TAG Enterprise 2.0 Society – November 5, 2008 Meeting

TAG Enterprise 2.0 Society – November 5, 2008 Meeting    http://www.tagonline.org/events.php

Cloud Computing – Amazon Web Services

In this session, Seattle-based Jinesh Varia, Evangelist for Amazon Web Services, will discuss the latest innovations and new technology trends like Utility computing (Paying by the hour, paying by the Gigabyte usage), Virtualization and Web Services in the Cloud and most importantly, discuss some of the innovative business models for Start-Ups and Enterprise companies.

In this session, we will learn how aspiring entrepreneurs and enterprises can take advantage of these technologies to quickly scale up their infrastructure programmatically without any upfront heavy infrastructure investment. Often termed as Cloud Computing, we will see how these technologies are changing the way we do business today.
 
Amazon Web Services provides Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) that allows requisition of machines on-demand using simple web service call and paying for computation by the hour. Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) which is infinite storage in the cloud and Amazon SimpleDB which is the Database in the cloud and how these services can help local companies to scale-out and go live quickly. Also, we will see some exciting apps and some unique business models that are built on AWS that have become profitable businesses and others that are just simply cool to see.

PRESENTER
JINESH VARIA, TECHNOLOGY EVANGELIST, AMAZON WEB SERVICES, AMAZON.COM
As a Technology Evangelist at Amazon, Jinesh Varia helps developers take advantage of disruptive technologies that are going to change the way we think about computer applications, and the way businesses compete in the new web world. Jinesh has spoken at more than 50 conferences/User Groups. He is focused on furthering awareness of web services and often helps developers on 1:1 basis in implementing their own ideas using Amazon’s innovative services.
Jinesh has over 9 years experience in XML and Web services and has worked with standards-based working groups in XBRL. Prior to joining Amazon as an evangelist, he held several positions in UBmatrix including Solutions Architect, Enterprise Team Lead and Software engineer, working on various financial services projects including Call Modernization Project at FDIC. He was also lead developer at Penn State Data Center, Institute of Regional Affairs. Jinesh’s publications have been published in ACM and IEEE. Jinesh is originally from India and holds a Master’s degree in Information Systems from Penn State University

Application of Social Computing to the Enterprise

Initiatives, programs, and day-to-day business operations are critical to the success of the enterprise.  Large companies have invested a significant amount of resources in IT tools, business processes, and technologies to gather critical information from a variety of sources about their business operations and business processes. 

Businesses rely on people to receive and analyze information, make decisions, and initiate and coordinate the appropriate tasks and activities.  Managers are responsible for assimilating information, managing/supporting their key personnel, marshaling resources, making decisions, following up to verify that the appropriate tasks and activities were undertaken, and insuring that objectives and milestones are being meet.

 

Individuals, managers and workers are facing a cognitive overload.  It is estimated that a Sunday newspaper contains more information than the average 17th century citizen encountered in a lifetime. Today, the amount of worldwide information doubles approximately every 1.5 years, and corporate files double every 3 to 4 years.

The one biggest challenges to the enterprise is making better (smarter, faster) use of information about its business processes.  The problem lies in the large volume of information that is presented to managers, the wide range of disparate sources from which it comes, and the fact that it is too often dispersed in ‘information silos’ across the enterprise.  All of this makes it difficult for managers to assimilate information and data, and rapidly make (informed/accurate) decisions.  Also, managers are getting so much ‘information’ that they are having difficulty keeping informed (up to date) about key topics and issues.

 

Information gathering, communication, collaboration and decision making in most companies relies on a ‘conventional’ set of tools and processes: conversations, meeting, emails, voice mails, basic messaging, conferencing, and office documents mailed as attachments. 

In the increasingly rapid pace and the complexity of today’s enterprise, the use of conventional tools and processes leads to inevitable latencies in business processes, activities and decisions.  Delays in communication and decision making and slow response to critical problems and issues can have a significant impact on business performance.

Dependency on Email has put up fences to efficient communication and decision making.  Consider the manager that has hundreds of unread Emails in their InBox; how quickly can they be expected to respond to a request for information, provide guidance and feedback, or make a decision? 

Meeting and conference calls can have less than optimal efficiency – they can create bottlenecks as managers may wait until the meeting to discuss and resolve issues.

Person to person communication can induce latencies.  If the contacted party is busy then the request is put in a queue.  If may people are trying to contact the same person then that person becomes a bottleneck.  How much time, energy and effort are expended (often wasted) playing ‘phone tag’ to get in contact with a key resource to have an important discussion or make a critical decision.

 

A large percentage of business data and business information is stored in ‘information silos’.  In general, these systems cannot exchange information with other related systems within its own organization, or with the management systems of its customers, vendors or business partners. The same can be said of the knowledge and experience of individuals within an organization or an enterprise.  Their knowledge and expertise cannot be easily shared (exchanged) with other individuals within the enterprise or with their partners or vendors. The skills, knowledge and experience cannot be easily shared for a number of reasons.  People have few ways of making their knowledge and experience known outside their peer group, unit or department. And, individuals that have need of specific knowledge and expertise have few channels to find or discover those individuals.  There is no framework for connecting individuals, sharing information and knowledge, managing the utilization of resources, affecting the successful resolution of a problem or issues, and ultimately, successfully completing tasks and projects

 

As the pace of business accelerates, the use of conventional tools and processes are becoming less and less efficient and effective helping business communicate, collaborate and make decisions.

We need to enhance the competiveness and responsiveness of the enterprise by improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the enterprise all levels:

 

Connections and Communication	More efficient communication – finding and connecting to the ‘best resource’ (most appropriate & most available) to address our problems and/or issues.
Targeted Collaboration	Creation, sharing and utilization of business knowledge and expertise.  Leverage internal and external knowledge and expertise.  More effective utilization of enterprise resources.
Knowledge Access	Timely and universal access to resources, information, knowledge and solutions (from both internal and external sources).
Organization, Visibility and Management	Single location (space) where information associated with task, project, or program can be viewed and managed.  Provide a framework for the management of tasks/projects
Responsiveness and Resolution	Faster and more productive response to problems & issues.  Better (more accurate/informed) decision making and problem resolution.  Link people processes to business processes. Sustaining progress; drive tasks and projects toward completion.
Accountability	Link business decisions and actions to work flow and processes.

Unity – Lockheed-Martin’s implementation of a social computing platform

Enterprise 2.0 Conference, Boston, June 9-12 2008

One of the biggest hits of the conference was a presentation of Unity; a social computing platform developed by Lockheed-Martin (LM).

“Enterprise 2.0 at Lockheed Martin is sparking a knowledge management revolution enabling the business to more effectively compete, win, and perform. At its core, a social computing platform empowers knowledge workers by lowering the barriers to create, share, and find information. The platform evolved from collaborative tools and now includes Web 2.0 tools such as social bookmarking, blogs, wikis, discussion groups, weekly activity reporting, and personal/team spaces. This session will communicate what the platform is, demonstrate the components, and share some case studies and lessons learned from the E2.0 implementation at Lockheed Martin.”

Before Unity was developed, the state of collaboration within Lockheed-Martin consisted of the usual set of office productivity tools: email, meetings, basic messaging and office documents mailed as attachments.

The goal of Unity was to bring social collaboration to the enterprise to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of their business processes. The key points of the product strategy were:

1) Provide a user experience employees would love, address “what was in it for me”, and balance security concerns (need to know vs. the need to share information).

2) Develop a social computing framework around a standardized platform: integrating wikis, RSS, blogs, social bookmarking, and document sharing.

3) Provide support for discussion forums, status and activity reporting, and suggestion tools.

4) Capture patterns of usage and gain insight into the adoption of the framework within the enterprise.

5) Maintain a consistent user experience.

6) Ensure that all information could be feed-enabled, and integrated into the framework.

Unity was built using Google [enterprise] Search Appliance (GSA), Microsoft’s Windows Sharepoint Services (WSS) and Newsgator’s Enterprise Server.

Unity has a backend database that collects all relationships, feeds into “spaces.” There are two types of spaces: personal spaces and team spaces. Each space can have wikis, blogs, discussion forums, shared documents, and social bookmarks. Both types of spaces can be networked, and can relate to each other.

Activity streams let people record and tag their activities. An employee can easily view relevant activity streams and be plugged into what other employees are doing. An employee can subscribe to activities streams so that they can follow tasks, activities and people of interest to them. Each activity generates an RSS feed that can be consumed by Newsgator or a portal.

Activity reports show the tasks, activities, and people that have been met with over the last six months. You can look at the activity report of an individual to see what they are doing. This can make it easier to find and engage the right people. The activity report is a good vehicle for transferring knowledge and information. The activity reports can be integrated into a branded “UReport” tool (UReport is a custom .net application).

How did the Unity team quantify the return on investment (ROI) for the dedication of resources and purchase of software? Some of the points of the ROI justification were:

- Productivity savings of users rapidly finding/locating appropriate information and resources.

- Customer’s interest in using Unity to collaborate with ML.

- Project bidding process, especially those proposals that involved knowledge management.

The Unity development team put together a “collaboration playbook” that demonstrates how use of wikis, blogs, and other collaboration components. They also developed a set of best practices. For example, as a team member, you should ask questions on a group page not just call and ask someone or send an email; this helps to capture information for everyone to see and use. The playbook described which communication type made sense for different collaboration activities: blog posts, wikis, email, virtual conferences or in-person meetings.

Lockheed-Martin built the basic Unity platform in 2007, and then ran a beta pilot of it over the course of the year. After the initial release, it took just six months for a second version to address the information security and legal issues. Unity was rolled out in to a number of divisions in early 2008. Currently, there are 4,000 personal spaces; the number is growing 10% every three weeks.

The most successful approach to ‘selling’ unity within the company was to emphasize the value of the team spaces. Project/program Managers that blogged in the team space really helped the engineers see the value of Unity and get them engaged. People who already have to collaborate between groups were good champions. The Unity team used a project management blog to keep colleagues up to date about what the development team was doing.

Lockheed-Martin wants to roll out Unity across the entire company in the third and fourth quarters [of 2008].

Value to the enterprise:

- At any time an employee can see what others are working on. They can access shared documents and ask questions on shared workspaces or directly to the relevant decision maker or stakeholders.

- There is significant value to the enterprise in tracking and reporting on activity streams.

- Team spaces for process compliance very effective. They got a significant amount of participation and input from a geographically diverse set of users.

- Ease of generating and sharing activity and status reports.

- Being able to search for information and ask relevant questions raises productivity. This leads to improved collaboration and knowledge exchange.