Alfresco and SAP could (and should) cosy up

If you can’t beat ‘em, join 'em, goes the old dictum, and SAP could be joining forces with Alfresco to provide it with a missing component in its enterprise software stack.

SAP’s recent decision to help pump $9m into Alfresco coffers was an indicator that the ECM open-source startup company is highly thought of in Walldorf. Of course, the investment was made by investment arm SAP Ventures and does not commit the firms to working together but you don’t wave to be Gipsy Rose Lee to read a little into these tea leaves.

Some close to SAP say that the German giant was looking for an ECM strategic purchase in the days when Shai Agassi had power. Open Text was the company most often linked back then and a deal would have made a ton of sense as the pair had worked together before on many projects. It would also have had the effect of potentially weakening Oracle, before the database giant went out and bought Stellent and BEA to give itself a full house of ECM products.

Alfresco might well be the hottest property among new ECM companies. The company has plenty of managerial experience and engineering talent from old-world ECM but has none of the legacy code and is free to explore potential of the latest tools. Its approach of building systems by layers of web services, rather than through software breeze blocks, might well fit with SAP’s NetWeaver strategy.

I spoke to Alfresco chief marketing officer Ian Howells after the investment was announced and he was keen to reiterate that Alfresco’s plan is to IPO rather than sell out. The big vision is to build a “world-class” software company and there are rich pickings to be had among smaller companies and those happy to serve themselves rather than follow the ancient enterprise path of consulting-led engagements and long negotiating cycles.

Good for him and Alfresco, but that shouldn’t preclude the company from working closely with SAP so that when enterprise applications owners come to look at content management again, there is a good fit between this pair.

IBM/Lotus struts its stuff

IBM/Lotus held its annual shindig in Orlando this week. Called Lotusphere, it was packed with devotees plus a quite a few analysts and journalists. Yours truly included.

Perhaps Orlando was deliberately chosen, because the event was by far the most interesting thing going on there. And, miracle of miracles, IBM pulled some interesting rabbits out of the corporate hat.

Let's start with mashups, or composite applications, which sounds a heck of a lot more enterprisey. The on-stage demo's showed how mashups could be created with a few drags and drops - exactly what Teqlo was trying to do before it realised it didn't have a decent business model.

Corporate information could be surfaced, through SOA or (I believe) through Websphere, external information could be picked up through widgets and onscreen information could be highlighted and used as input to the mashup. The end result was a little window which would deliver the information you wanted, presented in the form you most needed it. Graphs, charts, maps, whatever. Mashups can be catalogued and shared, making for ready re-use and potential time savings.

The only awkwardness is in how much you let users do themselves before having to push the mashups through to IT for approval. Something that hoovers masses of data every few seconds, or some logic that dives into a dead loop wouldn't go down too well.

What else? Well, IBM hasn't been best known for delivering software to small and medium enterprises. It's now going to push hard by packaging up a whole bunch of collaboration stuff and offer it as a service. Code-named Bluehouse, it will be a few months before it sees the light of day. Except you might want to investigate the beta version. It's based on aimed at users of Lotus Foundations, a software set that will also be provided as an appliance or straightforward installable software for organisations with between 5 and 500 connected users.

A unified interface might sound boring, but the idea of working on multiple applications through a consistent interface makes software a lot more attractive to users. If they switch applications without really realising it then the clunkiness and time wasting of conventional interfaces become all too obvious. It's been tried before but the difference this time is that the user can incorporate the elements they want rather than be stuck with someone else's idea of what a user needs.

Lotus went high wide and handsome on social networking tools. Its own Connections was made all the more interesting by the fact that it can integrate with external services. The integration potential of Socialtext and Atlassian wikis made the point, especially given that IBM has its own wiki engine. And this is another thing that came out of the conference: that IBM encourages openness and integration. While it has its own world, this does have very porous edges which could lead to an interesting software ecosphere which doesn't necessarily put IBM at the centre.

In some ways it doesn't matter if IBM takes over the world with its software innovations because, if it does nothing else, it helps to raise the bar. The focus of Lotusphere was a hundred percent on making the users' lives better and more productive. And, it has to be said, more enjoyable and fulfilling.

I'll drink to that. Off on holiday now. See you in two weeks.

Nomadic information

A couple of weeks ago I asked if things could get any worse as information loss bungles seemed to hit a government department every week. With last Friday’s announcement that 600,000 people’s identities had been lost following the theft of a Royal Navy Officer’s laptop, I estimate that gives us about 48 hours until the next blunder emerges.

That is unless you count Monday’s news from Defence Secretary Des Browne that a further two laptops with similar data (but less names) had been stolen from 2005 onwards. An investigation is to be conducted by Sir Edmund Burton. We will wait and see whether his findings will address this fundamental flaw in information protection.

Online meanwhile, there are some calling for a greater portability of data (much of which is personal). The problem right now is that for every social network, online community, or e-commerce activity we engage in, the information you enter on that site or network belongs to that online island. As you hop around these (albeit connected) islands you have to re-enter that information each time. It’s a chore.

However a forewarning comes from Monday’s FT in Kevin Alison’s analysis article, Social networks may find that it does not pay to be possessive. The story heralds a growing call for a common set of ‘data portability’ standards and its not just about saving people hassle.

Alison points out that “it could change the economies of the web itself as companies rush to build new services that take advantage of the free flow of information.” The article also asks if there are significant implications for the likes of Facebook and co. who may see their competitive advantage slip if the social networks information structure is wide open for all to see.

Issues of privacy will also be massive, Jia Shen founder of RockYou who make Facebook applications asks, “What are the rights of users and what are the motives of social networks to share data between themselves?”

That’s a worthwhile question and getting users to trust a web company when they can’t even trust their own government may take a lot of persuasion.   

Oracle’s ECM full house

I don’t know if the earth moved for you last Thursday but it was a pretty crazy day as merger and acquisition activity once again wrecked the old-look competitive landscape.

Sun’s deal to buy open-source database outfit MySQL probably eclipsed the much larger agreement for Oracle to buy BEA Systems in terms of media attention. It wasn’t a good day for anybody else to get a moment in the media spotlight so lots of us missed another significant purchase, that of Captovation by, that man again, Oracle.

All these deals have some significance for ECM. MySQL is the database of choice in LAMP stack deployments and a regular partner for open-source content management systems. BEA is best known for other middleware-related technologies but it also has strong portal capabilities.  Captovation adds another, relatively small element to Oracle’s ECM equation through document capture and imaging.

Confused by Oracle’s if-it-moves-buy-it strategy? You will be if it’s your job to explain to bosses what’s going on at the company. Oracle now has a full house (and more) of portals, document imaging programs, ECM system and developer capabilities, as well as CRM, business apps and integration tools. Its roadmap already looked like the M25 on a bad day, and with the BEA and Captovation contracts in place, things aren’t going to get any easier.

This is a very obvious period to ask for some face time with your Oracle rep, but give it a while yet. After all, the Redwood Shores executives will have to explain to themselves, and then their managers and staff, how having this pot pourri of technologies is going to help user organisations. You can't argue with Oracle's ability to extract stock value from its acquisitions but the jury is still out on whether it is doing anything for the people who bought the software.

VortexDNA cuts web time-wasting

While researching a column to be published next month, I stumbled across a New Zealand-based company called VortexDNA. It believes that it can boil your driving characteristics down to a ten digit code. This code can then be used to assess whether the web pages or people you encounter online are likely to be of interest to you.

Imagine doing a Google search and then having the best results highlighted in some way. The PageRank method is astonishingly good, but it knows nothing about you and your life purpose and values. Unless you are a totally brilliant search term creator, you can still end up wading through masses of pointless (to you) results.

The interesting thing about VortexDNA is that it doesn't need to keep any information about you. Although you answer a short questionnaire (some of it badly worded, sadly), your answers aren't retained. Your DNA is calculated and that's all the company needs to know. Best, though, to tell the company who you are and where to find you when new software releases come out.

You can download a Firefox extension right now and start experimenting with the software. Somehow, it overlays the web pages you're viewing with little orange highlights for stuff it thinks might interest you.

Your code could be attached to web pages that you visit thus giving people an idea of the type of people who like this kind of page. The seven digit number will be repeatedly averaged as new people arrive. (Don't ask me for the mathematics, you'd have to grill  chief boffin Branton Kenton-Dau on that one.)

Your code could be used to refine the ads that get displayed in the sidebar or the books that Amazon recommends to you. All without knowing a shred of personal information.

So the VortexDNA techniques can be applied to personal benefit and business benefit. 'Click throughs' are very important to online advertisers and one way that Vortex hopes to make money is by selling its technology to providers of online services, so they can increase their ad revenues and continue to give us the stuff we want for free.

My generation

Some more news from the British Library this week, as they co-launched with JISC a report on “Information behaviour of the researcher of the future”. The spiel on the day was about revealing who the Google Generation actually were. This followed some much needed myth-busting on how research and search is conducted online and by whom.

Underpinning all this is the issue of information literacy or often lack of it, among searchers today.

The fundamental myth the report addressed was that the ‘Google Generation’; those born and raised in an internet world possess the best web-literacy. In fact what the report has found is that although younger generations are at ease with computers and the web, there is a heavy reliance on search engines and a tendency to avoid reading and analysing online. The preference is to view and view quickly before rapidly moving on.

The Centre for Information Behaviour and the Evaluation of Research (CIBER) from UCL who conducted the study explained that a main characteristic of the digital age is horizontal information seeking. This entails a form of ‘skimming’ information before ‘bouncing’ somewhere else. Something I would guess will ring true even for the most information literate of you.

What is also interesting is that this behaviour of the ‘Google Generation’ isn’t limited to those born from the early 1990’s onwards (although they may be faster adopters of such behaviour). It seems all age groups share these traits, and that doesn’t bode well for information literacy skills.

Of course the BL’s involvement in this is to address how libraries should modify themselves to these changing digital needs and behaviours of their users. They cited their example of embarking on massive digitisation projects as a means of opening up more of their content to more of the population. But, more than anything, they wanted to “send a strong message to the government and society at large” about those lacking in decent information skills.

There are a lot more insightful gems contained in the report here, certainly worth a good old fashioned read-through.

Advocating openness

Today’s FT story on ‘super advocates’ in social networks got me thinking about how web 2.0 platforms are being used to sell all manner of wares. That line of thought inevitably drew me to consider whether my own information sources are subject to something similar. Likeminded ideas, opinions and politics can be worth a lot to an organisation looking for support.

It all led from a report conducted by Experian and Hitwise. They suggest companies looking to exploit social networks for sales should leave some funds from their marketing budgets aside to ‘court’ ‘super advocates’ on social networks. These are well known, respected and influential members of a particular social networking area.

By using the credibility of such advocates products, services or events can be recommended with credibility to readers. In other words, viral marketing.

The tale of caution the report pushes is that the very credibility of the ‘super-advocate’ and therefore the social network will be called into question if readers perceive they are being sold to. Users will jump ship – and jump rapidly if they smell a rat.

All cynicism to one side, I doubt that this kind of practice is just limited to the commercial sector. And that’s what got my attention; how do we know who is the real-deal and who isn’t? For the record, Incisive Media who own IWR, are themselves owned by venture capitalist giant Apax.

In our arena we use social networking sites for professional purposes; learning, making contacts or keeping up to date with the latest developments. On this very blog we often recommend product x or service y to our readers. Something we think that might help you work a little better; hopefully you trust our recommendations are genuine.

Cabinet Ministers (actual and shadow) seem to regularly be in the spotlight due to their own or department’s poor information practices. There are checks and balances in place to maintain credibility and quite rightly so. Meanwhile if the press step out of line there is the Press Complaints Commission to go to.

As far as I’m aware there isn’t an online equivalent (not that it would be workable) for bloggers and other social networking butterflies to adhere to. Keeping a credible reputation must be something every social networker strives for.

Credibility is king, so transparency is a must, but what should we be telling each other online to maintain this?