Look to Problems and Solutions not Labels and Definitions

Our last blog entry, many months ago touched on the debate around "Enterprise RSS".

Ironically, as I write now, months later, the topic has surfaced once more with a few twists. James Dellow links to many of the sources in his recent post "The Nonsense of Enterprise 2.0" Its interesting to see all this discussion right now. We took a few months off from posting to the site and observed while we focussed on our second generation platform - the Attensa StreamServer for managed syndication services or what has been called Enterprise RSS. While we think the term Enterprise RSS is flawed it has taken on meaning for many.

The recent discussion encompasses the topic of Enterprise 2.0 generally as well as "Enterprise RSS". See Marshall Kirkpatrick's post "If you think RSS is Dead Then That's Your Loss and It's a Big One" or the recent post by Stewart Mader "Return on Adoption: Help People Solve Business Problems". When RSS is mentioned specifically in these debates my observation is that for the most part, those who promote the benefits of RSS in the enterprise are focussed on the business results that can be delivered by leveraging RSS to connect people, business applications and information. It seems that the antagonists are often focussed on specific tools or approaches that they as early adopters are using. For example, RSS is dead because live twitter activity streams are better.... These trends from the leading-edge are relevant but they are not determinant with regard to matters inside the enterprise.

If we are talking about enterprise software (and we are) as opposed to individual adoption, the focus of the debate needs to move from technology to business results. While opinions appear to differ, the discussions seem to be evolving in this direction. Accordingly, it seems like a good time to use the debate as context to introduce our new product and to look at XML/RSS syndication though the lens of business problems, opportunities and ROI.

Consider the importance of information management, knowledge sharing and collaboration strategies to business execution, competitiveness and innovation. This has led to large investments of resources and capital into information solutions. Unfortunately, the very systems implemented to enable these strategies are now creating obstacles for achieving the desired results. This is because the proliferation networked information and the sheer number of systems with frequently changing data are creating significant challenges to finding, monitoring and sharing relevant information.

More importantly, while information systems are critical, it is people not systems, that make business decisions, sell and service customers, innovate new products and execute strategy. If they can not effectively utilize information systems these critical business functions suffer. We are inadvertently turning our most important assets - knowledge workers - into inefficient "hunters and gatherers" rather than "cultivating farmers" of information.

The key to all of these business benefits is not the technical methodology behind the solution but the fact that there is timely, contextual delivery of information relevant to the business activity at hand. If this was accomplished with two paper cups and a string the business value is significant. Don't get me wrong, RSS approaches to information delivery are very important. What I am saying is they have value because of what they enable within the business context. Two cups and a string or email for that matter can not effectively unite business applications, social applications and the users that need the information.

The problem of harnessing information and knowledge contained in business organizations is expensive and getting more challenging. These problems are not solved by monolithic systems, email, IM or traditional portal approaches. But there are applications, usage patterns and best practices emerging that leverage RSS in very powerful ways. That seems like the appropriate focus of the discussion at this stage.

From a solution perspective, managed RSS/XML syndication strategies offer unique benefits. For one, these strategies are inherently standards based and leverage other systems. By making the information that an organization already has more accessible and enabling users to share insights or knowledge across systems and information sources each system in the network becomes more valuable. This can take the form cross pollenating information between users and systems based on context or it can be as simple as enabling highly personalized information dashboards that span different systems and deliver highly relevant, channelized information to users. These dashboards can be even embedded in the existing systems themselves making it transparent to most users.

Interestingly, Gartner breaks RSS in the enterprise out and recently moved it out of the trough of disillusionment and up the slope of enlightenment. Elllen Feaheny has a post about this recently titled Gartner: Wikis and Enterprise RSS on the “slope of enlightenment”. I think this signals less generalization and more consideration of mapping products to solutions. All involved should welcome that.

In the prior post, describing what was necessary to move this thing people call "enterprise rss" forward I observed that "[t]he heavy lifting of this challenge lies with the vendors and solution integrators to create solutions that facilitate natural user adoption, address enterprise information management challenges and produce immediate value." For Attensa what this meant was the development of our second generation server product - the Attensa StreamServer. The StreamServer is both a natural evolution of the prior Attensa FeedServer as well as a substantially new platform with new capabilities across the spectrum of find, subscribe, publish and share.

It is no surprise based on that earlier post that the goals for the StreamServer were quite clear. It had to be easily implemented, encourage natural adoption and complement systems and information sources already in in use. The StreamServer is also first and foremost an enterprise application with a focus on management, security, integration, availability and ease of deployment across large numbers of users.

Applications like the StreamServer are new tools for IT and business leaders to solve challenges today as well as address the opportunity presented by information abundance and workforces eager to embrace collaboration. Identify any initiative or activity in the organization and ask the question - would our results be better and/or more efficiently achieved if the people involved could more easily find and remain aware of the information they need and share insights throughout their work? That seems to me to be the crux of the matter rather than what we call it at any given time.

More to come...