The Innovative, Ready-To-Go Enterprise 2.0 Platform

Businesses large and small are discovering the power of simple, flexible, and open collaborative tools from the Web 2.0 community.

Background on Collaboration Trends

While the term “Web 2.0” is sometimes overused, it is useful shorthand for the type of Web application currently spreading like wildfire on the Internet. Web 2.0 applications radically lower the barriers to capture user-created content and enable high levels of collaboration and communication. Weblogs, also known as blogs, and wikis, which are editable Web pages, are the most common examples of these two-way, easy-to-use Web applications. Tens of millions of users on the Web use these types of tools every day to reach out to and participate in conversation with their friends, family and co-workers.

In Web 2.0 environments information and organizational knowledge created by users and captured by blogs and wikis is discoverable via search. It is also less interruptive and can be easily leveraged by the organization. Contrast this with traditional collaboration methods, which tend to disturb workflow and leave vital business information trapped inside user’s e-mail accounts, personal file systems, and voice conversations. Additionally, Web 2.0 technologies allow conversations to occur on a larger scale and reach bigger audiences than traditional tools, providing yet another opportunity to get significantly increased benefits.

Recently, the industry has started to apply a term known as “Enterprise 2.0” for these social, emergent, freeform applications that have resulted in a flood of content emerging on the Web. Industry leaders and business thinkers believe these tools will usher in a major new era of increased productivity.

The Internet has provided an enormous living laboratory to discover the best means of working together. In this living laboratory users tend to “vote with their feet” by utilizing the tools that are the easiest to use and most effective. Blogs and wikis are rapidly emerging as the most effective tools after more than fifteen years of widespread innovation on alternative collaboration tools involving hundreds of millions of users and millions of Web sites.

Introducing Near-Time: The well rounded Enterprise 2.0 suite

One of the most mature entries in the Enterprise 2.0 space is Near-Time, which includes blogs and wikis as a hosted solution. The power of the Near-Time suite is that it goes well beyond the simple blog and wiki model and cleanly integrates other key collaborative technologies such as file sharing, scheduling, podcasting, feed publishing, and task management.

Near-Time offers several different versions that range from a basic version (Near-Time Plus) to a more feature rich version (Near-Time Power). The primary differences between the versions are the amount of storage, the level of security, and the addition of a task management feature. Perhaps most interesting is the top-of-the-line version of the product (Near-Time Premium) which is the first true Enterprise 2.0 platform to include a complete end-to-end business model, including direct monetization of the content contained within the collaborative environment. This is a compelling option as companies increasingly realize that the information they capture and collaborate on can be edited, cleaned, and released as products in their own right -directly from the tools that create them.

Near-Time is packaged in the form of a Software as a Service (SaaS) product that runs entirely inside the Web browser without anything to install or upgrades to deploy. This offers significant reduction in acquisition and operational costs. Hosted SaaS applications which operate in scaled, secure facilities managed by the software vendor, are a leading new segment of the software market.

The key business advantages of Near-Time’s SaaS approach are:

A granular security model with role-based permissions.
Optional data encryption using SSL
Best practices in operations, security and data storage.

Finally, the hosted SaaS model allows Near-Time customers to:

Collaborate and conduct their work in private
Make content instantly public
Amortize the cost of software over time and significantly reduce adoption costs

The Near-Time Collaboration Model: Spaces and Links

Much has been written about the power of the World Wide Web model of information. The simple concept of Web pages connected by nothing but hyperlinks describes the entire structure of the Web. This simple concept has made widespread collaboration and information sharing possible, it has also enabled effective searching through link ranking and link-based indexing.

Near-Time uses an increasingly popular model for collaboration by providing a Web-based “space” that belongs to a given user or group of participants and is fundamentally under their control. A space is nothing more than a simple set of Web pages that can be personalized and used to collaborate with others. Popularized by major social media sites like MySpace, spaces are a familiar concept that have been proven to be a useful organizational model for content and communication.

Inside a Near-Time space, users can create wiki pages that any authorized user can find, view, share, and edit. Spaces can also host news items, calendar events, shared files, and more. This open environment ensures that information does not get locked in e-mail or files systems. Access to spaces can be controlled by authorized users. Spaces can be entirely private or open to the entire world as appropriate. New users are brought in through a variety of methods including an e-mail invitation system, open-door, or join page. Most importantly, links can be used to connect all of the information into a coherent whole. This model reduces duplication of information and enables the intrinsic power of the Web across a board range - from social book marking to discovery via Internet search.

Near-Time takes the usual set of Web 2.0 organizational tools (categories and tags) to new levels with visual organizational tools, advanced search capabilities, and other discovery mechanisms. This becomes increasingly important when large numbers of users (employees, partners, customers, members, etc.) are generating content in an unstructured environment. When adopted, Enterprise 2.0 tools can quickly become the living fabric of an organization. Near-Time gives administrators and users a robust set of discovery tools to ensure that information is accessible, thus helping to reduce duplication of efforts and adding true value to an organizations knowledge base.

Near-Time has both traditional category based organization as well as liberal support of tagging. Tags are freeform bits of contextual information that can be applied to a piece of information stored on a Web site. Tags can be any string of characters such as “Draft”, “For Review”, “Final”, etc. Unlike pre-defined categories, tags allow users to apply custom organization information at the point of creation or use. In the Near-Time environment tags can be easily applied to new blog posts, wiki pages, event information, files and tasks – giving users an easy way to organize content or generate lists of related content. Tagging is often described as the first major new discovery system since Internet search itself.

Genuine Web 2.0: Network effects, syndication, invites, linking

At its most fundamental level, Web 2.0 describes networked software applications that explicitly leverage network effects. In the past, many web-based applications were built as if they existed alone and did not specifically leverage the power of the network. The Web 2.0 era is teaching us that applications are more valuable and powerful when they exploit connectivity and access to other applications. In this regard, Near-Time is a pure play Web 2.0 application. Although this power has been understood since the invention of computer networks, Web 2.0 is one of the first tangible steps toward leveraging network effects to increase productivity and collaborative benefits. This has two major implications for networked applications:

A social application’s value increases as the number of people using it grows.
Connected applications are two-way. Their content, organization, and their user base are created by the users – a technique known as harnessing collective intelligence, the core principle of Web 2.0

Near-Time has a variety of built-in tools that promote the network effect and enable an organization to harness collective intelligence. Included among these are advanced syndication capabilities (RSS and Atom) which give users the ability to push content to their readers. Users can also subscribe to updates and changes in a space through e-mail. Near-Time’s open invitation system is a key component of creating a viral adoption model and helps extend the network effect.

Near-Time has created a platform which employs best practices for Web 2.0 applications allowing customers to focus on collaborating and creating valuable interaction.

Near-Time Premium: A complete Web 2.0 business with built-in monetization

The most innovative and unique aspects of Near-Time’s platform goes beyond the most recent innovations in Web applications and social communities. Near-Time Premium allows users to monetize their content with a complete, integrated e-commerce system. With this service, users can designate “premium” content which requires visitors to pay for access. The capability to sell content directly gives lower-traffic sites legitimate revenue opportunities where traffic or click-based advertising cannot.

Now businesses repurpose their content to create viable commercial relationships with their customers. Content creators and owners can easily create their own marketplace for industry research, stock analysis, books, how-to guides, and virtually any other type of content. Using Near-Time Premium these content marketplaces take advantage of leading-edge technology to create rich user experiences, encourage user participation, and enable advanced distribution through syndication and other means.

Near-Time Premium is an intriguing and cost effective method for creating an on-demand storefront. This combination allows users to take advantage of another important Web 2.0 concept, The Long Tail.

Conclusion: An effective, turnkey solution for Enterprise 2.0

Most blog and wiki platforms are designed specifically for the consumer space. Near-Time has focused their efforts on building a commercial platform while still leveraging the consumer Web. To this point, Near-Time is extremely well-positioned to exploit the growing trend of harnessing the collective intelligence inside an organization.

By combining market leading capabilities, intuitive design, and full compliance with the Enterprise 2.0 SLATES checklist (search, linking, authorship, tagging, signals, and extensions), Near-Time has the recipe for a complete and well-rounded platform.

Beyond bringing the exciting consumer collaboration toolset to the enterprise, Near-Time has clearly innovated with Near-Time Premium. The native ability to monetize content goes far above the traditional ROI of these types of platforms and actually presents new revenue opportunities. For companies evaluating SaaS solutions for their Enterprise 2.0 projects, Near-Time presents a compelling solution. Consequently, Hinchcliffe & Company has added Near-Time to its list of recommended Enterprise 2.0 platforms.

May 2007
Dion Hinchcliffe with Reid Conrad

Learn how to create your Near-Time Premium Space >