An archive of my writings from 2007 till 2011. If you're interested in the recent stuff, visit my Tumblr at dvirreznik.com.
My BFF Ezra Butler videotaped this video, and it’s a good thing I’m leaving IBM, or I’ll have to answer to my bosses… 😉 Ezra came to IBM Israel for the Innovation Forum held last Thursday, and we managed to sqeeze this short interview before the event started.
As promised last week, you can read the full interview TheMarker held with my friend Arjan Radder, Social Software Sales Mgr., IBM Europe. Interviewed by Or Herschauna.
Arjan will be speaking at TheMarker Com.Vention Conference coming Sunday, March 29.
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Facebook Is Not for Enterprises
Arjan Radder, Social Software Sales Manager in IBM Europe, believes that a Social enterprise networks can have a crucial role in enhancing organizational efficiency.
By Or Herschauna
The first time Arjan Radder, who is responsible for social software sales in IBM Europe, heard that many IBM Israel employees have a Facebook profile he was surprised. “It’s very different for us in
A quick check indicates he is right. There aren’t any Dutch IBM employees in Facebook or, at least, not any employees who mentioned the name of the company for which they work. Radder quickly regains his composure. “It’s actually logical,” he says, “Facebook is very popular in
Radder’s role at IBM involves in leveraging the advantages of social networks in the enterprises.
“When web sites like LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook started to become popular we understand that we at the IBM, have actually been doing something similar for over a decade. For example, we have a network of employee profiles called Blue Pages, which is almost identical to LinkedIn. It is no simple matter to make communications in an organization of almost 500,000 employees efficient. We are spread out over the entire world and engage in fields with a large amount of knowledge. It was simply a matter of necessity for us,” he explains. “We also have 80,000 blogs at the company, ad 12,000 communities,” he adds.
As part of its use of the advantages of the open social networks IBM recently incorporated Lotus Connect and Beehive in its organizational social networks product. Beehive expands the standard user profile in IBM software and makes it similar to the Facebook profile. Beehive allows surfers to upload pictures and events to the profile, and to add comments to the profiles of other users. Radder finds it easy to explain the significance of social applications in an enterprise like IBM.
“Once, when I searched the Internet for something, I’d do it through the regular search engines and receive, at least, hundreds of results. Now I get two results – the first is the results from the general search engines, like Google, and the second is a result from the links that IBM employees uploaded to IBM’s shared tag web site, which is similar to the Delicious social tag site. In most cases the second result is more relevant to my purposes,” he explains.
Saving Search Time
Radder notes that in house research IBM carried out indicated an increase of 50% in employees satisfaction with the search results. “Moreover – not only do I only get relevant results I can also examine the ratings that the company employees gave to the link and, at the click of button, I can start a chat with someone who has already looked for the concept,” he continues. “Can you imagine how much search time is saved in an organization the size of IBM,” he asks.
Radder presents the advantages offered to the enterprises by social software. “Take, for example, the immediate message programs – this is one the easiest business examples. It is very easy to show the tremendous saving which organizations can obtain using such software, in terms of the cost of telephone calls and storage space for emails,” he explains. Nonetheless, he does not recommend the popular programs in this field, such as Microsoft’s Messenger or Yahoo, Skype or Google Talk. “There are regulatory requirements for information storage. For example, organizational solutions for social networks contain the users’ immediate messages for a period of around three years, as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (the law which requires public companies traded in the
“Until a few years ago organizations that wished to use social tools contacted the accepted Internet portals, simply because of the lack of alternatives. These tools, however, are simply not suitable for organizational needs,” he explains. The first and foremost reason for the lack suitability, according to Radder, relates to the inability to perform user identity verification in an appropriate manner in the open social networks, such as LinkedIn and Facebook. “Moreover,” he explains, “there is, of course, a major problem of security and compatibility with the regulations.”
Tomorrow will be my last lecture as an IBMer, at the 2009 Israel Chamber of Information System Analysts, at Ramat Gan. Similar to last week’s lecture, I’ll be speaking about social media ROI’s, why should a company consider deploying social media solutions, present some customer references and wrap up with IBM’s own deployment story – all in 30min.. :-))
The presentation (in Hebrew) is already available over at slideshare.
My slot is at 12:30 – see you at the event.
During the presentation I referred to Nielsen’s recent report (March 2009) Global Faces and Networked Places (PDF, 2.1MB), pointing out some of the facts about social media in 2008 and beyond. Definitely worth the read.
My good friend Arjan Radder, Social Media Sales Mgr., IBM Europe, will visit Israel next week, to speak at TheMarker Com.vention and meet some of our customers that are in various stages of social media adoption. This will be Arjan’s 3rd visit to Israel and obviously we’re excited to have him here. His agenda is filling up very quickly, but we still have some open slots.
So, if your company is looking into social media solutions – blogs, employee directory, wikis, social networks and the likes – and you want to hear what IBM has to offer, give me a ring and we’ll work something out.
TheMarker interviewed Arjan earlier this week (by phone), and the full interview is available in today’s print version, as well as online. Since both are in Hebrew, here are some notable portions of the interview. We’ll have a translated version soon, which I’ll post here as well.
When sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Youtube started rounding up fans, we realized that IBM has been deploying similar solutions for over a decade. Our internal employee directory, Blue Pages, stores over 500,000 profiles, much like an internal LinkedIn. Making internal communication efficient wasn’t easy, as IBM spans the world and works in many industries. It was simply a necessity.
Another aspect of Arjan’s interview related to the use of instant messaging solutions, such as MSN Messenger, Skype, GTalk and others, as THE corporate IM tool.
Any enterprise has to adhere to some regulatory restrictions (e.g store business transcripts for 3 years), not to mention the ability to authenticate the user – both don’t exist in public solutions. With corporate IM solutions, such as Lotus Sametime, those capabilities (and others) are built-in, not to mention the fast ROI we can show – reducing travel expenses and phone bills.
Only yesterday I spoke about Social Media Solutions for the Enterprise, at YCD/IBM event. Both of Arjan’s points, about social networks and corporate IM were discussed, with customer references showing the business value and added benefits. You can download that presentation at slideshare.net, or come to this event next Monday, and hear me speak about it.
The examples I mentioned were GE and Celina Insurance for Lotus Sametime (IM) and Ernest and Young and Sprint for social media solutions (Lotus Connections).
The full presentation is embedded below.
I’m not afraid of public speaking, on the contrary – I like it a lot. The interaction with the crowd, the presentations, seeing me on the big screen – all made me quite the popular speaker. Since I’m leaving IBM soon, you’ll have two last chances to catch me speak as an IBMer, this week and the next, about the subject that eludes us all (most of us at least) – Social Media ROI at the business.
The first event is ‘The Enterprise in the Digital Age‘ – a joint IDR (ISV and Developer Relations at IBM) and YCD (ISV) session about internal comm and marketing tools, held this Tuesday, the 17th, at IBM Forum. I’ll be speaking about Social Media ROI, focusing on some customer references of IBM’s Lotus Connections and Lotus Sametime, as well as our own (IBM) internal adoption story. The presentation is already available at slideshare.net.
The second event is The 2009 Israeli Chamber of Information Systems Analysts, to be held next Monday, the 23rd, at Kfar Hamacabia, Ramat Gan. I’ll be speaking around noon about (again) ‘The adoption of social media – enterprise 2.0 style’, providing an overview of the entire web/enterprise 2.0, what solutions are available today – both inside and outside the firewall, and wrapping up with IBM’s adoption of such tools. My presentation will be posted later this week at slideshare.net.
Hope to see you in one (or both) of these upcoming events.
