IBM's Social Business Gambit

Although I did not attend the IBM Lotusphere 2012 and Connect 2012 events in Orlando last week, I managed to wake up early enough (I'm in California) to watch the Opening General Session (OGS) and Keynote live-streams. These main "messaging" sessions are IBM's opportunity to tell its customer and partner base how it sees the current communication/collaboration/productivity IT market and what IBM plans to do about it. Largely the message includes a resolute - and not unexpected - re-branding strategy that shifts the discussion away from old themes to contemporary technology for business trends. Once again IBM is trying to keep at the front of the Business IT pack with the hope of driving the market and minds of business buyers. The idea is to start a new game, Social Business, and 2012 is the season opening.

The Gambit

gam·bit  (gmbt)
n.
1. An opening in chess in which a minor piece, or pieces, usually a pawn, is offered in exchange for a favorable position.
2. A maneuver, stratagem, or ploy, especially one used at an initial stage.
3. A remark intended to open a conversation.

It's clear that IBM has spent a lot of time considering its Social Business marketing strategy and how to dovetail a re-branding of the increasingly thread-worn Lotus marque. That consideration is showing up as a more focused IBM that is betting on a branding trifecta:

1. Social: more seamless integration of social tools with productivity tools and enterprise information
2. Mobile: consistent access and experience on different devices
3. Connect: information and people through a range of communication and collaboration experience

Not only is this a message customers (i.e., buyers) can hang their hat on, but it's competitively targeted at IBM's rival's weaknesses. This is most evident when looking at Microsoft's 2011 strategy that has been marked by an anemic social message, the inability to disrupt the mobile market (although WM 7.5 is getting some good press traction), and siloed productivity tools.

IBM's gambit includes the sacrificing of the Lotus brand; although not dead yet, it's been relegated to the back-seat with IBM Connections at the driver's seat. Notes Mail, Quickr, and Domino applications are now playing second fiddle to Social Messaging, Content Analytics, and XPages in the IBM Social Business strategy. It's as if IBM went to the spa and came out looking like a teenager.

This isn't all bad but the proof obviously comes in how the strategy attracts customers and if the follow-through and technology meet IBM's ambition. As one attendee tweeted during the OGS: "The geek aspect of all this is great. But will non-geeks embrace the cultural implications of all this?" (@duffbert).

Raising Bars
No matter though, IBM is confident. The teenage awkwardness we've seen at previous Lotuspheres has moved into young adulthood. Although there were some rocky moments - especially around the Websphere versus everything else message - this is not the clumsy and seemingly confused IBM of the past. IBM raised many bars at this year's events that are likely to have a bolstering impact on its customer and partner base. Overall the quality level of the streamed sessions was a step up from events over the last several years.

I am pleased that IBM finally invested in live streaming of important sessions. The insular, "you gotta be here to get it" attitude, was quite frankly insulting, especially coming from a company that sold communications products. It's as if IBM really got what it means to be social. Not only that but also the quality of the IBM web sites for Lotusphere and Connect were easy to navigate and use.

IBM also brought in A-list guest speakers. Instead of parading in partner and customer honchos, although there were some, IBM also invited key industry thinkers and figures such as Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Guy Kawasaki, Manoj Saxsena (OK he's IBM but it's Watson), Bill Taylor (FAST Company). These talks gave the event a world-class feeling with TED-style lectures that inspired discussion on how new technology in business is changing how we do our work.

Lastly, as always, the IBM press and analyst team worked the media. And although there was the usual coverage with press announcements, twittering, and blog posts (ah hem), IBM managed to also get some well-timed ink with attention grabbing headlines, such as: "IBM Gives Birth to the Amazing E-mail-less Man*" (Wired) and "SharePoint is a 'document coffin,' says IBM"(Computerworld).

Game On
In the IBM realm it's "Game On!" challenging competitors to join the scrimmage with IBM's new rules.  Now let's see how, or if, IBM's competitors join or if they will start or continue their own game. In competitor's circles IBM Lotus customers have become installed base point fodder as they compete among themselves. Now that the new game has begun IBM needs to stay the course and make sure it delivers quality technology that will strengthen and grow its fan base. Should IBM catch the attention of business customers and revive ties to the IBM brands enough to unsteady the competition then the Social Business gambit may be just what IBM needed.

*Although it's really not true, more like the "amazing e-mail emancipated man"

Not dead yet

Yesterday's Register article, "SOPA is dead. Are you happy now?" is a sobering - and in my opinion accurate - summary on the need for intelligent Internet piracy discussion between the Tech industry and our government:

Former Mozilla CEO John Lilly captured this best, arguing, "What’s extremely discouraging to me right now is that I don’t really see how we [the tech world and the US Congress] can have a nuanced, technically-informed, respectful discussion/debate/conversation/working relationship."

Instead all we get is the media industries engaging in back room lobbying to get bad bills passed while the tech world shotguns abuse until Congress capitulates. Talk about a dysfunctional relationship.

Hear, hear! It's a must read article, along with this mentioned (and quoted) article by Andrew Orlowski, "White House shelves SOPA...Now what?".  To expand the quote:

While the legislation is now moribund, the underlying concerns behind SOPA haven't gone away. No amount of bloviating is going to resolve this. The main provision of SOPA (and PIPA) is website-blocking, which has no friends here at El Reg. But SOPA will return next year, and the year after, until the issues have been tackled head on. The STOP SOPA stickers will return. It's all avoidable and getting quite tedious.

It's true. And it's not just the content industry or legislators that are covering their ears. Orlowski points out how tech is also digging in by avoiding progressive and mutual thinking.

"...if ISPs abided by a clear and open voluntary code to respect creators' rights, which required booting out the few serial offenders; if ad networks refused to support parasitic foreign companies; and if search engines shared revenue with media companies to whence they drove traffic, we wouldn't need new laws...Alas ISPs, service providers and search engines today see only risk in being socially responsible, not an opportunity.

The problem isn't going away and we all have to face it:

As Friday's exasperated joint White House statement points out, the copyright worries are justified, and entitled to some kind of enforcement - they won't go away. A property owner must be able to enforce their property rights, with legal backup, and the effective sort, or the rights become meaningless.

 BTW the White House is calling for co-ordinated, voluntary action on everyone's part to combat online piracy. Read the full statement here.

Killing the Killer App

Here we go again...

The CEO of Atos, Thierry Breton,  made recent tech headlines for taking the radical position to ban email at his firm.

I can't help but feel jaded skepticism every time I hear the media exploit this conversation missing the most important point: in business, email is strategic. Email is a vital part of how many organizations communicate internally as well as with clients, customers, partners, and suppliers. We've come to rely on email so much in business that I've had CIOs tell me that they could live without the phone system longer than without the email system. 

And we've heard it all. The horror stories of bloated email databases, inboxes that overwhelm users, the horrific ways that email interfaces support collaboration, etc. Rightfully so, users and managers are fed up with all of these issues. 

Breton estimates that only 10% of the 200 messages his employees receive on an average day are useful, and that 18% is spam. Managers spend between 5 and 20 hours a week reading and writing e-mails, he says.

A tool that was built to improve productivity has become, perceived or otherwise, a drain on time and resources. A tool that too many of us turn to for all our communication out of convenience rather than how well it is suited to what we need to communicate. Face it, for all the problems, email is generally reliable, personal, familiar, and crosses organizational as well as technical boundaries so users don't have to.

So the headline making comments, e.g., "Should we ban email in the workplace?," do just that, get  our attention. But the Atos approach is much more level-headed than the headlines will have you believe. It is one of careful and strategic thought about how we communicate in the workplace.

As email radical thinkers point out that turning off email isn't as easy as flipping a switch or declaring it dead. It is, however, possible to reduce our dependence on email and modify our email behavior so that it remains a useful tool rather than a burden. This weaning can't be done overnight, as Mr. Price, a representative of Atos, admits in a Pat Morrison interview on KPCC:

The original announcement goes back to earlier this year. There were studies done at the time that measured the number of emails that passed between people at that time...to identify the bad behaviors and try to cut those out and improve the way we work...to begin to introduce a rage of tools...that allow people to communicate.

Improving how people communicate, and how email is used in the workplace, requires a strategy. Understanding how employees communicate and collaborate is key to building out a communications and collaboration infrastructure to support the different ways that people communicate. It's not a bout finding a new tool to replace the old one. Mr. Price points out:

A lot of people ask is this about the movement of one technology to another technology? What it is about is finding the right communication medium for the type of communication you want to undertake.

There at better alternatives to using email for different types of communicant and collaboration. companies need to understand how their workers communicate, have a plan, build the infrastructure, and put the support in place for its users. Only then will email be useful and not a burden.

Of course there are many of us for whom this conversation isn't new. But it seems we continue to focus on finding a killer for the "killer app" when what we really need is a strategy for offering the "right communication medium for the type of communication [we] want to undertake."

The Economist's lean-back vs. Lean-froward journalism experience

Great interview with Andrew Rashbass, CEO at the Economist group, on the key to successful branding of journalism. What I like is the bit about learning the difference between print and on-line, interactive journalism:

...they came to realise that there was a distinction between what he calls the "lean-back, immersive, ritual pleasure" of reading the Economist in print compared to the "lean-forward, interactive" way people used the site.

All I know is that I enjoy both the print and on-line version. There are times when I want to sit back and read and the audio articles are really handy when in traffic and while I'm in the kitchen.

More or Less

For another tangent that I've always had interest in...designing user experiences. This is a great post on the dangers of complexity in your application designs. The thing to beware of, don't mistake simple design with brain dead design. I see this happening more and more, especially with internet apps and the crutch of "we can release it ad-hoc as new features are completed."

Consider the moaning that gets posted in Facebook status messages when they make seemingly random UX changes. Even the slightest, most subtle change is noticed with resounding hew and cry. Of course Facebook can regress and it's a free service anyway. So all those Facebook users out there feeling like guinea pigs might as well get used to it.

But the lesson for your enterprise-minded and software-for-sale developers there are some good lessons in this article.

Truly exceptional experiences are crafted when complexity is removed whilst the level of power and control is maintained.

Not an easy challenge and requires, dare I say it, planning. But sometimes the best planning isn't enough. You need to assess design all along the development process. Not always easiest on the developers but the best way to ensure adoption and user's preference for your product.