Rumors of Death Are Greatly Exaggerated (Again)

[admin]

There is some minor, yet annoying sidebar commentary about ‘Why Google+ is not an Enterprise Social Network.’ Normally it is not worth reacting to such superficial and naïve commentary. However, since it is emblematic of most the problems with enterprise social network services (SNS) then it is blog-worthy.

The problems with enterprise SNS are pervasive, insidious and costly. Fortunately, the solutions are simple and free. Unfortunately, various industry actors, and their hype, hubris and hyperbole, create deliberate barriers to matching problem with solution. This needs rectification.  

Purpose of the Firm

Often, concerning enterprise SNS, there is a basic lack of understanding about the purpose of the firm. The role of enterprise SNS is to achieve fundamental advancements in productivity, productivity growth (innovation) and enterprise decision making. Period.



Remember, the enterprise operates within a certain bounded rationality for decision making and related activities. There is a cost to gathering and processing information. Insofar as enterprise SNS lower costs and improves decisions, they have benefits. Unfortunately, most do not.

For example, take the so-called enterprise silos. Silos play a critical role – they are a unique social network pattern. Silos, or bounded knowledge domains, create specific benefits, advantages and knowledge for the firm that simply could not be created otherwise.

Principles of social network analysis (SNA) and graph theory are essential to determine the cost benefits and effectiveness of enterprise SNS. They elaborate the productivity, innovation and suitability of enterprise SNS. Deploying (or criticizing) enterprise SNS without a comprehension of the actual social networks, the knowledge pathways and structures, is utterly ridiculous. It is the root cause of most failures. 

An essential purpose of enterprise social software is to broker structural holes, not tear down silos (?) and other essential organizational, social and knowledge foundations of the firm. It is the knowledge-based view (KBV) of the firm and it is rising fast. Brokering via SNS achieves lower cost and greater effectiveness while maintaining, extending and creating essential organizational foundations and network patterns. This is a clear benefit of enterprise SNS: advancing the purpose of the firm.



Enterprise Oversupply



Meanwhile, today the enterprise is literally choking on a vast oversupply of collaborative offerings and social network services. The average enterprise has more collaborative capability that anyone could master in a hundred thousand years. Yet, suppliers still battle for the hyper-saturated SNS space as if they have something new or novel. It is a costly mistake and strategic disgrace.

Besides commercial oversupply, there is a vast ocean of insanely great open source and otherwise free offerings for enterprise collaboration and robust social network services. All you need to do is switch them on!

It is nothing new. Oversupply and duplication of enterprise solution software has been a mainstay of IT vendors for decades. However, today, for enterprise SNS, it is a lot harder to create the fear, uncertainty and doubt, the FUD-factor, that drives enterprise sales. It’s because most people are already using public and free SNS.

It is just lot more difficult to bamboozle enterprise buyers to get stuff they don’t need like SNS. Slamming competitors with dubious editorial is a tried and true method. Don’t buy it. Remember, the consequence of oversupply is people just won’t use it. It is a common problem. Beware.

Google+



How can people slam a service like G+ that is barely five-months old? Google already got there well-deserved comeuppance with Wave, Friends Connect and orkut. It looks like they learned. That’s a good thing, a very good thing. 

Note that over four million business use Goggle Apps, including some of the largest in the world and, of course, Google itself. Do you really think when it comes time to deploy their social network service (SNS) plank that these firms will shop the enterprise collaboration marketplace? Why would they complicate their platform and pay through the nose for yet another costly vendor and SNS?  

It’s important to grasp principles of the software product and service lifecycle. Today, G+ definitely exceeds the basic functional requirements of enterprise social software such as: search, tags, signals, links, authoring, etc. It also offers the critical social functions, provisions self-organization and emergence. All this for an enterprise SNS prospect that exited beta 10-weeks ago. That is impressive.

Let’s remember, sports fans, many/most collaboration applications and enterprise SNS are DOA or fail to meet expectations. Most ALL of them are a ‘bad fit’ because of the reasons already mentioned. Email was perceived as a ‘bad fit’ by most organizations in the 1980s. Today, according to CIOs, lowly email is the #1 mission critical app by far. Go figure.

Finally, Google Apps, including Gmail, Gdocs and G+ are seeing enormous pull-through in gigantic Lotus/SharePoint/Exchange shops (like GM). As the saying goes, the rumors of the death of Enterprise G+ are greatly exaggerated.

People tend to stick with what the already know, like and use.



Moral of the Story

The most important thing, what’s missing, is not the application, it’s the collaboration. Most sensible people know this fact. What’s matters most is how technology is used; it matters little how it works. It matters even less who makes it.



Technorati Tags: Google+,G+,enterprise collaboration


More...