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The FASTForward Blog

In uncertain times, Enterprise 2.0 takes the stageYesterday

For many people the positioning of Enterprise 2.0 as a cost reduction engine is not new. Complexity reduction, efficiency increases and fast response times have been the cornerstone of many Enterprise Social Software pitches in the last 5 years.

Enterprise software spending has recently crashed. Companies such as SAP, headquartered in Waldorf Germany, have recently issued earnings warnings, which illustrate how dramatically enterprise application spending has dipped in just a few weeks. These organizations can no doubt weather this storm, but with this shift, opportunity is found.

As traditional enterprise vendors suffer, a panacea for investors and customers is emerging with the nascent enterprise social software industry. Until now, Enterprise 2.0 has sat on the sidelines of the enterprise software industry, seen perhaps as less focused and more predisposed to conversation than action.

Enterprise 2.0 consultant and speaker Thomas Vander Wal may be a typical example of the ethos that has emerged from this industry within an industry. “My clients always see my value as providing strong benefit of getting the most value out of social tools,” of his work implementing and designing Enterprise 2.0 tools, “The interconnections and interactions between people spark great value, but the more costly traditional tools have missed out on this gre

Awareness Report Shows Significant Rise in Enterprise Social Media - Will It Continue?Yesterday

Here is another of the growing reports on research that indicates enterprise 2.0 is on the rise. Recently Awareness released a report on “Trends and Best Practices in Adopting Web 2.0 in 2008.” It shows that social media initiatives are on are increasing and continue to evolve. There is a focus on the deeper and broader integration of Web 2.0 technologies with other enterprise systems, enabling greater participation from both internal and external audiences. This is consistent with what I am hearing from others sources ((e.g., Forrester, AIIM, Aberdeen, Gilbane, etc.).

More than half of the respondents were management or senior-level executives, with their roles evenly between marketing, business strategy development and technology. Highlights include:

Employers are starting to allow social media participation more freely in their organizations: The number of organizations that allow social networking for business purposes has increased dramatically to 69 percent in 2008 up from 37 percent last year. The numbers in this paragraph and the next really struck me.

Employers are finding the benefits of using social media: 63 percent are using social media to build and promote their brand, 61 percent are using it to improve communication and collaboration, and 58 percent re using it to increase consumer engagement.

Seventy f

The Family our most reliable employment agency, banker, insurance company and pension fundOctober 7

This is the second of 5 posts on how relationships will have to trump transactions if we are to make it through the next decade. The premise being that it is our social networks that have the best chance of sustaining us and that social software in the end will have a huge role to play.

How do I know my “New Credit Rating”? What do I have to do to improve it?

Let’s now look at how I might map my own “Credit Community” and see if there are some rules that emerge that will show you how you might map your own.

The first thing that I see is that I don’t just have one of these networks. I have several. Some overlap but some don’t. In this post I am going to talk about family and show how the family connects to work. I will focus on work in the next post.

A really important Network is my Blood Family. In the centre of my family map is my marriage.

I think many of us forgot the eternal truth that the key to getting through the bumps of life is a great partner. Here is the opening line of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen:

IT is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a g

Mapping out your access to the real credit systemOctober 7

Thanks to Ross Mayfield for this model that looks like the work also of Valdis Krebs.

In this post I am going to do my best to show you what the observed reality of this “Credit” system is, make the case that social software will be a wonderful tool that will enable us to use this natural system and finally to make the point that we may have no choice but to try this because, the other source of “Credit” will not the available.

In my first post on Credit - I made the point that “Credit” is an ancient process where resources are leveraged not by a direct exchange of money (I lend directly to you and you owe me directly) but by a social process whereby my contribution to the community (which becomes my reputation and my character) allows me access to the wider resources of the group.

In the ancient system, the exchange is indirect. I contribute to an individual and this gives me an option of being helped by the larger grou

The Sharepoint Sessions – Part Four – Upcoming Sharepoint Investment AreasOctober 5

This is part four and the last installment of my notes from a local event sponsored by Knowledge Management Associates, “Real World Sharepoint Experiences.” Tara Seppa is a Microsoft Information Worker Solution Specialist who works with small to midsize businesses in New England. She covered Microsoft’s Sharepoint Investment areas. Tara started by saying that the latest launch wave – Windows server 2008 will include virtualization. There will also be SQL2008 enhancements to better work with Sharepoint including compression and high availability.

The Microsoft Search Server 2008 will be better suited for intranet searching with new federation capabilities and no preset document limits. It will be available in two versions including a free express version for a single server. Search will use mashups to include content form multiple sources in one result set. Currently, there is federation – search from other sources now. The next move will be to a combined mashuped set of results. Sharepoint will also allow for tagging and rating of content while maintaining the taxonomy.

The next release of Sharepoint, Microsoft will be investing for the paradigm shift to more web 2.0 capabilities. The consumer web is influencing the enterprise and search is getting bigger. Microsoft feels that software + services is the best of both worlds – combine SaaS and deskt