Portals, Content and Collaboration

Gartner is hosting a summit event in Baltimore: Portals, Content and Collaboration I am going to try to blog the sessions I attend. Let's see how it goes... My interest in this event is in the collaboration aspects of the event. Using collaboration tools provides an opportunity to capture knowledge and re-use it. For this to work we often have to rethink the way we work. The biggest switch is in moving from a document centric view of the world to a page-centric view. The conference was opened by Whit Andrews, VP, Distinguished Analyst, Gartner. How do you innovate without risking your company? Five discontinuities that are re-writing the rules: 1. software as a service 2. Open source 3. Global class computing 4. Web 2.o 5. Consumerization Consumerization Technolust driven by a desire for simplicity. "Consumer grade is the new industrial strength" Apple is driving consumerization in the cell phone space. They do this by delivering functionality incrementally Web 2.0 Amazon and Flickr have re-written the rules of engagement. "Why is my portal harder to use than Google?" Web 2.0 has moved us beyond text. Rich interface, real-time editing, instant communication. Software as a Service (SaaS) This is not a return to mainframes. SaaS leads to ease of use. Fast to deploy. Reduces complexity. SaaS categories: Office Suites, ERP, CRM but Content Communication and Collaboration is the big driver of SaaS. This is a wiki world. Global Class Computing Resilience is better than perfect. Web 2.0 players will spend over $10B on teraplex computing - the cloud. Cloud computing will take off but will do so by going through the Hype Cycle. Open Source Deep, broad and powerful. Moving from the OS (Linux) higher up the software stack and moving beyond the area of development tools. Enterprises are considering or have deployed open source DBMS solutions. MySQL, now owned by Sun, is bigger than DB2. Generate the capacity to Innovate Seize the cloud gently Content Explosion There is a content explosion underway and it is multi-dimensional. As the complexity rises our consumers expect everything to get easier to use. Our job is to mask complexity. Collaboration needs to be baked in to the process. It is the originating element and not an afterthought. Portals and collaboration go hand in hand. The portal serves up a personalized experience. We will soon have follow-me portals. So there are 3 recommendations:

• Generate the capacity to Innovate
• Seize the cloud gently
• Renovate our architectures.

“Speeding administrative tasks does not generate a capacity to innovate” “Productivity is not about the number of minutes we get back. It is about what we do with those minutes.” Proper architecture does not mean enforcing standardization. Encourage diversity. But enable inclusion.