Byrne Tony Byrne

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Are all wiki tools the same?

29-Oct-2009

Tags: Enterprise Collaboration & Social Software, Confluence, MediaWiki, MindTouch , Socialtext

Are all wiki tools essentially the same? Our research suggests not. For a longer explanation, consult this KM World article.  To quote:

From a platform perspective, many enterprises today do not suffer from owning too few wiki tools, but rather, too many. It’s not unusual in a large organization to see successful (or not) wikis running on as many as five different platforms.

Inevitably, senior leadership comes to see a need for at least some degree of consolidation. But on which one or two platforms do you standardize? That is never a simple answer, especially when you need to address several different scenarios, like software documentation vs. marketing community of practice vs. sales collateral repository.

Some IT leaders try to short-cut the process and simply default to a solution like SharePoint because they already license the platform enterprisewide and assume it will stretch for a variety of different needs. Their colleagues are likely to be sorely disappointed.

If you’re looking to standardize, here’s a better approach. Inventory the business purposes of wikis in your enterprise that have seen success to date—or are likely to thrive in the future—and then assess the strengths and weaknesses of available tools. You’ll want to assess incumbent solutions, but also keep an eye on the broader marketplace, especially if you’re thinking of exposing any wikis beyond the firewall.

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