Comments for SocialText Aims To Be Best Of Breed Office Software

SocialText Aims To Be Best Of Breed Office Software

2006-10-19T11:54:44Z

Disclaimer: SocialText is a competitor of Atlassian, one of our sponsors.

This week I spoke to Ross Mayfield, CEO of wiki company SocialText, about "Enterprise 2.0". To put it very crudely, Enterprise 2.0 means blogs and wikis in the enterprise. According to Ross and others, Enterprise 2.0 is slightly different to the "Office 2.0" or Web Office meme also doing the rounds. In our discussion Ross defined Enterprise 2.0 as "free form social software adapted for enterprises". Rod Boothby says it means "Emergence Software", while M.R. Rangaswami of Sand Hill Group wrote an in-depth article to try and explain the concept.

I have to admit I'm less concerned with how the term is defined (or even what term we use), than where the market for web-based software is heading and what products are out there right now. So let's get to the nitty gritty...

]]> One example of an enterprise 2.0 product is of course SocialText's enterprise wikis. SocialText 2.0, the latest version, was released in September and featured a new UI and "Wiki Web Services", which are described as "SOAP and REST APIs to support enterprise integration and enable Open Source developers to innovate in the language of their choice and mashup wiki functionality with other applications."

Like JotSpot, which we profiled on Read/WriteWeb recently, SocialText aims to extend the notion of wikis. Or as Ross put it at the time of the SocialText 2.0 launch:

"The solution isn't turning the wiki into yet-another-enterprise-tool, but to raise the bar on what a wiki can be, while making it open and extensible."

Best of breed apps vs office software incumbents

In our talk, Ross said that enterprise software incumbents will enter the market next year. For example Microsoft's Sharepoint will bundle in blogs and wikis and IBM Websphere will have wiki modules. But Ross' theory is that there are a number of "best of breed" web applications that are well positioned to compete against the big companies.

SocialText itself is positioning itself as "best of breed wiki application". Other best of breed apps mentioned by Ross were SixApart (blogs) and Newsgator or Attensa (enterprise RSS). In contrast Sharepoint, said Ross, is a suite that is "trying to be everything to everybody". So he believes there is still room for best of breed web innovation.

This is something I've long been a proponent of too. In February this year, I wrote a post entitled Web Office Suite: best of breed products. In that post I listed out a number of best of breed Web Office apps - like Gmail, Zimbra, BaseCamp. These are web apps that are Web Native and take full advantage of what the Web has to offer - plus they are focused on certain core functionalities.

The other point here is that we're talking about a new breed of enterprise software. Wikis and blogs are part of that, but there are many more hybrid Web Office apps in active development that are changing the game for office software - Zimbra, Morfik, Dabble DB are just a few examples.

Comment from john lawrence on 2006-10-19

2006-10-19T15:19:31Z

I absolutely agree with this commentary. As we have commented on our Longworth blog at www.longworthblog.com and as others have blogged, enterprise 2.0 is collaboration, communication and accountability. The accountability part is often not discussed but for large enterprises to grasp the concept of employees being able to share thoughts and ideas in a blog or wiki, there must be individual and corporate accountability of the words and process.

Comment from Kanwal on 2006-10-19

2006-10-19T16:24:03Z

Sharepoint might be trying to do everything for everyone, but its doing a damn good job of it. However, you are probably right in saying that not everyone wants everything. There will always be room for products that dont diversify but are specific in their abilities.

Visit http://www.sharepointbuzz.com

Comment from Emre Sokullu on 2006-10-19

2006-10-19T18:15:30Z

Last time I checked, SocialText was about to opensource their software and release APIs for their web services. I think both of these are good moves. Especially wiki APIs is not something we are used to see. But this is a very competitive market, a lot of open source - free rivals, a lot of high quality - enteprise ventures.. There should be still a lot of innovation to see here.

Comment from Puneet Gupta on 2006-10-19

2006-10-19T19:21:47Z

Social Bookmarking leading to Collective Intelligence and Expertise Management inside enterprise will be interesting one to watch.
Along with us - Connectbeam.com, IBM, and BEA have announced plans to enter this market with products in this category hitched with their existing product suites.

Comment from Jamie Fiorda on 2006-10-19

2006-10-19T19:28:49Z

For more information on the "Enterprise 2.0" discussion and definition, you might also look at Andrew McAfee's thoughtful work in this area, particularly his article "I Agree with Tom. And Yet...".

It's important to take the discussion of anything-Enterprise 2.0 beyond the features / functionality and look at what enterprises lack today, and why they might be interested in increased collaboration. The reason large enterprises are looking to Web 2.0 technologies isn't to create yet another source of content. People (employees, partners, customers) are already inundated with too much information. What they lack is the ability to focus on the most relevant information, and center relevant conversations around those topics. In this way, Enterprise 2.0 is as much about relevancy as it is about collaboration...or potentially even moreso.

In the spirit of transparency, I head up marketing at KnowNow. I'm particularly interested in this discussion since we have our own description of Enterprise 2.0 and why it matters. Today, we are often considered to be in the same category as Newsgator and Attensa, although our enterprise syndication capabilities go well beyond the RSS format. More information about our enterprise syndication solution can be found in this InfoWorld article from July 2006.

Comment from pireland on 2006-10-19

2006-10-20T02:17:39Z

I'm sorry... Sharepoint is doing a good job of... what exactly? Providing a bunch of features that fall just short of doing what it needs to? I've been using it heavily for the last few years and I yearn for a better solution... something fast, something easy for everyone to edit (no, opening a word document is not easy enough), something more collaborative, and something with better e-mail notification.

Sadly, in our last test of socialtext it wasn't good enough to warrant the migration. But I'm looking forward to what will be happening with it in the future...

Comment from Brian on 2006-10-19

2006-10-20T03:32:50Z

I'm not a big fan of this analysis of best of breed vs. integrated for the Enterprise 2.0 market right now. I tend to agree with Jamie's comment above ... relevancy is important. Regarding wiki, blog, and forums, these are really means to an end. They are tools, and thus not subject to a Best of Breed vs. Integrated solution debate so much.

The real issue is how to provide value-added applications that enable business results and value-add. Businesses need to efficiently Listen, Learn, Respond, and Measue their responses to relevant content on their site and across the web. Doing this properly yields measurable business results in lead generation, customer loyaly, product/service improvement, and innovation.

The Enterprise 2.0 application/service provider needs to provide the solutions to companies that allow them to manage and achieve these results. Wiki, blog, forum, etc. are guts to the solution for sure, but not the actual business application. The application needs to get above those levels to provide the true value.

For full disclosure, we at Kalivo are working on a business solution approach to customer engagement on the web. To be sure, we incorporate blogging and forum techniques, but our real focus in on enabling the achievement of business results. To that end, we have a Web Listener capability to find relevant content across the web for companies. We also parse the conversations happening on the company's Hub (or blog/forum) to identify and engage in business opportunities.

I'm a believer that we need to get past the "tools" and more toward the business results that can be achieved when companies engage in the read/write web.