Rants
Questions
Soapbox
Best Practices
Apply today for a FREE subscription to CIO Magazine!
Tue, Dec 23, 2008 12:25 EST
|
Posted by: C.G. Lynch in Soapbox Topic: ApplicationsBlog: Web 2.0 Advisor
Current Rating: |
you consider what business leaders have given us to work with over the past decades. The problem: the latter list of start-ups I mentioned find themselves in a fragile market. Technology spending will be nearly flat or decline (depending on who you ask). Traditional IT executives who trust IBM and MS, even if they'll eventually have to pay those vendors more money in a time when they have less to spend, might keep their allegiances.
This isn't great for business users if we automatically see everyone play it safe by purchasing IBM and Microsoft. (Have you seen a SharePoint wiki? I have, and it's not pretty.) This is not a knock on the incumbents, who deserve some credit. My interview with the forward-thinking Stephen Elop, president of Microsoft's business division, shows the company has turned a page (somewhat) in clinging to old business models. IBM, for its part, has more aggressively shown willingness to move forward with Lotus Connections, which right now has a better design than the social software features in SharePoint, which is largely still a document management system.
But both companies are further removed from innovation than the enterprise 2.0 vendors. While enterprise 2.0 vendors mimic what they see in the consumer market, thus keeping them a degree of separation away from where the innovation actually occurs, the incumbents are even further removed; they simply copy the enterprise 2.0 vendors.
This isn't a sustainable model for innovation in the enterprise Web 2.0 market. With shrinking access to venture capital, there's reason to believe some of the enterprise 2.0 start-ups will fail or struggle to make money in 2009. When this happens, they'll either fold or be purchased by IBM or Microsoft.
This could have good and bad effects. On one hand, it will make the market less confusing and noisy. The number of folks who don't understand the products they peddle at a trade show will decrease, and the choices for enterprise buyers will become clearer.
Some argue that a recession like ours is actually the best time to invent something, as it forces us to do more with less. But I'm a big believer that innovators need to be worried about ideas, not about how they'll pay the bills or a staff.
If the Silicon Valley layoffs we've seen recently are any indication, Web 2.0 companies will be more worried about operations and staying afloat rather than innovation in 2009.
Could someone please invent an application where I only have to upload my status once, and it will automatically distribute through Facebook, Twitter, Linked-in, Plaxo etc.? If it already exists, please let me know. Thanks!
Hi!
Yes, you thought you would receive emails from vendors you did not include, and here is one! I would like to introduce you to GroveSite. GroveSite introduced its first collaborative team site offering in 2003, using the software-as-a-service model. Our major differentiators are our clients' ability to easily collaborate with customers and vendors, to brand their sites, to fully customize their navigation, as well as our powerful feature set. GroveSite has been recognized in Gartner's Who's Who in Social Software, and in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Collaboration and Social Software in both 2007 and 2008.
We have a stellar list of very satisfied clients including recognized names such as Target, OfficeMax, Tyson Foods, AARP, Realogy (owner of Century 21, Coldwell Banker, ERA, and Sotheby's franchisors), and Texas A&M AgriLife. Of course we have many SMBs as well. You may not be familiar with us because we are a privately-held company. We experienced 25-30% growth in 2008 and expect a great year going forward as well.
So please give me a call if you'd like to learn more!
Jane Hagen
VP Marketing, GroveSite
866-952-9880 x202
Jane,
I'm a bit confused about why you rated the article one star? This seems to be solely motivated by self promotion of GroveSite. The article itself describes broad industry trends and never claims to be a laundry list or comparison matrix of what solutions to go with.
I've yet to encounter or even hear of GroveSite until you mentioned it. You are correct that Gartner included it as one of the 38 solutions they looked at, but most publications based off the Gartner analysis focuses only on the top rated systems. I don't see how it helps the marketing of your product to say you got an honorable mention.
After looking around at GroveSite, I can understand why Gartner picked the leaders they did while leaving GroveSite out of the top of the list. My initial impression of GroveSite is that it attempts to create the kitchen sink. It seems more an effort to be able to check boxes on a comparison matrix rather than create a coherent user experience. Features are great, but if users are not inspired to use them, they are useless and a waste of money.
I would also recommend picking some more visually appealing example screenshots for your marketing site. Web 2.0 encourages simple design, but that doesn't mean they have to remove elegance.
Admittedly, I'm just going off the marketing information on the GroveSite website. However, as someone who has performed numerous enterprise software evaluations, the marketing information presented about GroveSite would cause me to exclude it in the first round of research. The other solutions mentioned in the article seem to at least have a coherent story.
The only thing I see as impressive about GroveSite is the client list, but I've been in this industry long enough to see people duped by good sales reps and broken promises to know not to trust client lists alone.
I never intended to post this comment. I was brought to your unfair blast of this article by viewing the 3 star average which was dragged down by your 1 star rating. I expected to find some great analysis about the article and instead found a poorly disguised sales pitch.