Real Story Group. Make Better Technology Decisions.

We've just published an update to the Enterprise Collaboration & Social Software Version 4.0 Report. Version 4.0 is a significant overhaul, including updates to 16 vendors, plus we've added three new vendors: Yammer, BroadVision, and ThoughtFarmer.

SharePoint is widely considered Microsoft's most successful enterprise offering. It has become an almost ubiquitous component within enterprise information management architectures, and a seemingly pervasive topic of enterprise conversation -- even among those who don't license the platform.

Yet, SharePoint licensees generally concur that the platform's native social networking services are merely adequate to severely lacking. Moreover, SharePoint's notions of collaboration services tend to emphasize document-oriented use cases at the expense of discussion-oriented applications like collective ideation.

SharePoint licensees seeking to deliver on the promise of social networking and more advanced collaboration applications must therefore choose among three alternative approaches to close the gap: complement, supplement, or extend. Each alternative carries specific benefits and demerits in terms of cost, time to market, long-term adaptability, mobile enablement, user experience, external access, and other dimensions. This briefing examines the pros and cons to help you make the best decision.

It's a fact of business life that software vendors sometimes go out of business or vendors sunset their products. This actually happens less than most customers fear, but when it does happen, the results can range from damaging to catastrophic. Therefore, a prudent customer will monitor key technologies and suppliers for potential problems. Fortunately, a failing vendor or product will exhibit telltale signs of coming failure. Led by RSG founder Tony Byrne, this webinar will share ten key "early warning signs," so you can conduct your own risk mitigation accordingly.

With rare exceptions, most enterprises do not employ business software "out of the box." Rather, they create applications. Applications are a specialized implementation of a piece of software that achieves a particular business purpose, and they are critical to obtaining value in your specific business environment. However, creating applications requires development expertise, time, and funds. Applications also require configuration management: the process of synchronizing and testing multiple concurrent changes. Yet even with testing, bugs and instability frequently haunt them. SaaS (Software as a Service) and cloud-based services obviate only some (but not all) of these challenges.

It's been over 10 years since we first came across SharePoint and so much has changed in that time. Changes both in terms of the products, but also in terms of buyers and market expectations. Alan believes that SharePoint is approaching something of a crossroads, one that users of the platform may be more aware of than Microsoft and its partner channel. The times they are a-changing...and SharePoint has evolved in ways nobody could have expected. The competition, meanwhile, is far from rolling over and giving up. In fact it has adapted remarkably well. Who is buying SharePoint in 2011, why are they buying it and when might this Microsoft steamroller of success finally begin to run out of steam?

When you or your software vendors provide mobile access to business applications, there are two broad choices:

1. Create downloadable applications (or mobile apps) that are optimized for different device/operating system combinations.
2. Create web-based applications (web apps) that target a broader mobile population of browser-enabled devices.

Proponents of web-based apps claim that technologies such as HTML5 will make mobile apps obsolete. There is merit to this argument, but it's not completely valid. Both approaches will continue to coexist, and therefore you need to decide which approaches are suitable for your scenarios. This paper helps you make these choices.
Download this advisory paper here.

SharePoint's licensing structure has always been complicated, and with new variants and options, SharePoint 2010 is no exception. Moreover, with the advent of BPOS and its successor Office 365, you have recourse to new deployment options with distinct licensing models.

Depending on which version of SharePoint you deploy, the licensing cost can range from nearly zero to hundreds of dollars per seat. This is because Microsoft sells several versions of SharePoint, but each version is packaged with different capabilities and licensing schemes. If you don’t understand the varieties, you'll only get half the story.

As a buyer, in order to budget for SharePoint accurately, you need to assess the various levels and deployment options carefully.

It's a fact of business life that software vendors sometimes go out of business or vendors sometimes sunset their products. This actually happens less than most customers fear, but when it does happen, the results can range from damaging to catastrophic. Therefore, a prudent customer will monitor key technologies and suppliers for potential problems.

Fortunately, a failing vendor or open source project will exhibit telltale signs of a coming failure. By identifying these signs as a customer, you can conduct your own risk mitigation accordingly. This paper identifies ten potential warning signs and offers an approach to distinguish between simple technical or business hiccups, and potentially serious trouble. It includes a simple quiz for you to rate likely risk levels among your key technology suppliers.

We've just published an update to the Enterprise Collaboration & Social Software Version 3.4 Report. Version 3.4 includes updates to the IBM Connections 3.0.1 Evaluation.

We have just updated two evaluations: Drupal Commons 1.3 from Acquia and Socialtext 4.7. In addition, a new vendor has been added to the report: Social Sites for SharePoint from NewsGator. Download the new evaluations here.

The initially meteoric rise of Second Life gave visibility to a (mostly) new crop of vendors looking to apply "immersive" or "virtual" experiences to enterprise collaboration. The idea here is that specialized applications can improve collaboration by making digital interaction a more human and life-like undertaking. Meanwhile, a growing emphasis on social computing services as part of enterprise collaboration efforts seems to have ripened the opportunity for more immersive forms of interaction. Eight key business scenarios have emerged for immersive/virtual collaboration, and more than one-hundred vendors have begun to explicitly target those use cases. This advisory evaluates whether the enterprise immersive/virtual marketplace segment has achieved critical mass and adequate maturity, and it outlines common business and technical challenges encountered by early adopters.

Download this advisory paper here.

Today we released an update to the Enterprise Collaboration & Social Software vendor evaluations. This release features an updated evaluation of SharePoint 2010's collaboration and social software capabilities. You can download the new Enterprise Collaboration & Social Software release here.

Download a recording of this 30-minute webinar originally aired on 18 January, 2011. Alan Pelz-Sharpe highlights the newest trends and where the marketplace is heading, and explains the 2011 Document Management Cross-Check. 22MB WMV file.

Requests for Information (RFIs) will help you gather information to make better decisions, and eliminate suppliers that cannot or should not be working with you. Download the advisory paper here.

We've just updated four vendor evaluations: Google Apps, Jive Software, Wordpress, and Moveable Type / SAY Media. Download them here.

Dynamic Publishing Systems manage the assembly of reusable components for publishing, along with the delivery of aggregated content to multiple personalized channels. This advisory briefing paper provides a technical and business primer.

Please join the Real Story Group for a free webinar -- "When Google Analytics Isn't Enough: Alternatives in the Web Analytics Marketplace, 2010" -- examining the pros, cons, and alternatives to Google Analytics, on Tuesday, 29 June, at 1:00pm EDT.

A new, six-page briefing describes how you need to evaluate and adapt your web publishing platform for mobile content delivery. Download here.

New advisory briefing outlines the pros and cons of the forthcoming Drupal-as-a-Service offering called Drupal Gardens. Download here.

The presentation, "Should You Buy Social and Collaboration Software from Your ECM Vendor?" can be downloaded here.

New briefing provides specific advice to enterprise customers navigating contemporary content technology marketplaces.  Download here.