Here’s an excerpt:

Jay Baer: There is of course relentless chatter about social media ROI and success metrics. Measuring social media is viable, but not obvious. Is the same true in adoption of new technologies? How should companies evaluate success?

Phil Simon: Great question. The ROI of many Enterprise 2.0 technologies can be relatively easily derived. For example, an organization that would have spent $5M over ten years on a traditional ERP or CRM application (bought from an on-premise vendor) may spend $1M on a SaaS alternative such as Workday or salesforce.com. Alternatively, an organization may use the open source LAMP stack and OpenOffice and save a great deal on software licenses. Note that open source does not mean free, however.

For other technologies, the ROI is a bit tougher to quantify. How does one easily put a value on better data management via MDM? What is the precise ROI of being able to understand your customer base better via business intelligence (BI) applications?

While ROI is important, a discussion of evaluating success and benefits is remiss without considering risks—that’s why there’s a chapter on enterprise risk management. Any new major enterprise technology endeavor introduces risk. However, many times not doing something is actually the bigger risk.

You can read the entire interview by clicking here.

You can watch the video below or go the CS TechCast page. My piece begins around the 13 minute mark and goes for about 12 minutes.

Against this backdrop, I recently read a few posts that emphasize the continued importance of people in this very dynamic environment.

Cloud Computing

In Fixing IT in the cloud computing era,  Dion Hinchcliffe writes extensively about the game-changing nature of cloud computing. Ultimately,

…enterprise architects truly become business architects and business people become their own IT experts. Some of this is already here though much of it is not and there are certainly many issues to be worked out. But the writing is increasingly on the wall that this is the future of IT in the cloud computing era.

Translation: We are overcoming the traditional limitations of enterprise software. This has enormous implications for everyone, especially folks with “less than progressive” views on the normative roles of business end users and IT.

People-Oriented Architecture

In a related post, 2010 Watchlist: People-Oriented Architecture, Phil Wainewright writes:

I’ve used the term people-oriented architecture to make a deliberate contrast with our experience of service-oriented architecture in the past decade. Unlike SOA — which too often sought to remake the way that computers talk to one another without any reference to or consideration of user needs and business results — people-oriented architectures have to be developed collaboratively and iteratively with users and business owners, giving them as much freedom and autonomy as possible to control and manage information and processes to achieve the results they want. It’s an acknowledgment that people are both the commanding providers and the ultimate end consumers of any of the services in a computing architecture.

Put another way, just because we can doesn’t mean that we should, to paraphrase a quote from Jurassic Park. Enterprise 2.0 tools such as SOA, OS, and SaaS are very flexible. Because of this, the role of intelligent business decisions regarding design, architecture, UI, and the like are more important than before, not less.

Simon Says

In Enterprise 2.0, end users will drive how new apps and technologies ultimately work. I truly believe that we’re entering a period in which just about anything is possible on a technology front. The shackles of desktops and laptops, traditional networks, and client-server architecture are being removed. People matter, big time.

What do you think?

One of the issues that I have routinely seen over my years as a software consultant concerns customizations. On many a project, the functionality of a COTS application did not meet one of my clients current business practices. Invariably, this would beg the question, “Should we customize the system?” In this post, I’ll look at this from the angle of open source applications…

Click here to read the entire post.

What’s this about, anyway?

In the first chapter, I set the stage for the rest of the book and hopefully pique your interest. I discuss companies such as Google, Twitter, and Lawson. I also write about the inflection point at which many organizations find themselves, now that Enterprise 2.0 has arrived. Specifically, SaaS, clouds, open source, and other new technologies have become viable.

Also, you will find the table of contents and, perhaps, will understand why the book isn’t exactly short.

For more on the book, click here.

The Next Wave of Technologies – Chapter 1

Introduction

Two years ago, I switched from Mozilla Thunderbird to Gmail. Ever since then, a little voice has bugged me each time I sent an email. You see, I’m an open source software developer, the name of my company is “Open Source Strategies,” and our mission is to promote open source software. So when I give up on one of the most popular and successful open source applications, is it just an isolated expedient, or does it mean something bigger?

After two years, I’ve decided that it does. Cloud computing is a big time game changer, and we open source developers better get prepared.

Cloud applications are everywhere today, offering a hosted alternative to just about every open source project. For example, just from Google consider the following:

• Gmail to replace sendmail/postfix and Thunderbird
• Google Apps to replace Zimbra
• Google Docs to replace OpenOffice
• Google Groups to replace forums
• Google Sites to replace wikis and content management systems.

Then there are smaller cloud-based applications like Disqus and MicroPoll to replace the discussion and poll features which are ubiquitous in ecommerce and content management systems like Joomla!, Drupal, WordPress, and Magento.

And yet, open source developers are amazingly complacent. We’re lulled by the fact that most open source applications are web-enabled. Some of us think the cloud is just another deployment option. Some of us hope that maybe a cloud computing vendor would buy us out. Does none of us ever wonder if “No Software” might just mean “No Open Source Software” as well?

We should take cloud computing more seriously. Cloud computing has created a new value proposition for users. Unless open source developers understand and adapt to it, they will be relegated to the sidelines of the software industry. Let’s first take a look at that value proposition, and then at what it means for open source.

Traditional vs. Open Source vs. Cloud Value Propositions

Traditional commercial software is often expensive. First you have to pay to license the software, then pay for hardware to run it, then pay again for the software to be customized, and finally pay regularly for maintenance and support. Furthermore, because the source code is not available, commercial software could be very difficult to customize to meet the users’ actual needs. This combination of high cost and lack of flexibility is pushing some CIO’s to look for greener pastures.

Open source addresses both of these issues with a once novel but now familiar approach. The software is available free of charge, and the source code is also available so the user could modify it to fit their needs. The user just has to pay for the hardware and any customizations he needs, so the cost to acquire the software is significantly lower. Most importantly, the user has the flexibility to modify and use the software according to his needs.
Cloud-based software takes a different approach. The user pays a recurring fee to use a cloud-based application. In return, the cloud vendor provides both the hardware and software as a package. Cloud-based applications themselves are highly standardized, and you don’t get to see the source code. However, they usually provide APIs for building third-party add-on modules. This way, cloud vendors (try to) provide flexibility via a better technical architecture, rather than by freeing the code.

Clearly, people like this model. Consider two cases in point:

• Salesforce.com has grown to over a million users
• Google Apps has signed up over two million businesses

This begs the question: Why are cloud-based applications so successful? Because they have made it easy. Even though open source software is free, you still have to get the hardware and then set up and possibly customize it.  Cloud software vendors have taken care of all that for us, so we just have to show up with our browsers. For most users who don’t have very specialized needs, that convenience is far more important than having the source code.

So What About Open Source?

One viable option for open source software is simply to become the “anti-cloud.” Perhaps somethings aren’t meant to be “in the cloud” after all. For example, Eucalyptus is offering an open source solution to build internal clouds inside the data center. (The US Army’s Deputy CIO is quoted on their home page. Could you imagine why the military might not want everything “in the cloud?”)

Another interesting option is to make open source software the entry point to the cloud. Under this model, the real value of computing moves to the cloud, and open source becomes a way to mobilize developers to create as many entry points to that reservoir of value as possible. For example, Google made its Android platform open source to encourage the development of mobile applications which connect to the web—where Google rules. Skype’s plans to open source its client software seems to fit with this logic as well.

Finally, are there cases where flexibility is so important that standardized applications in the cloud wouldn’t work for a lot of users? We believe that Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is one such case. Because virtually every business has some unique processes, almost all ERP software packages must be customized to meet the needs of the particular organization. In these cases, open source is the right solution, and we’ve seen it in polls like this one from the home page of opentaps Open Source ERP + CRM, which tells us that most users of open source ERP are looking to deploy it internally:

Open Source and the Cloud Together

Ultimately, open source and the cloud are not mutually exclusive; they can work together.

I started my blog at opensourcestrategies.blogspot.com five years ago, but then moved it to WordPress last year. So here’s a case where I’ve moved off the cloud and back to open source. But I also use Google’s Feedburner to syndicate my blog, and I’m thinking about adding Facebook wigdets, MicroPoll, and Disqus as well.

I hope this may serve as an example for the future: a free and flexible open source core application enhanced by cloud add-ons. Open source software gave me more control, specifically over my online identity: I can have my own domain name, look and feel, and my choice of modules and add-ons. The cloud applications gave me easy, inexpensive, and maintenance-free ways to add standard features to this core. Today this is common in the blogging world, but we are re-architecting opentaps to bring that to enterprise software such as ERP and CRM as well: a world of open core architecture and platform-independent add-on modules.

Thanks again to Si for this great post.

Against this backdrop, I read an article on NPR with great interest. One thing led to another and I was ultimately able to speak with Laura Schoppe, head of Fuentek, a consultancy that helps organizations transfer technology from one application to new ones.

During this 20 minute podcast, Laura discusses the challenges–and opportunities–associated with being completely virtual, management challenges, software as a service (SaaS), open source, and a host of other interesting topics.

To listen to the podcast, click here or visit iTunes.

An interesting article in ComputerWorld the other day caught my eye. FewClix announced the introduction of a plug-in for the much-maligned Lotus Notes email application.

From the article, the FewClix plug-in allows for the following:

Archiving: While Notes only lets users archive batches of e-mail by date, FewClix offers archiving by any combination of factors, such as recipient + before date + attachment. The beta requires users to search archives separate from the main inbox, but that will be changed by the general release, Kumar said.

Folders and Groups: Rather than forcing users to set rules that route e-mails into various folders, Fewclix lets users keep their e-mails in the inbox but reduce clutter by creating different “Groups.” Those groups can virtually offload read and process e-mails to “done” groups, mimicking the delete/inbox removal process advocated by David Allen’s Getting Things Done regimen, Kumar said.

Performance: A slick demo Kumar showed involved a Notes database with 12,000 e-mails. He said FewClix’s in-memory index enables “very good” performance for mailboxes as large as 200,000 e-mails.

Now, I have not used Lotus Notes in nearly eight years but recently worked with a consultant forced to use the application for email. In a phrase, she hated it, and with good reason. I believed then–as I do now–that Lotus Notes is not remotely user-friendly. It completely deserves its reputation as a clunker.

Note that Notes’ purists will insist that you can use Domino Designer to develop databases and web applications. While I don’t dispute this, as an email client, I have never met a true Notes’ fan. It’s simply clunky.

The Problem with Plug-Ins

While I am a huge fan of plug-ins (especially for Firefox, my browser), this is the wrong route to go for Lotus Notes for several reasons. First, remember that Notes is primarily a corporate email application. I’ll bet you a coke that most IT departments will not sanction employees’ downloading third-party plug-ins to use with Lotus Notes. Imagine if the aforementioned Domino tools have been used to customize Notes, something that I have certainly seen before. The plug-ins can cause IT departments major problems.

Second, what does that say about your application when plug-ins have to address basic features, such as search and performance? We’re not talking about a cool new theme or the ability to add fish swimming in the background. This is core stuff, man.

Finally, why should end-users have to suffer when there are so many user-friendly alternatives? I have used gmail, Yahoo mail, and different versions of web-based Outlook. Each is vastly superior with respect to search and its overall user interface (UI).

Why IBM Won’t Blow Up Lotus Notes

I honestly have no idea. IBM has certainly embraced change, as evinced by their recent adoption of open source technologies such as Linux. Perhaps someone can explain this to me?

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To this end, I recently spoke with my friend Heather Meeker, intellectual property attorney and author of The Open Source Alternative: Understanding Risks and Leveraging Opportunities and A Primer on Intellectual Property Licensing Heather is also a contributor to my next book and one of the foremost authorities on the legal side of open source.

During this podcast, Heather answers questions such as:

• Open source software seems to be gaining traction in organizations these days. Why is this the case?
• Are certain types of apps more ready for OS? Why?
• I have heard many people say that “open source equals free.” Is this accurate?
• What are the most common misconceptions that people have about open source?
• What are the major risks associated with open source software?

Click here to access this 14 minute podcast or visit iTunes.