/curator: yesterday’s editors could rely on staff reporters; today’s curators must gather material from around the Web.
As the cost of the creation of content continues to come down, more content creators will come online. This will create a huge influx of unfiltered material, and create a significant demand for filters and editors who can find/sort/select and recommend contextual quality content within verticals. This “Curation” function has the potential to give media enterprises whose current business models are under tremendous pressure a new and important role in the web media world.
via Steve Rosenbaum: 5 Trends That Will Change Media in ‘09.
At Prequent, we think a lot about the business of open source software and also about cloud computing as an enterprise IT trend. Interesting to see the analysts at Gartner advising that the two should be managed together:
Gartner advises IT managers to manage their cloud and open source strategies together to maximize the potential of each.
Kelleher’s 2009 prediction article at GigaOm gives virtualization software the nod:
“CIOs plan to spend 2 percent less on IT projects next year, a survey by UBS suggests. Spending on virtualization software will rise 6 percent (down from 10-percent growth in 2008), although UBS cautions it still isn’t a priority in many IT departments.
That could change as CIOs wake up to the efficiency — and potential savings — that virtualization can bring. VMware rules this niche, with Citrix also a player. IBM, Oracle and Microsoft will try to grab market share, but it may require them to alter their licensing terms and cut into profit margins.”
via 5 Trends That Will Separate the Strong From the Weak in 2009.
