Mid-Atlantic CIO Conference

Yesterday Towson College in Maryland hosted the mid-Atlantic CIO Conference. It was a discussion of Collaboration for CIOs, from three companies: Gartner, IBM and Microsoft.

Tom Austin, a Gartner Fellow, gave a commonsense and insightful overview of collaboration. I noted these points:

• Microsoft and IBM are far and away the leaders with Oracle a distant third.
• When companies are asked which vendor they would most like to get way from (Tom called this the "loathing index"), it was inevitably the one they made most use of.
• When companies are asked which vendor they plan to buy more from, it is the one they use most of.
• Software has automated most of what can be automated. The most important gains now will come from improving non-routine activities: collaboration and analysis. The focus of IT is shifting from productivity to impact. Tom's five tips for effectiveness (which should be at the beginning and end of any discussion on collaboration software):
  • Active management involvement
  • Engage everyone
  • Develop communities: share interests and best practices
  • Provide resources to help people find information .. a corporate "Yellow Pages"
  • Implement metrics and rewards for collaboration and pro-social contributions

Ken Bisconti (IBM VP of Workplace, Portal and Collaboration Products) spoke next and gave an excellent presentation describing IBM's collaboration strategy. This snippet from an interview Ken gave in March is a good overview of how Ken represented IBM's strategy:

IBM’s strategy of empowering people through open standards computing models that provide flexibility in approach, operating systems and access methods. “IBM is about on demand, role-based workplaces built on portals and integrated collaborative services. IBM helps customers get hard ROI out of using collaborative services in the context of business processes – an HR portal or an e-procurement application, for example. IBM delivers tailored information and applications to the right people at the right time.”

Ken described the portal as a composite application platform, serving thin and thick clients. He made many references to the Eclipse framework which provides the UI and desktop structure for this vision. Ken mostly used Powerpoint slides, but he included a couple of demos including a Lotus Sametime (instant messaging) demo mash up with Google maps. He also showed a future project - Skill Tap -- which used "tag clouds" to link topics to individuals in the IBM internal address book. He also showed a concept called Activities, which I (I think) tagged items with key projects. I.e. you could tag an email as related to project X, and also locate all items related to Project Y.

Ken's presentation was polished and interesting. It was centered on portals, IBM Workplace and Eclipse. Notes was not featured although Ken mentioned a couple of times that Notes provided some of the collaborative features.

Bob Kuhns and I spoke last. I started with our view of collaboration, and acknowledged that Gartner, IBM and Microsoft shared a perspective: collaboration is a means rather than an end. In other words, collaboration is something that you need to be able to do well, in order to get your real job done, and it needs to be available in the context of your real job. E.g. find an expert and get an opinion so that you can approve a loan or a purchase order. Or get a team together over a period of time to analyse, recommend and even execute a merger.

Bob and I took a different approach from Ken. Our session was titled "Microsoft at Work." I used just a few slides to structure the discussion, and  Bob (connected to Microsoft via VPN) showed how he works on a daily basis, using his email, his instant messaging, workflow, expert locator, etc. No made-up scenarios, no "imagine if you will," and no "we are thinking about this ..." Everything Bob showed is in daily use at Microsoft and available today or in Office 2007 (which ships this year).

Bob and I alternated. I laid out the session in three sections : unified communications, shared workspaces, and finding information and processes. Bob showed how we do that at Microsoft, in real life.

While I think that IBM and Microsoft hold to similar principles of collaboration, I think the big difference between us is relative ability to deliver it.

<edited to remove typos 10/26/2006>

Comments

[Bob Congdon]

Minor typo Cliff, Ken Bisconti is a VP at IBM, not BM. The latter conjures up a very different impression. ;-)

[cliffreeves]

Good point, Bob. I'll make the correction as soon as I stop laughing.