Table of Contents

   Editor's Note
   Upcoming Events
   Quick Hits
   News and Announcements
   Guru's Corner:  Best Practices for Enterprise Adoption of Collaboration .
  Guest Editorial: Making Collaboration Work!

Editor's Note

The newsletter is a bit late in getting out this month due to the fact that I had a motorcycle accident and was in the hospital for a week.  But I am home now recovering and able to get to my laptop and phone and so can continue the work of collaboration virtually. 

We have a number of great articles in this issue of the Inside Collaboration Newsletter on advancements in the technologies for e-collaboration. We had quite a few briefings in June by vendors with either new or updated products. A few we found impressive enough to add to our TTW (technologies to watch) list . Last month we saw AdWeb's Dashboard, which is a competitor for Intranets.com, this month we saw GroveSite, another entry into the virtual team space category (www.grovesite.com ). Whereas AdWeb is from Australia, GroveSite is based in Phoenix, and comes out of an academic tradition. Another notable technology is OWC (Oracle Web Conferencing) Oracle's entry into the real-time market

(http://www.oracle.com/collabsuite/index.html?testdrive.html ). Oracle's tool made our TTW list in May, and is not for consumers, or even for most businesses, but is really focused at their target market the large enterprise, and for that market it is a very thoughtful solution.

If you want to read more about OWC see my Guru's corner article which talks about how the development team for OWC was able to drive high levels of adoption within Oracle. It is unusual enough for us to see high levels of adoption of a collaborative tool, but when we see someone doing a lot of the right things to drive adoption (not just technically) we want to make a case study of that organization and see if maybe some of those best practices are transferable outside of Oracle.

Over the last few months we have expanded our news and announcements section into two sections. The first section "Quick Hits" covers much of what happens in the collaboration market in a very concise format with just the news headline and a URL for more information. News and Announcements on the other hand takes a look at some of the more pivotal announcements that occur each month in more depth and also include the CS analysis of the event.

CS Collaborative Technologies Taxonomy

Collaborative Strategies has revised its functional taxonomy in 2004 as you can see we are seeing some profound changes in the technology landscape.  We see a convergence around the DPM/Virtual Team and Process Tools area (middle box) and we see that more and more some of the functionality of collaboration is being driven into the infrastructure layer. This is not only being done by larger vendors like Microsoft and IBM/Lotus, but also by smaller vendors to help leverage their departmental deployments into enterprise deployments.

If you are a vendor of collaboration technologies and you have not briefed us in the last 6 months please get in touch with us ASAP and bring us up to date on your collaboration tools.

While technology plays a critical role in terms of how organizations collaborate today, technology is, in general, an en abler of the interpersonal interactions that comprise collaboration. Economics, corporate culture (behavior), and internal politics (leadership) also significantly impact the efficacy of such implementations. Most news events in the e-collaboration and KM spaces focus on products and services rather than the more complex human issues associated with these tools. We believe that a true ROI for collaborative technologies requires a holistic or systemic approach and need to examine three areas: people, process and technology.

CS Service Offerings:

CS currently has three types of service offerings for collaboration vendors:

• Strategic Engagement: This is often how we get started working with a collaboration vendor, and is a short-term engagement that focuses on one specific issue or problem.
• Selling Collaboration: This is a longer-term engagement focused on the creation of specific sales process content for a vendor's sales force to be able to use immediately for qualifying prospects, identifying the economic buyer, controlling the sales conversation, establishing credibility and closing the sale.
• Partnering Program: This service is for those organizations that want to leverage CS's knowledge of the collaboration market, technology expertise and relationships. This knowledge and relationships can be used to help create marketing partnerships, develop sales channels, or for M&A. This program is longer term and is based on a small retainer with a performance bonus.

CS is currently working on service offerings for end-user organizations. If you have suggestions on services you would like to see from us, or are interested in any of the services listed above, please contact Mike Dressler at: miked@collaborate.com.

Technologies To Watch:

CS analysts are always getting briefed on new collaborative products, releases and services. In addition we are working on the TAXONOMY PROJECT to map the collaborative space (over 1000 vendors). Once in a while, we see some new or emerging technology that we think is exceptional, either in concept or implementation. We decided to start a list of these vendors and products, and the May, 2003 issue of Inside Collaboration, lists the charter members for the TTW list. Since then we continue to add one or two vendors each month, that show us technology interesting and unique enough to make the list. If you believe your company or software should be on our TTW list, please contact me directly to set up a briefing with one or more of our analysts at (davidc@collaborate.com).

• GroveSite provides and interesting and inexpensive virtual team space (www.grovesite.com ) that competes with AdWeb, Internet Office, and Intranets.com.
• Convoq's ASAP service combines IM, Presence and Web Meetings in a very interesting, natural and cost effective manner. This ASP service is worth looking at, see www.convoq.com .
• InterWise ECP Connect, unlimited Audio/Video/Data conferencing for the extended enterprise for a fixed cost. See: www.interwise.com
•  NetScreen Secure Meeting Appliance - an e-meeting in a box! Focus is on security and cost reduction. See:www.netscreen.com
• Conferencing- Intranets.com, A very slick integration of real time functionality into an otherwise asynchronous collaboration vendor that is focused on SMBs. See: (www.intranetsmeeting.com)
• Meeting Edition 1.0- Raindance- a sophisticated integration of audio and video conferencing with sophisticated access rights and features like "follow talker." Offering a free 1-to- 1 service to start. See: (www.raindance.com)
• ShareITNow- Encounter Collaborative- Like Glance.net, this is a simple approach to web/data sharing for e-meetings (www.encounter.net).
• Accolade 5.0 from Sopheon - a very thoughtful approach to the problem of new product development (www.sopheon.com)
• First Virtual’s Conference Server 7.0 - interesting integration with MS Server 2003 (www.fvc.com)
• Séance Software - elegant integration with PBX for e-meetings
  (www.seancesoftware.com)
• Kubi Software- e-mail oriented collaboration (www.kubisoftware.com)
• Hyperwave - eConferencing Suite - moving into the e-meeting space
  (www.hyperwave.com)
  Imanage - WorkSite - an interesting combination of asynch/synch collaboration
  (www.imanage.com)
• SiteScape- the addition of process oriented templates/modules to the newest version of this e-meetings tool. ( www.sitescape.com)
• Truereq - Thoughtful collaborative requirements gathering tool for project management (www.truereq.com)
• Collaboration CONTROL!- DYS Analytics provides an interesting management tool that takes the next step in the collection and reporting of data and metrics for Domino and Exchange management. (www.dysanalytics.com).
• EReview - By Web4 is an elegant document, review and markup program that meets many of the CS e-meeting criteria. (www.ereviewonline.com)
• Ever want a really simple screen sharing solution? Glance's minimalist, but well thought out approach, is also reflected in their commodity pricing,900 customers in six months, and profitability. For more information, or a free trial see (www.glance.net).
• BrainEKP 3.5- helps you to create, manage, and find content in a graphical, relationship-oriented metaphor. See: www.thebrain.com
• e/Pop Web Conferencing by WiredRed, takes a presence-oriented approach to web conferencing and offers good audio and video support; see: www.wiredred.com

Documentum/BEA Webinar on how organizations can deploy a unified portal and content infrastructure designed to help improve customer service effectiveness. Wednesday, July 7, 2004, at 10:00 am PT/1:00 pm ET

See: http://www.documentum.com/events

BASEX Strategic Thinkers Forum ; 7/13, Los Angeles
Building Portals and Collaborative Business Environments 2004
See: http://www.strategicthinkers.com/special04

London KM Cluster, Symposium on Social Tools For The Enterprise: July 12, 2004, 8:00 - 5:00  Bloomsbury Square Training Centre , London
See: http://www.kmcluster.com/lon/

Southern California KM Cluster, Summer 2004 Tuesday, July 13, 2004,Los Angeles
http://www.strategicthinkers.com/kmcluster07

Wainhouse Research Summit, July 14-16, held at the Colonnade Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts
See:http://www.wainhouse.com/wrsummit/

5th International Conference on Information Communication Technologies in Education" , July 2004, Greece
See: http://www.ineag.gr/ICICTE

National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-04) July 25-29, 2004, San Jose, California, see: http://www.aaai.org/Conferences/National/2004/aaai04.html

BlogOn 2004: The Business of Social Media" (Berkeley, July 23rd)
See: http://www.blogonevent.com/blogon2004/

VoIP Developer Conference, August 3-4, San Jose, CA

See: http://www.tmcnet.com/voipdeveloper/

Distance Learning 2004, 20th Annual Conference, August 4-6, Madison, WI 
See:http://www.uwex.edu/disted/conference/

Seybold San Francisco 2004, Moscone West, San Francisco, CA
August 16-19, 2004
See: http://www.seybold365.com/sf2004

International Intellectual Capital Congress 02 - 03 Sep 2004, Helsinki, Finland
See: http://www.iccongress.fi/

Project World Baltimore, September 21-23 Baltimore MD
See: http://www.projectworld.com/pwevents.asp?eid=BA1004

Organizational Effectiveness through Collaborative Excellence, September 27-29, Fort Worth, Texas
See: http://www.workteams.unt.edu/conf/Fall2004/Call-for-presenters-2004.htm

Niku 2004 Global User Conference to Be Held at Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport September 27-29, 2004

See: www.niku.com

Business Performance Management Summit, October 19-20, New York Marriott Financial Center

See: http://www.bpmmag.net/summit/

Streaming Media WEST 2004, Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara, CA
October 26-28, 2004
See: http://www.streamingmedia.com/west/

ViewCentral Appoints New Finance Director with M&A and IPO Experience

See: www.viewcentral.com

Worldwide ISDN Selects V-SPAN Collaboration Platform as SME Conferencing Suite

See: www.vspan.com

Learning Network Queensland Uses Centra Online Collaboration to Connect Remote and Rural Communities in Australia with Education, Training and Legal Services, and Centra Offers Online Collaborative Solution to Boston Area Businesses Impacted by Democratic National Convention

See: www.centra.com

SiteScape Wins over $1M in Contracts from CDC, NIH and NIEHS

See: www.sitescape.com

Semagix Appoints Matthew Hilbert SVP Biz Dev For Financial and Govt. Mkts.

See: www.semagix.com

Interwoven TeamSite Helps NEC Manage New Web Site, and Interwoven WorkSite MP Chosen by Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island

See: www.interwoven.com

Communicast Now Offers Self-Service, Instant Recording of Live Web Conference Audio, Video and Data with One-Click Replay™

See: www.communicast.com

Smart Technologies Rear Projection SMART Board interactive whiteboard with XGA resolution < US $10,000 for educators, also SMART launches new version of SMART Board software for Mac OS X and announces Bridgit 2.0 software for more cost-effective conferencing.

See: www.smarttech.com

eDial Introduces IM Web Access Server 2.0

See: www.edial.com

FVC's Click to Meet 4.0 Enriches Learning With Real-Time, Rich Media Communications

See: www.fvc.com

Bechtel Selects Documentum ECM as Global Standard

See: www.documentum.com

Microsoft Creates Office Information Worker ‘Board of the Future' Composed of 15 University Students from 14 Countries

See: www.microsoft.com

SURGISCHEDULER™ SPIN OFF Wins Health Management Technology Award and Surgischeduler, a Webscheduler LLC Company, Signs License Agreement with United Surgical Assistants, Inc.

See: www.surgischeduler.com

Steve Peltier Joins WiredRed as CEO

See: www.wiredred.com

Genesys Boosts Voice over IP Capabilities to Deliver 1 Billion Minutes of Multimedia Conferencing by 2005

See: www.genesys.com

IBM Q1'04 Software Revenues Up 11% and Lotus Revenues up 13%

See: www.ibm.com/investor/1q04/1q04earnings.phtml

Open Text to Support Pharmaceutical Industry's “SAFE” Initiative, Among First to Provide Technology Prototype

See: www.opentext.com

Sony and RadVision Announce Open Conferencing Initiative

See: www.radvision.com

Affinity Engines Sues Google's Orkut Social Networking Site for Stolen Code.
See: http://www.orkut.com

ClearOne Sells its Conferencing Services division to Ptek Holdings Inc.
See: www.clearone.com .

3DIcon Corp. Developing Secure Digital Holography to Facilitate telecommuting
See: http://www.3dicon.net

NetTogether llc Release Version 2.0 of NetTogether Presenter SM
See: www.nettogether.com

AOL and Yahoo Back Out of EIM While OmniPod Offers Transition Plan

See: www.omnipod.com

Data Connection Ltd (DCL) announced version 3.0 of its MeetingServer web conferencing solution
See:http://www.dataconnection.com/press/meetingserverv3.htm

BeNotified Software, Inc., Auctions Presence Aware, Policy Managed, Real Time Communications Software

See: www.benotified.com

FaceTime Buys Offshore Development Group from Tumbleweed

See: www.facetime.com

Parlano and Communicator Partner to Offer Secure Collaboration for Financial Services

See: http://www.communicator.com/pr/PR_2004_06_08_MindAlignOnConnex.html

WebEX Now Works With AIM

See: www.webex.com

No News

OpenTextBook.org Supports On-Line Collaboratively Written Text Book

OpenTextBook.org is a new project to create a free, open text book 'collaboratively written by anyone on the internet', using a Creative Commons license. Citing the free software development model and the philosophy that underlies much of that effort, OpenTextBook.org's introduction says this philosophy should apply 'at its most basic to the learning of science.' They hope the project will help to counter the current governmental trend of strengthening the scope, duration and rights of intellectual property owners while cutting back on the fair use rights of individuals. The current state of the project is available as a daily snapshot pdf file which contains the introduction to the project and 9 chapters mostly covering math at this time." For more information see: http://www.opentextbook.org/

This is a very interesting online project/community that is using free tools and a variety of people's knowledge and content to create a textbook.  I am all for intellectual capital rights, but this project is going in just the other direction.  Without a WIIFM (what's in it for me) I am not sure that there will be a great deal of this kind of work happening, I could be wrong, but basically I think people look out for themselves and participate when they see it could in some way help them. People can sometimes be altruistic, but not on an ongoing basis, or for a long-term project like a book.  We wish them the best, and will track the progress of this project with interest.

Documentum Delivers Latest Version of eRoom.net Hosted Collaboration Environment

Documentum, a provider of enterprise content management and a division of EMC Corporation announced the latest version of Documentum eRoom.net, a hosted, subscription-based collaborative workspace that can be tailored for specific projects, processes or business initiatives, such as new product development, contracts negotiations, client engagement and supply chain management.  

Ideally suited for small to mid-sized businesses and departments or divisions within larger organizations, Documentum eRoom.net can be implemented and configured for hundreds of users within minutes and provides flexible, easy-to-use, feature-rich collaborative workspaces.

Documentum eRoom.net delivers enterprise-class salability, functionality and performance.  Hosted by EMC's Solutions Center based in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, Documentum eRoom.net offers organizations world-class management, security and protection of their applications and content.  Documentum eRoom.net requires little overhead support, minimal training and eliminates the need for an up front investment in IT infrastructure or staff. The company also announced a new Documentum eRoom.net Channel Partner Program, which enables partners to customize Documentum eRoom.net for industry-specific processes and sell to their customer base.

Documentum eRoom.net Features

Documentum eRoom.net provides ease of use and comprehensive feature sets, such as an intuitive interface, enhanced drag-and-drop functionality, rich text formatting, a shared calendar tool and powerful database capabilities.  New features of Documentum eRoom.net include:

• Collaborative project and program management – for efficient and predictable project execution with a structured project-planning tool that provides native, web-based project scheduling and Gantt charts for visibility into task and milestone relationships and dependencies, and supports custom program- and executive-level dashboard views for managing large project portfolios
• Pre-configured business applications – in addition to easily developing or reusing customized best practice applications, customers can also immediately deploy user-ready applications for collaborating on specific work processes, such as compliance, project management, new product development and finance
• eRoom Communities and Unlimited eRooms –customers can create an unlimited number of eRooms for a community of users for no additional charge per eRoom

New Documentum eRoom.net Channel Program

The new Documentum eRoom.net Channel Program enables partners with expertise in vertical industries such as manufacturing, pharmaceutical, energy, transportation and government, to customize and sell industry-specific collaboration solutions built on the eRoom.net platform to their own customers.

Documentum channel partner, e-IDC, a leading provider of technology solutions for the design and construction industry, integrates Documentum eRoom.net collaborative workspace into its product and services offerings, providing its customers with a rich set of applications specific to their industry's needs.  “Using Documentum eRoom.net, our customers are able to manage projects more efficiently and cost effectively from remote locations,” said Mike Pachler, CTO of e-IDC.  “Our customers have realized significant return on investment, including time savings, better project organization, improved communications and enhanced service delivery.  A recent project saved the company more than $50K in printing and delivery fees alone.”  

Pricing and Availability

Documentum eRoom.net is immediately available.  Pricing is a based on a monthly, sliding scale model, based on the number of users.  Pricing for 100 users averages $20 per person per month. For more information on Documentum eRoom.net, please visit: http://www.documentum.com/products/glossary/eroom_net.htm

e-Room.net is the ASP version of the industry-leading virtual team space. Besides integrating functionality with Documentum, eRoom.Net provides a great way for smaller businesses to take advantage of it's collaborative capabilities, without having to pay for additional infrastructure. At $20/user/month they are very price competitive and are now competing with a number of our TTW companies like Intranets.com, AdWeb and now GroveSite.  It looks like this part of the collaboration market is heating up, and with this increased competition we expect to see pricing drop even lower, as well as the integration of better "presence" capabilities in such systems.

Boston Scientific Trains 5,000 in 8 Months Using IntraLearn XE

IntraLearn Software Corporation, a supplier of configurable e-Learning software applications, announced that Boston Scientific Corporation has successfully implemented IntraLearn XE (Extended Enterprise) to train field personnel for new product launches.

The multiple-language system is hosted for Boston Scientific by IntraLearn partner QuickCompliance, a full-service e-Learning company that provides e-Learning, testing and tracking solutions.

Boston Scientific needed to distribute educational documents on physiology to its workforce for an upcoming product launch. To meet this regulatory requirement, they needed an LMS that was hosted, had an assessment engine capable of randomizing questions, was SCORM compliant, was exceptionally secure, and could be customized and run simultaneously in several languages.

Jerry Goguen, CEO of IntraLearn Software Corporation, said, "We are pleased to have been chosen by BSC to meet their stringent needs. The fact that we and QuickCompliance have successfully met those requirements is a testament to the quality of IntraLearn'™s products and partnerships."

BSC also had to begin delivering courses and assessments in advance of the product launch. "To help meet this aggressive schedule," said John Danaher, CEO of QuickCompliance, "we used parallel teams of media developers to create inexpensive online courseware in less than 3 weeks, and hosted IntraLearn for ready access to meet the launch date."

In the 8 months since the project began, Boston Scientific registered over 5,000 students and 27 courses in 4 languages. The total number of learners is expected to grow to 15,000.  For more information see: http://www.intralearn.com/4010_PR-BSC.asp

In many ways regulatory compliance can drive various types of collaboration. In this case e-learning was the target, and new product launches are an ongoing need of most companies.  The need to get the sales force trained quickly, get the same message out to the market and keep travel costs down all help prove the ROI for the e-Learning case

Our guess is that Boston Scientific broke even on the software, maintenance and support costs after only 200 people, so they are way ahead at 5000, and it is even more compelling at 15,000.  RTC tools, like e-learning only have about a 15% penetration rate currently based on CS research, so we to expect to see a lot more of this over the next 2 years.

Business Engine Survey Reveals Global 2000 Firms Waste $300M Each Year From Failure to Run the Business of IT

A survey of Global 2000 companies has shown that over $300m per year is being wasted on poorly managed IT projects due to a failure to efficiently run the business of IT.

The figure comes from an international Value Assessment survey of IT directors and executives conducted by project portfolio management and collaboration software specialist Business Engine. The in-depth survey was conducted over a three-year period with over 30 blue chip organizations across the financial, healthcare, retail and telecommunications sectors.

The primary objective of the survey was to identify which business areas within organizations deliver the most value, thereby guiding executives to focus and prioritize IT budget on those areas that produce the greatest and most immediate ROI. Under-utilization of offshore outsourcing (offshoring) was found to be the single biggest cost saving opportunity missed by businesses.

" The survey reveals major missed opportunities for increasing the value of IT within an organization," said Doug Dickey, CEO and president of Business Engine. "Three key areas account for the bulk of the opportunities: poor visibility and control of IT projects, a failure to align a company's IT with its business strategy, and the underutilization of existing resources, primarily offshoring - are the culprits."

Data from the Value Assessment survey identified that:

** The single biggest cost to a business was the under-utilization of offshoring. The Survey concluded that 29 percent of the total $300m was lost due to companies failing to take better advantage of existing resources across geographical boundaries.

** 28 percent of the total potential cost savings were lost due to poor visibility and control of projects resulting in overruns and delays and a failure to identify and resolve problems in the early stages of a problematic project.

** A failure to align IT with business strategy also accounted for 28 percent of the losses.

" It is clear that aligning IT with business strategy is the quickest way to achieve considerable value gains and cost savings," continued Dickey. "Constant evaluation, coupled with portfolio prioritization and optimization means a company can reallocate resources from low to high value projects quickly and efficiently. The biggest prize, however, will go to those organizations that start their offshore initiatives as soon as possible."

Business Engine's analysis of the data also includes key recommendations for companies seeking to harness the available cost savings. The full report is available for download at http://www.businessengine.com/solutions/value_of_it.html

Having dealt with many IT organizations in my time, the survey results do not surprise me. Not that IT is not necessary, and does not provide a valuable service to the enterprise, they do, but not always with the level of efficiency we all would like to see.  How many times have you asked an IT person to develop an application for your organization only to be told that you can get it in 1-2 years at a cost of $5M. It seems ridiculous, but that is usually the standard answer.  The problem here is one of context, which is alluded to in the finding that IT is not always aligned with the enterprise business goals. To start to fix this situation it is important to start to measure IT by the value they provide the LOBs, and find ways to quantify and track that value. This is especially true and especially hard with collaborative applications, but it is even more necessary to do with collaborative applications because they have such a broad social reach and effect on the organization.

Horizon Wimba Marge, Acquire Continuum Group B and get a $1.875 million Private Placement of Shares of Preferred Stock as Mr. Tommaso Trionfi becomes CEO of Horizon Wimba

HorizonLive.com, Inc., a U.S. company and provider of virtual classrooms and real-time collaboration software to higher education, and Wimba S.A., a French company and a leading provider of web-based voice collaboration tools to higher education, jointly announced today the completion of their business combination, previously announced April 7, 2004. Effective as of the closing of the transaction, the corporate name of the

combined companies has been changed to Horizon Wimba, Inc. ("Horizon Wimba")

and Mr. Tommaso Trionfi, former CEO of Wimba S.A., has become the CEO of

Horizon Wimba, while Mr. Walter H. Barandiaran, former CEO of HorizonLive.com, Inc., has become the Chairman of Horizon Wimba.

Horizon Wimba also announced that it has concurrently completed a private

placement of shares of its Class A 5% Convertible Redeemable Preferred Stock

for an aggregate purchase price of $1.875 million. The primary investors in

the Class A Preferred were current institutional shareholders of HorizonLive

and Wimba.

Horizon Wimba also announced that it has entered into an Agreement and Plan

of Reorganization (the "Plan of Reorganization") with Continuum Group B,

Inc., a Nevada corporation and a reporting company under the Exchange Act of

1934, as amended ("Group B"). Pursuant to the Plan of Reorganization, a

subsidiary of Group B will be merged into Horizon Wimba and Horizon Wimba

will become the surviving company. Following completion of the Plan of

Reorganization and subject to a vote of Group B's shareholders, it is

expected that Group B's (i) name will be changed to Horizon Wimba, Inc.,

(ii) state of incorporation will be changed from Nevada to Delaware, and

(iii) shares of common stock will trade in the OTC Bulletin Board.

Completion of the Plan of Reorganization is subject to customary closing

conditions. For more information, contact info@horizonwimba.com.

Horizon Live has been in the RTC market for quite a while, but over the past few years they have been struggling.  Not only because they were small, but because there are many other players in the e-learning market space, and some very large players have jumped into this area. One of the trends CS has seen over the last 2 years is a lot of consolidation. In this case it is consolidation of 3 companies to provide a more fully-featured solution, instead of what we call a "point solution."  This type of consolidation is a clear sign of a maturing market.

US Phone Regulations May Drive VoIP

The US Supreme Court refused to block a US appeals court decision (in March) to eliminate phone competition regulations requiring RBOCs to share their local networks with competitors at deep discounts.  This is known as UNE-P (Unbundled Network Element - Platform) regulation and has been in place since the Telecommunications Act of 1996.  The rules expired earlier this week.  The US Supreme Court refused to grant a stay of the decision as requested by AT&T and several state utility regulators.  This means that the RBOCs (Regional Bell Operating Companies) are no longer bound by the rules to offer their local access facilities at set prices between $15 and $22 per copper pair, depending on the state.  

Long distance and competitive carriers may now be more motivated to own their own facilities and use the UNE-L (Unbundled Network Element - Loop) rates that range in price from $2 to $7 per copper pair.  This is where delivering VoIP (Voice over IP) services using media gateways comes in.  VoIP networks cost less to own and operate than traditional TDM networks and create the ability to offer additional services.  While the FCC is developing new rules to replace the old rules that expired, competitive carriers will move to own more of their own facilities (using VoIP) to compete with the incumbents.  In the meantime, the incumbents are also adding VoIP capabilities to their networks. For more information on federal regulations and VoIP see: http://www.instat.com/catalog/bcatalogue.asp?id=18  

We have been watching the emergence of VoIP over the last few years, and as we have stated in our last RTC report (2003) there are several factors holding the widespread adoption of VoIP back: the first is quality, although we have used quite a number of VoIP tools as part of web conferencing or other collaborative systems, they just don't offer the same voice quality and reliability as PSTN does; The second reason is that it will take a behavioral change for people to see their computer as their telephone.  We believe that the addition of "presence" will help to make the computer into a more valuable tool then the telephone in the near future. The third and final barrier to VoIP is regulatory, the Bush administration has in some ways helped to foster VoIP by keeping regulators away from the fledgling technology. The expiration of the FCC regulations will surely expedite a trend towards VoIP that has been in full swing for the last two years.

Best Practices for Enterprise Adoption of Collaboration

By David Coleman

We recently had a chance to see a demo of Oracle's new real-time tool, called Oracle Web Conferencing. As an enterprise tool for RTC it seems to hit the mark, but what really distinguished Oracle in my mind was how they rolled this technology out to Oracle its self. As an organization, Oracle had been using 12 different RTC tools until 18 months ago when OWC went beta. This was a big switch, and one that is still going on at Oracle.

Oracle currently has 40,000 employees worldwide. OWC went into beta in November of 2002 and was released into production in October of 2003 . The development team at Oracle has been working on OWC, which is part of Oracle's Collaboration Suite, for the last 3 years. Currently Oracle has 31,862 of it's employees using the system with a mix of 50% being ad-hoc and 50% as a part of formal line of business (LOB). Usage statistics show about 1.2 million minutes/week currently which Michael Miller, Sr. Director, Product Management RTC Products, expects usage to grow to 5.0 million minutes/week by year-end.

In working with two different lines LOBs, Oracle Direct (telesales) and Oracle Support, current anecdotal evidence states that Oracle Support has saved about 30% from the use of OWC. Mark Walsh, the RTC champion at Oracle Support notes: "OWC is an integral part of our support offering, allowing Oracle the ability to see any issue real-time, diagnose the solution with a high degree of accuracy and collaborate with our customers. Oracle Web Conference is a critical tool in our quest to become an industry leader in customer service and satisfaction."

It is harder to get any kind of ROI from Oracle Direct, but when we interviewed Norm Gennaro, Technical Director, Core technology Sales Consulting, and the champion for OWC at Oracle Direct he stated “ OWC has enabled Oracle Direct to take our interaction quality with the customers to the next level. We can show and do things with them with OWC that I don't believe we could do with any of the other commercial products on the market today. ”

So what did the Oracle development team for OWC do that was so unique, and helped to drive adoption through the enterprise so well? After an extensive number of interviews we found 12 best practices for driving adoption of OWC throughout Oracle by the development team. Not all of these best practices are transferable to organizations outside Oracle, but since Oracle is now selling OWC to customers, we at CS are encouraging the development team to also share some of these best practices with their prospects and customers, and in some cases to even help their customers with adoption so that their customers can be more successful with this specific collaborative technology.

It is our belief that most collaborative software vendors fall short in their offerings to the customer, not so much in the technology they have to offer, but rather how they offer it. Because collaboration is a complex interactive social process, we believe that these vendors underestimate the complexity that their customer has to deal with in getting wide spread adoption, and that without help from the vendor or some other third party organization, about 85% of collaborative installations will only see limited and not wide spread adoption in the enterprise.

So it is no surprise that when we run across an organization that does a good job in helping the enterprise adopt a new technology, we want to write about it. True, Oracle is having their own enterprise adopt technology that they built, and this may be a strong reason for adoption, but there is still a lot to learn from this case study.

The Dirty Dozen

In reviewing this complex case study, we were able to tease 12 factors that the Oracle OWC development team did, that helped them be successful in getting wide spread adoption of their technology at Oracle. These factors are listed below, and this multi-part article goes through each of these factors in detail to make a fascinating case study.

•  Understand all the use cases for RTC in the enterprise.

•  Make it easy to use – for both internal and external users, but make sure the right groups get the right level of education/training on the tool, while making the tool use as transparent as possible to the end user.

•  Make it easy to administer, have a low TCO and easy to deploy (central)

•  Help to integrate it directly into specific (critical) business processes

•  Operational Simplicity -Make sure the application is efficient and does not require large amounts of bandwidth

•  Get the CEO to be the champion for the technology in the enterprise, make sure it is used on a regular basis with the executive committee.

•  Make sure the executive team is trained on the technology, what it can do, and how it might be used in their organization.

•  Deal with implementation challenges immediately and directly

•  Make sure your technology is in line with corporate technology standards – can traverse firewall's, proxy servers, etc.

•  Make sure the pilot in each group is successful and then help the group plan and implement the deployment.

•  Get buy-in from one or two visible groups in the organization, and make them successful

•  Make the technology available to others in the organization on an ad-hoc basis to help create “buzz” about the technology and it's benefits

Understanding All The Use Cases for RTC in the Enterprise

It is important to understand whom your audience and users will be for your RTC tool. Oracle was clear on their target, large, geographically distributed enterprises, like themselves.

The development team for OWC talked with a number of the LOBs at Oracle that were currently using other RTC tools and found out what worked and did not work with those tools. For example, Oracle Direct, which is 900 people scattered in 5 offices around the world and generates several hundred about $450 million dollars in revenue, was pretty happy using WebEx. Oracle Direct has a long history with RTC tools going back 8 years, and have used WebLine, Raindance, PlaceWare and most recently WebEx. Norm Gennaro, the RTC champion for Oracle Direct frankly told the development team that they had a great license deal with WebEx, and had spent a lot of time with WebEx in customizing it to work for Oracle the way they wanted it to. “ When we sat down with the Oracle RTC development team, what we told them is that we were not going to switch RTC tools unless the tool they wanted us to use really worked, and provide some serious additional benefit .”

The issues that Norm identified to the Oracle development team were, speed, ease of use (due to a 30% turnover rate in the sales force), customization, ability to integrate with current work processes, and to get the latest and greatest technology as soon as it was available. In terms of speed, it had to work better and faster than WebEx, and because they had a custom version of WebEx they were not getting updated on WebEx technology as soon as it was available (if at all).

When the development team talked to Oracle Support, it was a very different set of needs they heard about, but they also wanted a real-time tool, and currently were using PC Anywhere and Expert City. Oracle Support, unlike Oracle Direct, has 4,000 people, but they are not scattered geographically.

According to Mark Welsh, Sr. Director of Collaborative Support and champion for RTC in the support organization “ we needed the capability of going into a collaborative experience with our customer to understand their issue to properly diagnose and solve those as quickly as possible .”

When the development team interviewed Mark, they found that the current RTC tools had some drawbacks. “ Expert City was missing the ability to have multiple people/roles participate in a session (support, development, consulting) reviewing one customer issue. The other critical issue was that a support person using Expert City could see the customer's environment, but they could not see ours. We often need a true bi-directional experience to help the customer solve their problem .”

When the Oracle Development Team for OWC created the tool they not only created it to support multiple people in a session, and to be bi-directional, but they also had the advantage of OWC being compatible with other Oracle tools, which would allow Oracle Support to store critical issue data directly into other Oracle applications and databases.

Ease of Use and Appropriate Training

One of the biggest advantages OWC has, which we heard from everyone we interviewed at Oracle was it's intuitiveness and ease of use. Part of this was determined by the application of OWC. For example in Oracle Direct, because of the high turn over rate, extensive training would be an issue. In addition, most of the sales reps did not require full OWC functionality, but rather, just needed to quickly get into OWC's application sharing function. Oracle Web Conferencing was presented to the initial (pilot group) through a full training, showing them all the features of web conferencing.

However, since most of the Oracle Direct Sales Reps did not need all the features of OWC but they did need their prospects to be able to get into the tool quickly and easily, that is were the focus of the development team was.

According to Norm Gennaro “ one of the key things we needed to see happen to move to OWC was that it had to be irrelevant to the user. We have customers right now that go to a page called: “meet.oracle.com” and at the same time our sales reps would go to our web portal which is called “sales call online.” Since we always do web conferencing in desktop sharing mode, there is no console for the reps to see, they just get a red box around the edge of their screen after seeing two flashes on their screen and then they know that the person on the other end can see whatever is on their desktop .”

So those that did not need training did not get it, and those that needed it, like the few people at Oracle Direct that do Webinars, and needed to know the full extent of OWC's feature set, got the training they needed to use OWC for the Webinars.

Ease Of Administration and Low TCO

According to Campbell Webb, Sr. Director Collaboration Suite and Product Services, who is the IT person responsible for running both the productions system and the on-demand hosted business for OWC at Oracle, it was almost two years ago that he saw the first version of OWC. Initially when the code was more fluid (the first 6 months of beta test) IT had weekly face-to-face meetings with the development team and also got new releases of the code weekly so that they could patch the system on the fly without any outages.

Once the code began to stabilized they began applying standard IT practices and procedures to the software: put on a production platform Red Hat Linux, and started applying standard monitoring tools to it like SiteScope, and Enterprise Manager. They applied standard backup practices and even though it was built in house, they treated it like any other application they ran.

Today OWC runs in Oracle's Rocky Mountain data center on six small Dell 2650 Servers (with dual CPUs and 6 GB Memory). Although they started with only three of the 2650's, they added three more when the code moved from beta to production. With each of the servers costing about $5k and an additional Network Appliance 400 GB disk the total cost for the system was $40k.

The OWC servers are only in one site at the Oracle data center. Initially there was some concern about performance and there was a plan to have local OWC servers in various geographic regions, but performance was so good that they decided it was not needed and kept it in one location.

To support the hardware and software for OWC Oracle IT uses two people to support three different environments: the staging environment where they validate new releases of code; the trial environment, where anyone can sign up for a 30-day try before you buy free trial (which IT manages for the sales force); and the production environment.

To get a rough estimate of the TCO we will look at two years of cost because Oracle offers a perpetual named user license . Therefore 2/3 of the hardware costs = $26.6K, and with a retail price of $45/user x a 40% enterprise license discount = $27/user (which covers both years) x 31,862 users = $860,274 plus the cost of two IT support people for 2 years = $320k, for a total cost of $1,206 , 874 . If we divide this number in half ($603437) and divide by the number of users (31,862) the yearly cost per user is about $19, which is much lower than the market leader WebEx's TCO costs and significantly lower than Microsoft's LiveMeeting TCO.

Part 2 Next Month

David Coleman is the Founder and Managing Director of Collaborative Strategies (CS), and the editor of the “Inside Collaboration” newsletter. He is the author of two books on groupware, and is the editor and writes the “Guru's Corner” column for this newsletter. He can be reached at davidc@collaborate.com or 415-282-9197.

Making Collaboration Work

By

David Straus and David Coleman

David Straus has spent the last 30+ years looking at collaboration. From graduate training in architecture at the Harvard School of Design in 1965 and the founding of Interaction Associates in 1969, David has watched the field of collaboration mature over the last 3-4 decades. I had the chance to interview David recently about his greatest insights into collaboration as well as his greatest challenges… David Coleman

[read more]

Collaborative Strategies makes every effort to bring you timely, accurate information on collaboration and knowledge management. However, we are part of a rapidly evolving market ourselves and events occur during the publication of this newsletter every month that we do not become aware of or that happen post-production. If you know of such events, please contact David Coleman at Davidc@collaborate.com so we can note these key events in the next edition of this newsletter.