IBM bringing Web 2.0 to corporate workers
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IBM introduced three tools aimed at helping corporate IT operations and business users take advantage of Web 2.0 technologies.
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IBM has unveiled virtual resources to help business partners more quickly build and deploy on-demand business applications tailored to customer requirements across all vertical industries.
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WorkLight, a Web 2.0 application developer, announced today WorkBook, a Facebook overlay targeted to Facebook users in a corporate environment.WorkBook, a Web 2.0 applications that works with WorkLight, the company?s on premise server software, uses the Facebook application to facilitate corporate communications and knowledge-sharing in a secure environment.?People use their regular Facebook profile. But when you install WorkBook it creates an application that asks users to authenticate themselves against a company directory and the company authentication engine,? said David Lavenda, vice president of marketing and product strategy.The Faceboook application appears along with the list of other third-party Facebook applications. After a user clicks on WorkBook, however, the organization knows who the user is and gives the user all of his or her access controls and roles.There is no new layer of security required, Lavenda added.With the recognition that social networking can facilitate sharing of information and communications in a business environment, especially for a global company, a? number of organizations have tried to implement their own homegrown social networking applications without much success, according to industry analysts.The goal, not dissimilar to a corporate portal, is to keep employees apprised of company information and allow workers to expand their knowledge base by being able to contact certain remote employees within a large company who may possess skill sets required to complete a project.WorkBook, however, leverages a popular program that many workers may already be familiar with and feel comfortable using, Lavenda said.It will allow users to search for co-workers by name, location, department, project, or by area of expertise and connect with them using the usual Facebook capabilities.The WorkLight server connects to enterprise systems and the security infrastructure and exposes the information to Web 2.0 applications, in this case WorkBook.The application is available now in limited release and will be generally available in February 2008.Licensing starts at $10 per user, per month with volume discounts available, Lavenda said.
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IBM's Atlas tool aims to help businesses visualize connections between colleagues.
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DECEMBER 07, 2004  - IBM yesterday announced virtual resources to help business partners more quickly build and deploy on-demand business applications tailored to customer requirements across all vertical industries.
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IBM late on Tuesday announced the biggest update of its popular WebSphere business software in two years, adding features such as automatically detecting and fixing problems.
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(InfoWorld) - To celebrate the 10th anniversary of its alphaWorks Web site for experimental technologies, IBM on Monday will begin hosting projects including a precision weather-forecasting application and two offerings for developers. Being offered via a new effort called alphaWorks Services, the projects stray from the previous format in which users have been able to download prototype technologies. This time around, IBM is offering what amounts to hosted online applications, Chris Spencer, emerging technology strategist at IBM alphaWorks, said. The alphaWorks Services platform leverages the software-as-a-service delivery model, IBM said. One project, Deep Thunder, provides high-resolution, localized weather forecasts for businesses, down to the hour and specific square mile. "We actually have two meteorologists who are on staff and this [effort] is out of IBM Research, Spencer said. With Deep Thunder, a business could learn if snow is falling in an area or what the weather is like at a manufacturing center. Or, a transportation department could find out which streets need plowing. Although Deep Thunder sounds suspiciously like an application rather than middleware, a development tool, or a platform, Spencer would not characterize it as an application. IBM says it isn't in the applications business. "What we're offering here is a prototype of an idea," Spencer said. "I would not say this is an application." An IBM representative later described Deep Thunder as a demo. An industry analyst agreed with IBM's assessment that Deep Thunder does not move Big Blue into the application business. "I think of Deep Thunder more as a great demonstration of both making the results of a high computational problem available -- most of us don't have that much computing power available -- and then using mashup-type technology to interface it to a Web-based application," said Amy Wohl, editor of the Amy Wohl's Opinions newsletter, in an e-mail response to question. "I don't think IBM is going into the weather forecasting business but you have to use some application to show how this sort of thing works. "I'm fairly sure that IBM intends to stay in the middleware and infrastructure part of the software business and leave the applications to their partners," Wohl said. The other hosted projects include ADIEU (Ad Hoc Development and Integration tool for End Users), which is a collaborative online environment for developing Web services, and Web Relational Blocks (WebRB), providing a GUI to construct front-end Web applications from back-end databases. ADIEU, available as either a download or a hosted service, features a card-based programming paradigm, in which each card contains specific programming functionality. Offering a simplified way to build applications, ADIEU is similar to Apple's HyperCard concept, Spencer said. "I love the idea of ADIEU -- that someone can write an application in a few hours or less," Wohl said. "[It] sounds like a great idea for prototyping or for small needs where big investments or long waits couldn't be justified." WebRB features a GUI for nonprogrammers to build applications. "What's kind of nice is they don't have to understand the database schema," or the details of the database, said Spencer. The project uses technology such as AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) and Cascading Style Sheets in a hosted environment. Components are dragged and dropped onto a canvas. It remains to be seen whether the three projects become official IBM products. Since its formation in 1996, alphaWorks has released 700 technologies to early adopters and contributed 30 technologies to the open source community, Spencer said. Open source technologies have include the Jikes Java compiler and the Xerces XML parser. One project originating on alphaWorks, the Servlet Express Engine, later formed the basis for the IBM WebSphere application server. All told, about 250 alphaWorks projects became products or product extensions for IBM. "It's evidence of the community having an influence on IBM," Spencer said. The alphaWorks site attracts about 165,000 unique visitors per month, Spencer said. "We have everything from developers to executives and they represent anything from Fortune 100 companies to SMBs (small and medium-size businesses)," said Spencer.
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Web 2.0 champions face numerous obstacles, including resistance from IT, in efforts to implement the technology for corporate users.
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As employees struggle to read an increasing amount of work-related material, some companies have turned to RSS (Really Simple Syndication) technology to improve productivity.With RSS servers and readers designed for workplaces, IT departments set up internal information feeds that employees can subscribe to, a delivery mechanism that, for some information, can be more precise and effective than e-mail.&quot;The first problem we see addressed regularly with enterprise RSS systems is e-mail overload. Most knowledge workers these days are just about completely fed up with e-mail,&quot; said Oliver Young, a Forrester Research analyst.An enterprise RSS system is ideal for delivering the type of information employees need to know about, but not necessarily act on right away, Young said.RSS keeps need-to-know information out of the e-mail channel, which for most people is &quot;a need-to-do task list sort of thing,&quot; Young said.Often those need-to-know e-mails -- such as a corporate benefits update or a newsletter -- end up getting deleted or ignored, even though employees recognize that they may contain potentially important information.For example, a company could post human resource messages and documents on the intranet&#39;s human resources section and send RSS alerts with the appropriate links, instead of blasting out the information via mass e-mails.RSS feeds became popular initially as a convenient way for Web publishers to alert their readers about new articles and changed information on their sites.Using consumer-grade RSS readers&#160;such as&#160;those from Google and Bloglines, people quickly check what&#39;s new on their favorite sites without having to visit them.Inevitably, people started using RSS readers at work, creating potential problems for IT departments in areas such as security and user support.Seeing an opportunity, vendors&#160;such as&#160;Attensa, NewsGator, and KnowNow developed on-premise, behind-the-firewall RSS software for workplaces.Unlike consumer RSS readers, these vendors&#39; systems can be integrated with existing corporate directories and security frameworks, giving IT departments control over employees&#39; RSS use.IBM&#39;s Lotus and Microsoft have started to add RSS capabilities to their respective collaboration and communication platforms, but their feature sets don&#39;t match the functionality of enterprise RSS vendors&#39; systems, Young said.The Union Bank of California hopes that enterprise RSS can help it tame an internal communications overload.About 80 bank groups, from such areas as public relations, marketing, sales, product management, and operations, hit employees with a steady stream of mass e-mails, all-hands voice mails, printed literature, and intranet additions.&quot;We discovered that about half of the messages being delivered via these methods weren&#39;t appropriate to the people [receiving them], so we definitely needed to do something,&quot; said James Penn, the bank&#39;s vice president of interactive marketing and communications.For example, the bank realized that salespeople, deluged with often irrelevant information, often fall behind learning about the bank&#39;s latest offers and promotions, affecting their ability to pitch them at customers.Union Bank is now in the pilot phase of an implementation of an enterprise RSS system from KnowNow, which it expects to eventually roll out to its about 10,000 employees.The bank is creating very specific RSS feeds and defining the target audience for each one so that employees will receive fewer but more relevant messages.While the project will initially focus on improving internal communications, Union Bank may later link up the RSS system with its CRM system, as well as allow employees to subscribe to external data feeds, Penn said.At the U.K. National Health Service (NHS) division in Orkney, Scotland, the IT department has significantly cut down on e-mail overload with a NewsGator enterprise RSS system, said David Rendall, a computer programmer involved in the project.At NHS Orkney, few of the 600 or so users -- mostly doctors, nurses, physical therapists, and business administrators -- are technically savvy. So Rendall has reached out to departments and held frequent training sessions to promote the RSS system&#39;s use.&quot;The biggest challenge is helping people make the switch and get their heads around the new RSS paradigm,&quot; Rendall said.This user indifference and ignorance, coupled with e-mail familiarity, is a common barrier to RSS adoption in workplaces, according to Forrester&#39;s Young.&quot;While most people have a love-hate relationship with e-mail, it&#39;s easy to use and very convenient to [copy] your entire office to make sure you get everyone involved,&quot; Young said.This is why Young recommends starting RSS deployments within specific groups in an organization and with the purpose of improving a specific communication issue.&quot;Where I see most enterprise RSS solutions starting to fall down is when you&#39;re trying to encourage or bring a whole host of workers along all at once,&quot; Young said.In addition to reducing e-mail, enterprise RSS systems often boost organizations&#39; use of intranets, blogs, and wikis by alerting employees to changes and additions, Young said.At NHS Orkney, the NewsGator system lets employees subscribe to feeds from the organization&#39;s blogs and wikis, thus increasing their readership and boosting collaboration and communication, Rendall said.Meanwhile, Union Bank trusts RSS will improve its intranet, currently being redesigned. &quot;There are many applications for which we could use the intranet as a repository, and leverage RSS for distribution and change alerts,&quot; Penn said.Specifically, RSS could help with notifying Union Bank employees about modifications to policies and procedures. This is key for banks, which are highly regulated by the government.&quot;Often a little nuance of a policy will change, and while not applicable to 90 percent of the employees, it&#39;s crucial for the 10 percent who need to know,&quot; he said.Not to be overlooked is the ability of enterprise RSS systems to give managers a clear view into how popular blogs, wikis, external sites, and intranet sections are with employees, Young said.&quot;Because it&#39;s all coming into one central location, you can do very advanced analytics on who is reading what,&quot; Young said.For example, if half of the sales team subscribes to one specific journal&#39;s feed, it might make sense to suggest the feed to the other half. &quot;It really helps information spread more quickly and best practices to proliferate across the enterprise,&quot; he said.Likewise, it makes it easy to spot skunks. &quot;If your CEO&#39;s blog has no one reading it, you know pretty quickly there&#39;s a problem there,&quot; Young said.
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IBM is building a virtual world to help its employees collaborate.
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TechWeb - IBM has reached a deal with Google Inc. to bring the consumer Internet into the office by piping YouTube and thousands of other Web programs into IBM software used by millions of office workers.
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Discuss your addiction to Big Iron here... IBM aims to leverage social networking by building an online meeting place for users of its System z mainframes. It says the Web-based portal, called Destination z, gives customers a place to discuss and debate mainframe usage, exchange ideas and seek technical advice.â¦
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IBM is moving forward with its Jazz application lifecycle management platform Monday, expanding access to the Jazz.net community and touting Project Bluegrass, which seeks a virtual world for developer collaboration.The company also is readying a second beta release of the first Jazz product, called IBM Rational Concert Express."The first thing we're doing is we're opening up the Jazz.net community to everyone," and allowing them to participate in the evolution of Jazz, said Scott Hebner, vice president of marketing and strategy for IBM. Previously, the year-old Jazz.net community was open only to IBM Rational customers, academics and partners.Allowing greater access to Jazz.net boosts exposure, noted Liz Barnett, principal analyst at EZinsight. "They're going to expose the technology to a much wider audience, certainly [to] many people who are not IBM tool customers," she said.Jazz represents IBM's approach to enabling better collaboration in software development projects that can be distributed across the globe."The Jazz technology is designed to help people work together more [effectively] and collaborate in the development and delivery of software," said Hebner. What is different about Jazz is it provides real-time collaborative technology to manage under the covers all information pertaining to the health of a software development project.Unlike previous ALM products, Jazz offerings will adapt to the way that users want to use them instead of users having to adapt to the products, Hebner said. Featured in Jazz products is a central repository to store information about different software development projects.With Bluegrass, IBM is attempting to bring the visual, collaborative nature of virtual worlds to software development. Hebner cited the Second Life 3D online environment as offering the kind of functionality IBM wants to bring to ALM with Bluegrass.Developers could work together while viewing interactive representations of ideas and data. Avatars, or graphical representations of participants, would be used as well. Geared toward new, younger workers used to Web 2.0-style communications, Bluegrass is a research effort that may result in products from IBM or other companies.Bluegrass will be demonstrated at the Lotusphere conference in Orlando, Fla. next week. Bluegrass also is available on the IBM Codestation kiosk in Second Life.IBM Rational Team Concert Express is intended for smaller development teams looking to use agile development techniques and collaborate across the globe, Hebner said.The product should appeal to the agile community, Barnett said. "It's a lightweight toolset, and it's really easy just to pick up and use and extend on your own," said Barnett.With the second beta, IBM has added capabilities for team collaboration and gauging project health; Web dashboards are featured. Also, users also can leverage a broader set of underlying infrastructure, including Oracle databases, Lotus Sametime communications software, and Apache servers.?The first beta arrived last summer; general release of Team Concert Express is planned for later this year.At the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, Team Concert Express has been used to develop a tool called Emergent Expertise Locator, which recommends members for development teams based on an examination of how files have changed hands and who has participated."Essentially, the tool's looking at the story of how changes have been committed to the code base," said Gail Murphy, computer science professor at the university.?Over time, key IBM Rational products, including the ClearCase software configuration management system, ClearQuest for software change management, and Build Forge for build and release management, will incorporate Jazz technology. This will enable participation in a more collaborative real-time ALM platform, Hebner said. These upgrades will begin to arrive later in 2008.
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Want to use Google gadgets for work? Big Blue plans to let business users run the mini apps on its WebSphere Portal software.
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IBM late on Tuesday announced the  biggest update of its popular WebSphere business software in  two years, adding features such as automatically detecting and  fixing problems.
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KickApps has updated its hosted social networking platform to allow non-programmers to add Web 2.0 capabilities to corporate web sites.
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Lotus Notes and Domino 8 appear less complicated for IT staff to manage and make it easier for developers to build on the collaboration capabilities in the rich Web 2.0-style client.