By: Bob Tarzey, Service Director, Quocirca Posted: 26th June 2008 Copyright Quocirca © 2008

There continues to be much coverage in the press about the impact IT is having on the environment through increasing power consumption. As well as berating IT departments for the poor running of data centres and deploying devices inefficiently in the field there has also been more positive talk about the valuable role IT can play in reducing carbon emissions elsewhere, especially in transportation. This is a pressing issue anyway with the fuel price crisis.

Estimates vary in the total power used by IT, but as a percentage of total power consumption it is not necessarily bad if this increases, as long as emissions fall elsewhere as a result of innovative use of IT. If, say, 100 telepresence meetings can be run for the same equivalent carbon emissions as flying one person across the Atlantic, then this is almost certainly a more productive use of that power, however it is supplied.

The real problem comes with actually proving that investing in and increasing the use of electronic collaboration tools is really reducing actual travel. So when at its annual analyst conference this week Cisco made claims to this effect analysts were keen to know how this was measured.

In the absence of a generally agreed emissions accountancy method for business, financial measurements are the next best thing. Cisco's claim was that in the period of one year 120,000 telepresence meetings had taken place, reduced travel costs by $85 million. Now, if this figure is for real it will pay for an awful lot of communications equipment, so presumably the return on investment will be pretty good as well as the CSR (corporate social responsibility) message.

Gratifyingly, as a market leading supplier of network communication equipment, it seems Cisco is setting an example. Its estimated savings are based on a reduction in the average employee's travel expenses. With around 61,500 employees that is around $1,380 per head. That equates to between 1 and 10 flights per year depending on the route and class of travel or a few thousand kilometres claimed for car travel. Given that some employees will not travel much at all the actual reduction in for field employees must be somewhat higher than this.

As well as year over year comparisons on travel expenditure, Cisco has a double check on this figure. After every telepresence meeting the attendees are asked to complete a survey stating how the meeting would otherwise have been convened. This means that Cisco has more in depth data on the type of travel that is being replaced although it did not share this at the conference.

Demonstrating that IT really can reduce emissions elsewhere is good - but green wash is not. It is important that claims are backed by hard data, however for a full understanding it is necessary to know what the total travel spending is. Cisco has annual revenues approaching $40B and total travel costs are likely to be much, much higher than its $85 million saving (which is about 0.2% of revenue) and it also needs to take in to account non-employee travel - such as that of the few hundred analysts and consultants if flew to the UK to hear its message this week.

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By: Rob Bamforth, Principal Analyst, Quocirca Posted: 16th June 2008 Copyright Quocirca © 2008

When the first Apple iPhone appeared a year ago it created a huge stir among consumers. It was a particular hit with the Apple faithful, with an expectation that anybody with a creative bone in their body, or a tendency to wear sandals and sport a ponytail would go for the device no matter what the functionality.

There were many naysayers, and many technical issues were raised as ‘big problems' that would deter users; a poor camera, a closed battery, no 3G - a supposed deal-breaker for any European user. It was also very expensive and tied to costly contracts with only one choice of operator. Despite all this, Apple can be fairly pleased. Usability and design have trumped all the techie issues, it is a communications device centred around the user, balanced across all applications - a simple to use and handsome jack of all trades.

But of course, it shouldn't appeal to the business user. After all, they are too sensible to be lulled by ease of use and beauty of design, especially as a major flaw for them was the lack of full connection to enterprise email, calendar and contacts. They want a tool that allows them to get on with the job, not a style icon or object of desire.

However, business users turn out to be human too, and even the first generation iPhone appeals to some. It's probably only as a second device to another enterprise supplied phone, and as only really the top execs would get away with it on their corporate contract, it couldn't be positioned to challenge the corporate handset suppliers, or could it?

Well, this creates an interesting feeling of déjà vu. A companion device, only senior execs, early security worries, proprietary architecture - this all mirrors Research in Motion's (RIM) early progress - perhaps Apple's new device is more ‘BlackBerry two-dot-oh', than iPhone 2.0?

So what does that mean for RIM, its bunch of BlackBerrys and the other corporate smartphone handset suppliers?

It is clear that many of them have tried in some way to latch on to the handheld style and usability that Apple brought to everyone's attention. Their products are not all necessarily as aesthetically pleasing, but the entrance of the iPhone onto the scene appears to have raised everyone's game. Touch screens and icon interfaces have abounded, but some suppliers still fail to understand that it's not simply about hardware features, but the right blend of hardware, software and service. This was something RIM recognised from the fruition of the first BlackBerry.

Having created the mobile email category, RIM has had enormous success with both its chunky PDA-style devices and their full qwerty keyboards, and slimmer smartphone style hardware. Its attempt to widen appeal to other manufacturers by licensing the software platform has been slow, and in reality, stumbled. The combination of hardware, software and service that made the concept such a success means that hiving off any of the elements was always going to be a challenge. Offering the software on someone else's plastic, even with the same push email service, still pits any licensee against the BlackBerry branded hardware.

As a result there have been large numbers of the BlackBerry hardware devices sold, 20 million at recent count, although that's still tiny compared to the billions of mobile phones. Use has spread beyond email to many other applications. The increasing spread of the BlackBerry across all layers of the organisation opens up a different challenge for the first time. It is no longer a mark of seniority, status or prestige - if anyone can get one, where's the deferential differential?

There are other challengers for RIM too, coming from Symbian and in particular, Windows Mobile. As the BlackBerry normalises many more enterprise activities onto a mobile handset, this increases the need for closer integration into existing IT infrastructure. In many areas Microsoft products - Exchange, Office, .NET - will form crucial parts of the corporate IT services. Skills in these product areas will be widespread, and despite many concerns about specific product issues, there will be an undercurrent of acceptance. This makes Windows Mobile devices more acceptable as the mobile workhorses, but thus far, the range of products has been limited, some struggling with the operating software and some designs a little uninspiring.

Now, Windows Mobile has evolved from feeling like a slightly flaky Windows 3.1 into a very capable Windows 98. The licensees building handsets based on the Windows Mobile platform, in particular Taiwan-based handset maker HTC - perhaps in response to Apple and further developments of their own - have significantly improved form and functionality, despite some lingering concerns about battery life (something RIM cracked a while ago). There is of course still further to go, but this broadening range of handsets from HTC and the other licensees is now ready for a mass business market.

By adding Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync mail, calendar and contacts synchronisation, security and device management features, and positioning the new iPhone as enterprise ready, Apple has thrown a new challenge into the smartphone industry. The style and cool appeal will certainly undermine the kudos crown held by the BlackBerry, but it might also have given an unexpected shot in the palm to other smart handsets as well, in particular to Windows Mobile.

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By: Rob Bamforth, Principal Analyst, Quocirca Posted: 12th June 2008 Copyright Quocirca © 2008

There is plenty of ‘hubbub’ in many countries around whether customers are getting the broadband speeds advertised by their internet service providers (ISPs); highlighted again most recently in the UK with a series of populist news items. A new code of conduct from the UK's telco and media regulator, Ofcom, aims to stop what many believe is an attempt by the industry to mislead customers.

Now it is fair to wrap the industry's collective knuckles to stop "up to 8MB/s" claims, when many customers are so far from the telephone exchange that the reality is the best they'll achieve is 2MB/s—far better to let the customer know what they can expect. However, just like the UK motorway speed limit allows you to drive ‘up to’ 70mph, it is not always possible when congested—and connections to the internet are far more congested than any motorway.

First the link from premises to exchange is dependent on the quality of the (generally) copper connection, and the speed it can bear over its length. The upper limit of the ‘up to’ numbers in the industry typically describe performance over a short high quality hop, rather than each subscriber's experience, which is always going to be lower.

Next the connection capacity may be shared, or contended, with others. For consumers that typically means 50 households sharing 1 line, with some low cost providers pushing that up to 100 to 1, and many small business tariffs offered a slightly better ratio of 20 or 10 to 1. With averaged, random, traffic in bursts, like emails, browsing and the odd download, that's not going to be too much of an issue, but with more consumers and SMBs using internet telephony/VoIP, streaming music or video, or highly interactive services, the problem will increase dramatically.

There's also the challenge of inequality in the connection speeds up or down. The ‘A' in ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) is important as it means more bandwidth downstream, for downloading, and only a fraction for uploading. Sending large emails is much slower than receiving them, but crucially for business users who may be sending large amounts of data up into the network—using the internet for remote backup storage—this is another potentially problematic limitation.

Recent Quocirca research shows that small and medium businesses (SMBs) are increasingly using the internet for more business critical activities—a quarter for voice over IP telephony (VoIP), over a third for network storage, one in six for video conferencing—with more planning to do these activities over the coming year.

Given this, those SMBs that rely on the internet for running parts of their business should be more aware of the limitations of different offerings from service providers. Unfortunately, many of those interviewed were unaware of the true impact of sharing a connection with other users—contention ratio—or the difference in upstream and downstream connection speeds.

While the general public might not be expected to be aware of these nuances, these interview respondents were, in the main, responsible for the IT and communications investments of their companies, but with so many other things demanding their attention, this has not yet been deemed as being sufficiently important. They are, after all, probably consumer users too, and have been fed the industry marketing messages about raw bandwidth, and been led astray by the ‘up to’ promise.

With an ever greater dependence on the internet for all manner of activities, SMBs now need to look more closely at the service they are getting, and discriminate between different offers on more than raw advertised speed, taking into account how capacity on offer better matches their usage patterns and needs of the networked applications they plan to use. On top of these technical criteria, they also need to assess reliability, support and service suitability.

ISPs and their services should no longer be measured solely on simple capacity—time to mind the quality, not just feel the (band)width.

For more information and advice on the internet service provision challenges facing SMBs, download Quocirca's free report "Soaring not Surfing".

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By: Rob Bamforth, Principal Analyst, Quocirca Posted: 4th June 2008 Copyright Quocirca © 2008

Almost half of UK organisations subsidise employees' personal calls made on company supplied mobile phones—either completely or only requiring a partial contribution from the employee—according to recent Quocirca research. With the average personal usage on company mobile phones estimated to be as much as a third of the total bill, why are companies letting this through? Is it intended as a perk for employees or are those in control of the purse strings just being casual with money they could add to the value of dividends paid out to shareholders?

It might seem like mean penny-pinching to some, but pennies saved quickly add into pounds, which might be important in harder economic times. Take a simple example, where an organisation has 3,000 mobile phones with an average airtime cost per user of £30 per month. The total annual expenditure would be £1,080,000. Using an average of around 30% for personal use (probably optimistically low), the total cost of this would be £324,000.

The values per person might be deemed to be low and, as such, many organisations may see this as a minimal or acceptable loss, but when equated to the entire mobile fleet this becomes a significant sum to be given away as an informal benefit. In most cases it is unlikely to be recognised as forming part of the employees' benefit packages.

This could be only the tip of the mobile personal usage iceberg, with many new elements contributing and becoming more appealing. For example, ‘personal content’ on the mobile phone such as premium text messaging (voting for reality TV shows), services that cannot be barred by the networks, the increase of personal text messaging (over two-thirds of company text messages are thought to be personal), then there is the possibility of making payments via the mobile phone.

In addition to the loss there is also a compliance issue, in particular relating to VAT, which cannot be reclaimed on personal calls. According to Quocirca's research, in many instances companies use a ‘finger in the air’ estimation, or leave it to the employee to work out a value to assign for personal use in order to satisfy HMRC requirements. The issue with this is that organisations have no or very few processes in place to actually audit their employees’ personal usage levels and, as such, could be under-declaring the VAT value and, in some instances, over valuing.

As organisations begin to deploy more and more mobile data applications this adds further complexities in understanding and in managing such expenditure. In one anecdotal example a company was stunned to receive a mobile data bill for one user in excess of £8,000. When investigated, it turned out the user had been streaming a live football match to their smartphone whilst away on holiday. The employee's response—"I thought we were allowed personal use of the mobile?"

There is a further issue most organisations do not even consider that could have greater repercussions from a HR perspective. If the company allows employees with business-supplied mobile phones to benefit from free personal calls then, in practice, they are excluding all other employees that have not been issued with one from receiving this benefit. This is an unwelcome potential headache that could lead to claims of unfair treatment from the many employees without them, or those expected to provide their own.

Overall, the need to make personal mobile use visible and to effectively manage that use is evident from the impact it might have on the bottom line. Brushing it under the carpet is no longer acceptable in times when companies should be prudently managing their costs, or at the very least understanding the true value of all the benefits they are providing their employees.

Some companies will dismiss the amounts involved as of little consequence, but their shareholders might like to ask if the business's decision to ignore personal calls is taken by default by being unaware of their true cost, or whether it is deliberate, based on the facts.

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By: Rob Bamforth, Principal Analyst, Quocirca Posted: 6th May 2008 Copyright Quocirca © 2008

In economically challenging times it is no surprise to see the knee-jerk reactions of many organisations to ‘cut costs'. Overall solvency (profitability), and the monthly demands of liquidity (cashflow) are vital for the health of any company—most businesses cannot rely on government rescue like that extended to some now infamous banks—so it sometimes seems that cutting costs is the best thing to do.

However cutting equally across all cost centres in a blind panic is rarely effective in the long term and should be taken as a last, rather than first, resort. There are often many avenues that can be addressed before wielding an indiscriminate axe. This is particularly important in those areas where direct expense is most visible, but the true business value is opaque or diffuse.

Take mobile telephony as an example. Those responsible for telecommunications in most organisations have a pretty good idea of how large their total phone bills are and can see how much certain elements, for example mobile calls, are growing by. This makes it an easy target area for swingeing budget cuts. According to recent Quocirca research, around a half of companies are not seeing mobile spending falling in line with tariff reductions. Telecoms managers can also see who the worst offenders are, as over two thirds believe they have sufficient accuracy and detail to know ‘how much' and ‘who spends what' from itemised charges on a mobile phone bill—what they don't know is ‘why?'.

This piece of information is critical, because not only does it provide an indication of what value might be being gained, it also offers some intelligence that could be used to decide if it is possible to find an alternative, so that the value can be retained while the cost reduced.

Businesses obtain significant value from voice communication, and the mobile phone has become a primary tool for delivering this, ensuring that people can be reached when away from their desk. Decisions can be made faster, avoiding costly delays, and improving responsiveness. Individuals are able to make use of previously dead time, hopefully either improving their personal productivity and taking control of their work/life balance, or perhaps just as likely staying in touch friends or relatives.

Making mobile calls while in an office with perhaps a lower cost fixed phone nearby is of more questionable value, but something that many employees will do. Why? Because it is more convenient and generally the desired contact numbers are already in the phone and just a click away. There's also the flexibility of being able to start a call while sat at a desk but not having to hang up and call back when other demands make it necessary to get up and move, say to head off to a meeting, or to go home.

If the call is important, mobile flexibility means it does not need to be curtailed, promoting value over cost. What is the value of a lost opportunity when a salesperson is unable to make a mobile call because of penny pinching, or the loss of loyalty when a rapid response to a customer can not be made because the person needing to call is out of the country? The reason for the call is more relevant than its length or distance.

However not all calls are that instantly vital. They may simply be being made because it is all too easy to call a contact out of the address book or click to return a missed call. Employees are so familiar with using a mobile phone as consumers that they would rarely think twice about the cost of making calls from a business supplied mobile phone. Other alternatives—an email, instant message or text message—may be seen by the employee as too awkward to use, are not encouraged by their employer or are not available because of the devices or services currently being supplied.

These alternatives can only be pursued with appropriate knowledge of ‘why', and this requires an appraisal of the impact of current usage by line managers and the individual affected employees. This awareness encourages personal responsibility among employees, perhaps making them think twice about too many personal or unnecessary calls, and allows managers to make business oriented decisions balancing value with cost.

There is also a need to understand outside influences, such as the viability of other services, a comparison of current tariff options and best practices in place elsewhere. This is where a good telecoms manager, either on their own or with external specialised help, can provide more effective support to users than simply an itemised bill and a budget squeeze.

The business value of mobile telephony stems from the importance and timeliness of making contact there and then, coupled with the convenience of how contact is made. If companies take too simplistic a view to cutting costs of mobile telecoms that means cutting usage or users. They may of course be able to negotiate a better deal with a supplier, but according to the same research, even with falling tariffs, for most companies mobile bills are still rising. Convenience, timeliness and perhaps over familiarity are driving up the demands for usage and the number of users.

Companies have to be more effective to continue to get good value out of advanced communications, and use other tools to help manage telecoms budgets than just an axe. To look in more detail at obtaining value from telecoms, download this free report from the Quocirca website, "Total telecoms expense management".

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By: Rob Bamforth, Principal Analyst, Quocirca Posted: 22nd April 2008 Copyright Quocirca © 2008

The importance of assessing and measuring records management policy and the subsequent procedures used has been thrown into sharp relief by the disaster that last year befell the UK's Revenue and Customs organisation. The personal records of 25 million of the UK population were sent protected only by a password in an internal postal system, and lost.

It's bad enough that it happened at least once, but worse still to think that organisations get away with bad procedures for some time, before only a combination of circumstances cause them to be revealed. Even if the strategic policy is robust, when a system breaks down in the implementation of the policy, its effectiveness isn't being correctly measured.

Organisations need to know how their systems and processes are performing—well or badly—before any fallibilities are exposed with potentially far more catastrophic results. There is also the more basic and straightforward reason for checking—having invested in a records management system, is it providing good value?

Most organisations will have justified the expenditure on some combination of expected benefits—strategic and tactical. In both cases, they need to know if these benefits are being realised and must put some form of measurement and benchmarking systems in place.

There are two main drivers for this. The first is to demonstrate the short term benefits to stakeholders to show where the investment has been a success, and where there needs to be changes or enhancements based on lessons learned. It should not just be a set of check boxes as part of the project review and seen by only a few, but a broad internal presentation of current and expected progress. This should have been set out as a main part of the initial plan, and have straightforward measurement criteria set against each benefit, including:

• improved productivity
• competitive gains
• costs savings
• reductions in storage space
• better workflow

The second reason for measurement is for the longer term, more strategic or indirect benefits that need to be enhanced and protected. This includes those that might form part of an external vision or message, both for ongoing present promotion, but also for defence in the event of some future failure. These benefits are harder to quantify, but should also have been outlined from the beginning:

• image or brand value
• the need to meet statutory requirements
• enhanced knowledge management
• improved customer service
• business resilience or disaster recovery

How should an organisation start to quantify what they might need to measure in their records management projects? Well there are established standards to address this, such as ISO 15489, which covers plenty of ground in addition to providing a benchmark for best practice.

ISO 15489 is about the entire approach, methodology and processes for ensuring that an organisation's records are properly managed and made usable and accessible throughout their lifecycle. For the sake of external validation and verification, the standard also ensures that critical stages, such as final disposal, are carried out in an open and transparent manner and according to pre-determined criteria. This is particularly important where there are regulatory or data protection requirements from legislation.

The value of measurement is not only for the benefit of external stakeholders. Improvements made in information access and workflow can have a huge impact on individuals, both in terms of their effectiveness and their job satisfaction. Office workers can waste many hours searching for badly labelled, badly filed or simply ‘mislaid' records, which eats into their time and morale. So as part of the introduction of new procedures and systems, the personal benefits can be identified, and then captured over time to show even the most reluctant individuals and, perhaps, more importantly, their industrial relations representatives, that improvements are being generated for both organisation and individual.

Tackling measurement from an early stage can also help if a project is struggling to obtain sufficient management resources by identifying some early success stories. If some of the expected benefits have not been achieved there will be a need to look for reasons and seek to overcome them so that later phases can be directed to address the shortfall.

However, it is best not to over-rely on measurement, and more useful to measure what is important, rather than making important what it is often too easy to measure. Always feed back good news items with reasons as to why they have happened and how they will be capitalised upon, but don't shy away from making clear where there are problems, and what corrective action will need to be undertaken.

Finally, if internal measurement or external exposure in the media highlights major flaws, take prompt action to tighten up procedures and communicate them so that all staff understand why processes have become more restrictive. These can always be relaxed later, but everyone needs to know that the organisation takes its records management seriously and effectively measures how well it is being performed. No one wants to discover inadequacies after a public failure—just ask the UK's Revenue and Customs, or any of the other large organisations that have recently inadvertantly hit the media.

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By: Rob Bamforth, Principal Analyst, Quocirca Posted: 18th April 2008 Copyright Quocirca © 2008

There is no doubt that many markets are facing challenging or at least uncertain times. Those predicting a falling market are known as "bears" and are often thought of as pessimistic. The term is thought to originate from the inverse of the concept of "don't sell the bearskin before you've killed the bear", known in trading circles as selling short. The other strategy in bear markets is to stay away, but that's not possible if you want to keep a company in business in a bear-ish economy.

A hunting story might indicate a better direction to take in a falling market. Two hunters out tracking bears suddenly encounter one and realise they have no ammunition for their guns. While the first hurriedly tries to drop rucksack and surplus weight, the second stops to put on running shoes. "You won't outrun the bear in those" says the first. "No, but I'll outrun you" is the reply.

In almost all industries except the stock market and gambling, the object is to stay ahead of the other participants, not the market itself. When times are hard, it's better to be more competitive than simply slashing budgets. This is particularly true in the area of telecommunications where companies have put useful or even vital tools in the hand of employees, only to now apparently say, use fewer of them and less often.

These capabilities were put in place for valid reasons, such as making the company more flexible, more customer-centric and competitive, or enabling employees to be more responsive, efficient and effective. So why would any company want to compromise these advantages by adopting blanket restrictions that might just put it in the jaws of the bear?

Communications costs are an easy target. They spread right across the organisation, can be identified to an individual, have been seen as growing rapidly in recent years and there is a general undercurrent feeling that the organisation is subsidising inappropriate personal, as well as legitimate business, use. Not only does that raise an issue of potentially avoidable expense, it also brings in both personal and corporate taxation, most especially VAT.

Applying swingeing cuts across the board might seem right the right thing to do as it appears to be evenly unfair to everyone, but it doesn't tackle root causes and runs the risk of disabling functions that are important to the business. There are, however, a number of things that organisations can do to try to outrun the competition:

• First decide on policy. Will employees be charged for personal phone calls and will they have to pay for their broadband at home when it's partly used for business? What sort of restrictions will there be on making international calls, accessing the internet from the office, using Wi-Fi on laptops, or using premium rate services? Any or all of these may be supported by some technology, but first the rules have to be decided, then made clear to everyone, then enforced.
• Converge thinking on communications. Different technologies, mobile phones, desk phones, landlines, laptops with datacards—historically may have been the responsibility of different groups or individuals in IT, procurement, finance and facilities. Move the overall responsibility into one place, so that decisions are more strategic and less territorial. The technology is converging, so apply the same attitude to budgets.
• Find out what is already in use. Do a proper audit of the telecoms estate, and if internal resources or skills are in short supply, get outside help. Make sure this is not a one off exercise, as the portfolio of assets shifts as employees leave the company, or new services and suppliers are brought in. Mind the gaps and don't pay for things that are necessary or people who have left.
• Face up to personal usage. Measure it, manage it and bill for it. It not only does employees good to see and agree what they've used, it also makes managers able to sign it off as appropriate and allows the company to verify the suppliers bills are correct. Errors frequently occur, for many innocuous reasons.
• Take a longer view than simply negotiating a better deal with each supplier in turn. That only provides a short term boost to the budget, but doesn't address underlying issues or costs that could be avoided. The longer term view also has to take into account the broader goals and needs of the business, rather than the pressure on one individual to squeeze a budget to hit an objective.

Companies need to put in a little effort to optimise their current spending on communications and avoid unnecessary future expense. Rather than simply lightening their loads, they need to invest wisely on ways to be nimble. To look in more detail at obtaining value from telecoms, download this free report from the Quocirca website, "Total telecoms expense management".

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By: Rob Bamforth, Principal Analyst, Quocirca Posted: 15th April 2008 Copyright Quocirca © 2008

No, not a prediction for the winner of the next UK Grand National horse race (this year it was ‘Comply or Die' who won), but a siren call across the IT and communications industry for ‘Unified Communications'. So is it just the buzzword du jour, the latest bandwagon to jump on, the current trend being peddled around hype cycles, or is there something real and tangible for businesses to gain benefits from?

One thing's for certain, there are now more options for connecting people than ever before—fixed, mobile, rich media, and social as well as business networking—providing more opportunities for communication to be dis-unified rather than unified. Too many points of contact, or ways to go ‘on hold', coupled with multiple repositories for either typed or spoken missed messages makes life complicated for the user. A collision of IT and telecoms around IP is bearing down on the capacities of enterprise and service provider networks trying to run voice, video and regular business applications at acceptable service levels.

Add to the mix an uncertain economic landscape and an increasing pressure to bear down on costs. IT and telecoms has often been seen as an expensive business ‘investment' and, with new services and increasingly mobile workforces, many businesses are seeing their communications costs grow, even when supplier tariffs are shrinking.

So why invest now in unified communications?

Better to ask, what to invest in as we move along a path towards unifying our communications. This shouldn't be seen as a big bang—one day we're all over the place, next we're unified thanks to product ‘x'. First it's necessary to see what unified communications is, and see how this concept and the technologies it comprises might fit into the current and future needs of the business.

One important component has been voice over IP (VoIP), not as a technology or series of technologies per se, but as part of the transition from thinking as voice telephony as a separate service requiring its own dedicated network and endpoints, to becoming JANA (just another network application). Of course it needs its own services in the network to ensure quality and provide security, but it is a communication component, not a discrete channel.

VoIP is also important because it generated the idea of saving money by converging networks and coalescing or sharing endpoints, and running the phone system parasitically on the back of an existing data network. The reality is more complex, as many early VoIP adopters have found out. Simply throwing VoIP phones onto data networks, bashing connection capabilities together into softphones and letting the network cope just won't deliver the real benefits. The network will wilt, quality of service will falter, or if really unlucky will fall over, and users will still have a confusing array of options, often making the mobile phone look the simplest, if most expensive, way to contact someone.

The interest in unified communications might be about a desire to save money over time, but crucially it has to make the business more effective and individuals more productive in the short term. There are three levels to address when considering how much and what to unify—people, processes and plumbing. People need to be in control, the processes need to be collaborative and the plumbing needs to converge.

Why do people need to be in control? Mainly to improve their time management, avoid unnecessary interruptions and get hold of people when they really need to. It's about controlling and managing a digital workflow increasingly spread across geographic and organisational boundaries. The working processes are increasingly complex and convoluted creating an opportunity for collaboration. The cornerstone for the value that unified communications can offer is an awareness of the state and availability of those being contacted. This is summed up by the term ‘presence', which is familiar to instant messaging users as the current indicator of the state of their buddy list, but for a unified set of communications tools for an entire business, this becomes the context-aware corporate directory.

While fully integrated and federated presence delivers a powerful tool, how it is used from a social and interpersonal level is critical to whether it successfully delivers. Organisational processes and personal prowess mean that training on soft skills is more important than the technical skills of how to use the tools. This is part of the roadmap to unified communications—identifying personal and organisational efficiency.

The other major part of the roadmap which can be developed in isolation from the people and process improvements is the convergence required in the plumbing. However too many companies focus too much on this as a simply a set of technology innovations and initiatives. The technology is important, but rather than concentrating purely on innovative communication products, more attention needs to be placed on convergence of other aspects, such as the financial management and organisational responsibility.

That means taking a different view to managing costs and charge backs to users. The budgets for the varied telephony and IT services being combined will sometimes have been managed in very different parts of the organisation—facilities, IT, procurement. The converged infrastructure required for unifying communications needs to be justified at a strategic level in the organisation, and this means converging budgets and lines of responsibility before converged technologies can start to pay dividends.

Access, communications tools and services can be dealt with separately from a commercial control perspective, with the IT infrastructure and department essentially becoming a communications service provider to the rest of the business.

Want to be successful with unified communications? Drop the narrow focus on the technology and think about how people and processes will need to evolve, and how to commercially separate plumbing from service so that the infrastructure specification isn't compromised, and services are justifiable and of real benefit for the business.

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By: Clay Ryder, President, Sageza Group, Inc. Posted: 10th March 2008 Copyright Sageza Group, Inc. © 2008

The 1394 Trade Association has announced a new specification to quadruple the speed of FireWire to reach 3.2 gigabits per second. The new specification, known as S3200, is backwards-compatible with the IEEE 1394b standard and will be able to use the existing cables and connectors already deployed for FireWire 800 products.

The Silicon Working Group developed the S3200 specification within the 1394 Trade Association, with participation by Symwave, Texas Instruments, LSI Corporation, and Oxford Semiconductor. Since the 1394 arbitration, data and service protocols were not modified for S3200, silicon and software vendors should be able to deploy the faster-speed FireWire quickly. Operating without polling, idle times, or continuous software management, FireWire 800 efficiently delivers more than 97% of its bit rate as payload with FireWire 800 hard drives today moving over 90MBps. S3200 preserves the 1394b design efficiency and is planned to deliver payload speeds reaching 400MBps.

According to the trade association, the best FireWire 800 hard drives move data almost three times as fast as the best hard drives equipped with USB 2.0 and do so with more electrical power to enable operation without an AC adapter and at higher rotational speeds. Alternative cable options that can carry FireWire 100+ meters, even at high speeds, will be available with S3200 and will make this interconnect competitive with eSATA while delivering electrical power, which eSATA does not. Based on the working group's progress, the Trade Association has set a January 2008 date for the specification to enter a ratification process with ratification expected by early February.

Sometimes it is easy to think of interconnects as nothing more than nuts and bolts. Fasteners are generally not all that exciting and can viewed as a commodity. But in the case of FireWire, and its latest high-speed specification, the potential impact is more than a mere commodity could deliver. We have seen some astonishing improvements in copper wire connectivity speeds as of late. Not all that long ago, 100MBps over wire was considered lightning fast, but today 1GBps is met with a yawn of the mundane. The original FireWire was fast for its time, and easily beat early USB implementations. However, neither of these was generally considered for the highest speed interconnects, as this was left to expensive fabrics and optical cabling. Yet today, with this announcement, the notion of 3GBps through a low-cost established interface with considerable backwards capability is now on the cards.

With respect to disk drives, the new S3200 could have substantial impact in the cost of delivering storage both inside and outside of the desktop and the server. Small form factor external drives connected through S3200 offer a single-cable, high-speed, no-power-pack-required storage solution. This simplicity could simplify external disk drive usage in mobile environment where laptops are on the move, but also reduce the dreaded power vampire syndrome for desktop environments where bulky power-sucking transformers pile up around machines, generating heat and sucking power 24x7 even when the disk drive is turned off. Within storage appliances or other internal applications, the simplification of cabling could lead to cost reduction and greater efficiency in solution packaging.

As FireWire has many uses outside disk drives, including camera, cable and satellite set-top boxes, HDTV, and more, the potential for S3200 to compete in high-bandwidth digital media scenarios is considerable. Under S3200, FireWire should offer sufficient throughput to support uncompressed HD signals over longer distances. If further developments permit FireWire to operate over the coaxial cable common in TV installations, the potential of additional data streams coexisting with TV programming should be well received by service providers who are seeking to develop additional revenue streams that leverage the existing infrastructure. But even at present, from the simplistic view of cabling expense, FireWire tends to compare favorably with HDMI, and can easily support storage and other devices that are typically not connective through HDMI. This lends FireWire well to media centers, set-top boxes, etc., as well as its existing base of computing and consumer electronic devices.

Overall, we are intrigued by the potential of S3200 and the potential raising of the bar it implies. As rich media increasingly inundates all aspects of life, the ability to easily and cost-effectively move large numbers of bits between devices becomes all the more important. Further, in an era where green is more than just a color, the leverage of a centralized power distribution source to power devices is well positioned to not only save manufacturing costs and complexity, but lower the overall amount energy consumed by interconnected devices and their users.

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By: Rob Bamforth, Principal Analyst, Quocirca Posted: 4th March 2008 Copyright Quocirca © 2008

The old joke about the office worker who says to their partner when they get home at the end of the day: "the computers went down and we all had to think for ourselves" is getting too close for comfort.

As the mobile industry started its grand annual event in Barcelona—Mobile World Congress—a breakdown in the BlackBerry email service meant that many thumb weary executives had a break from their mobile email habit.

The device is often known informally as the ‘CrackBerry’, but the reliance on frequent hits of email and the subsequent cold turkey of withdrawal are very serious for many. This latest breakdown impacting North America, the second in less than 12 months to be caused apparently by the same problem—a system upgrade in the network operations centre in Canada—lasted for almost 3 hours. As the number of mobile email users has grown rapidly in recent years alongside their increasing dependency, the impact of any loss of service is greatly magnified, and felt in several quarters.

Take the hard-pressed IT manager for a start. The almost continuous operation of IT systems is taken as a given in many organisations.

When IT applications decentralised onto the PC, there was a time when the office desktop was mostly autonomous and independent in operation from the network, and intermittent service may not even have been noticed. Open standards and universal connectivity have now rendered the network critical and visible to almost any application. This is especially the case with email and, in particular, mobile email. Many an executive has assessed IT departmental efficiency based on whether or not they are receiving emails on their BlackBerry. Faults like this recent one are outside of an IT manager's control, but no doubt they will still be the focus of blame from users.

Then there's the recipient of those emails that the BlackBerry wielder has shot from the hip—literally and figuratively—with insufficient screen real estate for broad viewing, time for consideration, or a "real" keyboard for a response that might be misinterpreted. The only caveat is the sender's apologetic (or boastful?) signature line of "sent from my BlackBerry". These ‘stationary’ (as opposed to mobile) recipients put up with the constant drip of terse one liners from users who are unconcerned that their idle moments might not correspond with their colleagues', thus distracting or interrupting the working pattern of the recipient. One can only imagine the flood of pent up message/reply demand after a service outage is fixed.

Finally there is the impact of the outage on the BlackBerry user. Many complain about not being able to switch it off and the expectation from others that they are always contactable. It's becoming quite common to take a BlackBerry on vacation and some, no doubt, to bed. Of course the user would argue they are more responsive, with decisions being made in real time and customers or other external parties more involved in the process. The question is, are those quick responses the right ones or best ones in all situations? Are CrackBerry addicts running the risk of losing the ability to discern the difference between "Important" and "Urgent"? These abilities are tested to the limit when the user is deprived of a service they have come to heavily rely on.

The answer lies not in faults with the core technology, or, save the odd system wide crash or other, in the implementation. It lies primarily in the ways in which people are managed—mobile users and their more ‘stationary’ peers—and what expectations are set. Getting these right is not only going to benefit the BlackBerry-wielding executives, but also the wider workforce as they all become increasingly mobile. As more applications become network accessible and relied upon by mobile workers and their use becomes embedded in critical business processes, it will become even more vital to understand how the technology use intersects with the working practices and business processes of both individuals and the organisation.

Technology, in particular personal communications technology, should support, improve and extend established working processes, rather than trying to invent brand new ones. That's not to say it is impossible to create new processes, but it does require a wider, more strategic, business process re-engineering assessment to take place, and most mobile deployments are tactically driven. Quocirca research has shown that around a quarter of large European companies will retro-fit a strategy after making mobile deployments, a figure that has remained consistent for several years.

As part of the supporting, improving and extending of established processes, those using the technology need sufficient guidance to make the best use of what it can offer, without being sucked into bad habits or behaviour their colleagues may regard as anti-social—in short, good mobile netiquette.

In the days of LOL and L33T (text, chat or hacker-speak in these cases for ‘laughing out loud’ and ‘elite’) it might seem somewhat quaint to think about etiquette and the art of effective communication, but from a business perspective it is critical. Not only so that mobile workers and their colleagues do not feel as if they are being unnecessarily overloaded, but also to deliver on the main business benefit of mobility—productivity. Individual responsiveness is all well and good, but the final measure of productivity is on the corporate bottom line, which takes into account everybody—mobile user, stationary colleagues and IT manager.

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By: John Brand, Research Director, Hydrasight Posted: 25th February 2008 Copyright Hydrasight © 2008

In the lead-up to the proposed ratification of OOXML as an international standard, I wonder what all the fuss is about. For starters, even if OOXML becomes ratified, it doesn't necessarily mean it will become adopted. There are plenty of standards that no-one uses. Moreover, no-one more than Microsoft knows that "the only standard that matters is ubiquity". So what is this argument really all about? The people involved in this war on document formats always seem to come down to the issue of functional richness. ODF is criticised for being simplistic and OOXML is applauded for being richer in capability.

I do agree that ODF is simplistic. But that can be a good thing. HTML is also simplistic and that's why the web took off with such incredible velocity—anyone who could find the angle braces on their computer keyboard could publish an HTML page. However, when people are arguing over document formats in the context of ODF vs. OOXML it does make somewhat of a difference. OOXML is a richer file format—but then, that's what everyone (that doesn't like Microsoft) always complains about. Microsoft has a history of taking something simple (and often an agreed standard) and adding their own "usability flair" to it. So yes, ODF is more simplistic than OOXML but that's not really the point most people should be concerned about.

The dispute over ODF and OOXML is a holy war over no-man's land. The argument about "which is the right document format" is masking the fact that it's still just about a document format. What people are trying to do with the document format now however, is fundamentally different than in the past. Organisations are trying to create applications around a document format which in effect makes the document become a database (refer "Multi-dimensional documents compound information management problems"). It's therefore essentially the same issue as people arguing about which database format is the best one to use.

Organisations are confusing this issue about document formats with issues around application and information lifecycle management (refer "Open Document Format won't solve long term archiving issues"). For example, can you still access data in a DBASE application you wrote 15 years ago on your PC XT machine? Some organisations probably can, most probably not. But can they access the data from those databases? Generally they can today if:

1. They transferred the data to another format and media over that period (possibly even several times over that period with the change of technology)
2. They archived the data to a final form document—usually hardcopy print.

Some organisations had the forethought to output their document records to film 50 years ago and they're still always available today. So the issue is not really whether you can access the data in the documents in their original format in 50–100 years time, but whether you have considered the most appropriate method of retrieval in 50–100 years time (refer "ODF: 'Open' is not something end users even care about"). In this sense, the argument about document formats is really; "what benefits do you get from creating applications around a document format by using it as a database?"

When you look at how documents are evolving they are becoming collaborative applications in themselves (refer "The future of document sharing: collaborative online document editing"). Google Docs for example allows two (or more) people to edit a document simultaneously and to retrace your steps through those edits later if need be. Documents are therefore becoming multilayered databases, and word processing software is morphing into sophisticated collaborative applications.

To sum up, I think the war on document formats was over long before it began!

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By: Gerry Brown, Associate Analyst - BI and CRM, Bloor Research Posted: 14th February 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

When QlikTech CEO Mans Hultman recently retired he was asked how QlikTech maintained its 80% year-on-year revenue growth while competing with giants such as Business Objects, Cognos, and Hyperion. "The secret is our mission statement—simplifying analysis for everyone. In other words we keep the product simple and by doing so deployment is both easy and fast".

This ‘secret sauce’ resonates for sales intelligence solutions SaaS vendor sales-i also. Salespeople (not normally the most tech-literate folk) can work the system within minutes. No training required. sales-i sells via tele-sales and WebEx demos. Their catch phrase is "see it (the product) – get (understand) it" (NB QlikTech's is "seeing is believing").

sales-i is a sales analysis and reporting application, hosted by telecoms giant NTT. sales-i monitors customer behaviours and purchasing patterns in real time providing email and text message alerts to highlight sales opportunities. Salespeople drill down into customer sales records to determine buying trends and, most importantly, "drift"—when customers stop buying and a competitive threat is potentially lurking. The Snapshot window tells the salesperson the "leakage"—which products have not been purchased, and their potential value.

sales-i uses seamless mashups and is interoperable with other vendor applications. For example, users toggle between sales-i, Google Live Maps and SalesForce.com. sales-i can be easily mixed with best-of-breed applications. sales-i is directly accessible from Outlook and web browsers and via mobile phones, PDAs / BlackBerrys, and portable PCs. Salespeople receive sales-i ‘action required’ alerts on the road. They can also do account reviews at customer premises, using the "customer mode" button to mask cost and profit figures from the customer.

sales-i is ideal for small and mid-size companies with many products and customers. Office equipment companies are a classic example. Office equipment companies need to sell paper with envelopes, copiers and toner refills etc—cross-selling, up-selling, and switch-selling is the way to maximise share of customer wallet. sales-i helps sales reps to be aware of such sales opportunities.

Research shows that an average salesperson costs companies £250 per day to employ. For £251 (as sales-i costs c. £1 per user per day) sales-i provides a profitable focus for sales activities so that sales time is not wasted.

CRM and sales contact management software is a crowded market space with established big brand names such as SalesForce.com, Sage, Microsoft, NetSuite, and FrontRange (Goldmine) playing. sales-i does not seek to compete with these vendors. Instead it serves to add value through its simple-to-use sales intelligence functionality.

The product certainly looks good. With plans to launch in the US shortly and an OEM agreement with BT in the offing, there is no shortage of ambition. With the SaaS market still growing at an exponential rate, there is plenty room left in the market for innovative products like sales-i. Whether it can emulate the model for success in the SaaS market, SalesForce.com, has yet to be seen. However sales-i is walking and talking and is developing well—so far so good.

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By: Rob Bamforth, Principal Analyst, Quocirca Posted: 28th January 2008 Copyright Quocirca © 2008

Managing information is always a challenge. When it's locked inside an individual's head—arguably information mobility in its most basic form—teasing it out and sharing it for the benefit of many rather than the power and influence of one has often proved difficult.

The problem now is quite the reverse. There is such a variety and scope of information, not only the core records that IT systems have captured over the years, but almost anything and everything else has been digitised: images, sounds and video, location and identity tagging, and behavioural data from supermarket shoppers to telephone call records. This is great for data mining and analysis, but the sheer volume of data poses many challenges.

For many it's not, however, a problem of storage capacity—how?—but one of access and discovery—where?—and of containment or security. Storage capabilities have increased dramatically, essentially outstripping the amount of data that has to be stored, not just at the large volume, heavy end of data centre storage systems, but at what could be termed the tiny end of storage.

By this we mean the explosion of finger sized memory sticks with one or more gigabytes capacity and portable hard drives the size of a deck of cards holding hundreds of gigabytes. Added to this almost every mobile device from mobile phones to cameras is capable of storing not only its own internal data, but also of acting as an external mobile storage facility.

As information can then become more mobile, keeping it under control is a challenge. Once, taking work home from the office meant risking carrying a stack of papers containing kilobytes of information. In those days, a select few might be permitted to take some files on a laptop, but now almost anyone could carry a bank's entire customer database in their pocket. As more information is condensed into smaller physical spaces, its value is no longer diluted but distilled, and the risks increase.

According to Quocirca research, loss of data through theft or the mislaying of some form of mobile device—laptop, handheld, phone or memory stick—is seen as a greater issue than the problems caused by viruses or the potential for breaches in access security. This should be no great surprise, but the underlying fears over this loss need to be addressed, as employees and businesses are unlikely to give up the flexibility that mobility brings to their working lives.

The first issue to consider is the shift from perimeter and barrier protection to a shrinking bubble of defences applied directly and proportionately to vulnerable items. In this case, anything that may travel outside the physical confines of the organisation is potentially vulnerable and needs a level of protection. This does not mean a blanket approach of, say, encrypting everything inside the IT system just in case, but neither does it mean assuming that just because private customer accounts should stay in the building that they will.

A realistic approach to the value, vulnerability and secrecy of various types of information has to be taken, assessing who needs access to what, when and how. It is not enough to ensure that employees will ‘do the right thing', as even the most trusted may make mistakes or fall foul of faults in hardware, software and networks, or inadequacies in business processes. The simple guidance should be, the more valuable the information—where value means not only the value of having it, but also the cost of losing it—the more stringent, complete and discrete the protection should be.

The relationship between the individual and the technology raises the next issue to address, as the small size and simplicity of use of mobile devices mean they are prone to abuse—either deliberately or accidentally.

Firstly, it is easier than ever to bring a small device into the organisation—whether legitimately or not—transfer information onto it and take it elsewhere. This means organisations should take greater care with access to traditional fixed IT systems and PCs, and should consider products to protect, or at least detect, when external devices are used and, if necessary, only permit the use of corporate sanctioned and managed devices. This might disappoint the increasingly technology aware consumer-as-employee who wants to use their own better or more convenient technology. However, the organisation has to balance these wishes against protecting its assets.

Outside its perimeters, an organisation is far more dependent upon the diligence of the employee to protect and look after the mobile assets in their care. All too often this is a little lax and, according to Quocirca research, some IT managers would characterise user behaviour as ‘irresponsible' as they lose, leave or forget laptops, BlackBerries and mobile phones in taxis, coffee shops, bars and hotels. This is difficult to stop entirely so, as far as possible, protection has to be applied automatically. Beyond that, part of any security policy has to include educating users of their responsibilities and the consequences of their mistakes.

Overall, the diversity and flexibility of many technologies makes the management of securing information against device loss, or leakage through vulnerable points of access, a far harder challenge. More than ever before, those tasked with applying and managing security policies need tools that streamline the processes and blur the distinctions between different devices, storage systems and access methods, to ensure that common and consistent rules apply to data wherever they are used inside or beyond the organisation.

These principles apply even to organisations that do not condone or provide mobile tools or remote access to their information. The accessibility of consumer technology in terms of price, capability and ease of use means the physical barriers can no longer be relied upon to safeguard an organisation's information, so the focus has to be placed directly on the valuable data and on those who use it.

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By: Rob Bamforth, Principal Analyst, Quocirca Posted: 25th January 2008 Copyright Quocirca © 2008

All organisations depend on safe, reliable and secure storage of their digital records, but the challenge of securing this information is becoming more difficult due to expansive global networks, more users and increased data portability and mobility. This internetworking means that physical and logical perimeters around the organisation no longer apply, so the security of applications, the end points of access and the data itself needs to be taken even more seriously and become more fine grained—focused directly around the items being secured.

In addition, despite the melting away of the perimeter, the security risks for all organisations have always been from internal as well as external sources. These can come from the deliberate or accidental acts of employees, or weaknesses in business processes. External threats vary from those that threaten the resilience of the business—terrorism, weather disruption or communications breakdown—where records might still be ‘lost', to those that are malicious or deliberate acts for financial gain, sabotage, notoriety or a prank—stealing, spying and hacking.

Whether as a result of an accident or deliberate act, the end result is that data has leaked outside the organisation, with potentially disastrous consequences. Some accidental data loss may appear to only necessitate a simple short term cost to repair or recreate, but could have further negative impact on corporate image or increased regulatory scrutiny in the longer term. Deliberate acts are likely to have far more direct consequences to actual data and the concern that it may have fallen into the wrong hands, but the accidental leaks are more likely to cause indirect consequences, such as damage to a brand.

The first objective in mitigating internal or external vulnerabilities is to define which particular resources need to be protected the most, and identify the range of threats they face so that appropriate measures can be put in place. It is important to distinguish between information that is critical or sensitive—for example customer, patient or accounting records—and information that is simply a collection of public knowledge. Somewhere in between lays general purpose internal information, such as emails, where content may vary from mundane to secret and care needs to be taken to ensure suitable protection is in place.

While the organisation's physical perimeter could at one time be relied upon to provide a level of protection, the use of open networks like the internet, wireless and public cellular networks, mobile devices and tiny high capacity storage devices mean this is no longer the case. Information can be detected and snooped while travelling over these networks and small smart devices are highly vulnerable to loss or theft. Organisations now have to focus their security efforts on specific resources—the applications/databases, end devices used for access, the users and the records themselves.

Those with access to managed information need to understand how and why the information is being protected, and their role in ensuring it is kept secure. The onus is then on the organisation to keep security processes as simple as possible to accomplish the level of security required. This means identifying where security needs to be tight, and where it can be relaxed, and to distinguish how policy or controls should be applied. If the organisation is providing tools that can offer more security, users need to be fully educated in the effective use, and must appreciate the consequences of incorrect actions. The best way to set this out is as follows:

• Start with a pragmatic and granular security policy based on business needs. This should follow good common business sense that can be easily justified as a means of protecting the organisation's assets, but still operating to fit within day to day working practices.
• Engage users with consultation, not prescription. Any policy must be well communicated throughout the organisation and delivered using well understood business procedures. Involving users early will generate trust and encourage responsible behaviour in return. They need to appreciate any security challenges faced, understand the measures being put in place to tackle them, and how they play their part.
• Automate procedures with technology where possible. If the policy dictates the use of strong passwords, encourage or compel users to change these regularly, and have systems automatically refuse passwords that are too short or simple. Anti-malware and firewall protection must be installed on every device and updated regularly, but it is important to make sure that these products themselves do not render the very devices they are there to protect unusable—so choose carefully. Known risk areas such as mobile devices must be properly configured by default and before deployment.
• Train users before, support during. Run comprehensive training, use workshops and user participation to establish best practices and etiquette that everyone can buy into. From then on ensure users are kept informed and updated with any changes and that they have a simple and straightforward route for getting support in the event of a security problem. One number to call, one website to visit, one email address for support.
• Strictly enforce policy to show they are important. Policies must have consequences to be effective, and there are times when rules must be enforced. These must be clear and understood from the outset, so that violators are not surprised. As with any form of disciplinary practice, enforcement should scale according to severity and frequency of the problem.

Records management security is not something that should be buried deep in the IT department, or seen as an arcane art, but as a set of business principles with the intention of ensuring efficient and safe functioning of business processes. Just as all individuals play their part in their respective business processes, so they all play a part in ensuring security.

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By: Rob Bamforth, Principal Analyst, Quocirca Posted: 23rd January 2008 Copyright Quocirca © 2008

The internet has already had a massive impact on the way we access and distribute information as public websites led to intranets and all sorts of web enabled applications, but it has also started to change the process of collecting, creating and contributing to documents, files and records.

This should not be a surprise as many of the internet tools have a concept of shared interaction at their roots, and the original idea that Sir Tim Berners-Lee had for a web server was a collaborative way of building information and records. What is surprising is that it took so long for the rest of the internet community to catch up and largely this has now happened because of the creation of simple to use models and their supporting tools for non-technical users to generate their own content. Not by creating or editing web pages per se, but by working on information in forms they can understand—using constructs such as diaries and encyclopaedia, and environments such as golf clubhouses, market squares, bars etc.

Being the internet, a whole new ‘paradigm shift' in nomenclature had to occur, so these models are re-branded under the Web 2.0 banner as blogs and wikis and the umbrella term for all online gathering places—social networking. These concepts have swept the consumer and professional space rapidly with millions of people blogging and participating in social web sites. The basic process behind all this is to publish content to a large group for comment, with the hope and expectation of finding skills and knowledge beyond that immediately available to the publisher or their direct contacts.

The idea of wikis, in particular—shared access, shared edit, record entries—is an interesting way for organisations to manage, update and disseminate information, but steps have to be taken to ensure it provides an accurate picture. While blogging and entries on social websites generally reflect more personally held views, wikis encourage multiple participation and collaboration. They are relatively self regulating which tends to amortise the personal and oft times biased opinions of individual into a wider ‘group think'.

Like many self regulating systems, continued growth will depend on tools that make usage and access simpler, yet allow procedures to maintain some form of control. Many tools are appearing in the consumer market but most will not survive or translate well into the commercial world. For many organisations, the pace of the consumer market causes problems in the selection of tools for business use, especially if employees feel externally available tools are better than those provided by their own IT department.

Even if they want to embrace the new opportunities created by these types of social collaboration tools, organisations have to be able to ensure they can meet their other obligations. This will include securely and effectively managing processes that need to be assured to comply with any associated external standards or adhere to relevant internal policies around the distribution and publishing of records. There are several areas to address in order to maximise the benefit of using social tools for collaborative records management, in particular wikis, while minimising the drawbacks:

Security - Consumer-focused social networking tools have few, if any, information security capabilities built in to them. Organisations will have to select enterprise class solutions that use secure connections and enforce the recording of interactions between individuals and groups.

Quality - Initial records may start with standard reviews and sign offs, but the responses and edits of wiki records will not necessarily have the same vetting, and may be of dubious quality. Control is required and, where problems are identified, the owner of the wiki record should reserve the right to correct or remove as necessary.

Focus - If open to wider discussion, many wiki records become defocused as comments or spurious information builds up. What started well can drift off topic as a result of certain vested interests and the information becomes less accurate or valuable. Here too, monitoring and overall control is required, to maintain the focus and quality.

Integration - Any business social networking solution must be able to be integrated into an employee's daily work environment, and must be capable of using multiple corporate data storage for information retrieval and handling. This also means they will be protected by the standard data protection processes such as backup and recovery.

Information Lifetime - Many social networking solutions lack the sophisticated enterprise procedures such as information ageing and archiving. Wikis can help in this area, as new information can be rapidly embraced and promulgated through the wiki base—provided that there are enough active users underpinning the wiki itself. This again requires an active approach to ownership to ensure record lifecycle policies are maintained.

Wisdom of the Crowd - Social networking encourages this concept where it is assumed that a large enough group of people produces an end result that reflects the truth more effectively than any individual. This is a dangerous assumption within an organisation where groups may still have a narrow viewpoint, so it is always useful to have expert sources and reviewers as part of any managed wiki collaboration process, to ensure that records stay relevant and sanity checked.

New concepts from what initially appears to be a ‘world wild web' should not be dismissed out of hand when looking at ways to manage record creation, update and review. The ‘open to everyone’ approach of the internet's latest evolutionary phase with social networking and user generated content can have many benefits, providing they are well managed. Organisations can exploit them for effective collaborative records management if they remember to stick to their guiding principals of ownership, responsibility and accountability.

For an in-depth look at how social networking tools might be useful in organisations, download the free Quocirca report "Social Networking and Opportunities in the Public Sector".

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By: Rob Bamforth, Principal Analyst, Quocirca Posted: 18th January 2008 Copyright Quocirca © 2008

The IT and communications industries can now offer high storage capacities and highly functional access and management tools, and organisations can put in place well-honed records management policies, but all systems still rely on that weakest of links—people.

While the policy provides the roadmap and the technology provides the underlying engine, the journey depends upon a series of individual contributions to ensure no one gets lost, runs out of fuel or crashes.

The concept of a journey is pertinent, since many organisations unfortunately focus only on the destination. They take the view that defining who has responsibility for what is a one off activity—once done, we're there—but the reality is this is not the case, since some people find they are not well suited to some responsibilities, others take on commitments that become more important or they don't have the right skills at the right time. They also get promoted, fired or leave. Roles have to be dynamic to deal with the various requirements of records during the lifecycle of their creation, usage and disposal.

To start to assign roles, it's best to take a step back and understand why anyone should want to define roles for records management. Is it for the sake of the data itself? No. Is it to reward (or punish) individu