I’ve been talking recently about some of IBM’s social software solutions, and even shared some screenshots with you, but until now – no list. Why? Well, I’m not that of a list guy. Top 10, top 5, top 2 – there are too many lists, and often people are posting ‘my top xx list of..’ instead of writing something that has more meaning, but more time-consuming (to write).
Still, after reading Orli‘s post of My 15 Favorite Web 2.0 Sites (2008) at her Go 2 Web 2.0 site, I decided it’s time to post a list of my own. IBM is really a technology and innovation oriented company, and we have numerous enterprise 2.0 tools – some internal while others matured to IBM solutions. Three of my fav five started off as an internal project of some research dude, who then published his project internally, in our ‘technology greenhouse’, aka TAP – Technology Adoption Program‘. TAP is basically how IBM embraces innovation and technology, by encouraging its employees to develop and pilot new technologies, that might mature one day and become IBM solutions. If innovation and technology interests you (and it should), read the whitepaper IBM published about TAP.
Here goes, my fav five list of enterprise 2.0 tools:
Lotus Sametime (instant messaging)
I know, IM is not an enterprise 2.0 tool per se, but if we’re talking about connecting people with knowledge, IM is as good as it gets. Lotus Sametime celebrated earlier 2008 its 10th birthday, and with over 100 million corporate users, is the leading IM platform to date. At IBM, the daily usage of IM has surpassed that of emails, and personally I chat between 10-30 times a day, unique chats. The tool gathers its employee information from our employee directory (see fav #5), saves chat history (if I wish to), works with my IP phone, and with the public gateway I can chat with business partners and AOL/Gtalk/ICQ/Yahoo users.
Dogear (social bookmarking)
Ultimately one of my favorite ‘web 2.0 that made the enterprise 2.0 leap’ tools. Dogear actually started as a TAP project within IBM some 3 years ago. Since then The Dog attracted many (internal) early adopters, until 14 months ago – when Dogear was introduced to the market within Lotus Connections, IBM’s social software for the business solution. At IBM we have some 500,000 links, 800 of those are mine 🙂 There’s a Firefox extension (dogear this, search), private/public options and the ability to import del.icio.us bookmarks (among other features) – Super COOL!
Cattail (file sharing)
Again, another TAP graduate. Contrary to belief, you can’t find MP3s or Dexter Season 2 at Cattail – but you can find other kinds of knowledge: customer presentations, competitive analysis, reviews, analyst reports, whitepapers, screenshots, solutions overviews and much more. Yes, it’s basically a document repository, like a wiki (which is also available internally at IBM), but the social aspects that were added to Cattail makes it a hugh success internally. In fact, some Cattail features will be incorporated in a future release of Lotus Quickr… but you didn’t hear it from me.
IBM w3 (intranet)
Probably the best corporate intranet out there, and I’m not saying that because I used to editor-in-chief the local Israeli site. With some 400,000 employees worldwide, 30 something languages, thousands of roles and expertise, IBM On Demand Workplace (aka w3) is the one stop shop for every employee and manager working at Big Blue. The abundance of external articles and internal news pieces are obvious, but I’ll just mention the ability to download any software internally – without IT, manage your passwords, locate people and expertise, personalized and role-based homepage, track stocks, work with your opportunities, semantic tagging, experience new research projects, watch and download webcast and podcasts – should I say more?
Fringe (web 2.0 employee directory)
Again, TAP graduate. Fringe (source unknown) is an enhanced employee directory, aka BluePages, which hosts over 450,000 employee profiles (including task ids, assignee in/out, etc). Each profile contains some general information from our HR systems (timezone, organizational tree, dept., contact info, etc), but there are also fields for user generated content: skills, CV, customers, experience, teams and communities and photo. I know, a photo is very obvious in today’s web 2.0 arena, but IBM campaigned internally for profile photos some 6 years ago, when digital cameras had 2MP… Fringe also adds social software capabilities, such as adding friends and building a network (facebook anyone?), adding RSS links, showing your social presence (second life avatar, flickr, del.icio.us, twitter) and updating your status (which can be synced with your IM status – nice).
Meet my fav five
If you interested in some of these tools and technologies, there’s an excellent opportunity to watch (some of) them in action – in our KM and Collaboration User Forum, Monday Sep. 8th. Register now, seating is limited.
Clay Shirky said in his recent TED lecture that twitter is making history and that the internet is changing the way people communicate and collaborate – “When a new consumer joins the conversation, a new producer joins as well”. The examples Kerry brings forth are a strong testimony to the power of social media and I hope Israeli companies will soon follow in those foot steps. I for one, will definitely do my best to make it a reality, soon.
