Enterprise community

There are open source CMS extensions and then there are families of them. These families tend to revolve around a single, powerful core that includes an API, allowing it to serve as a linchpin for a whole suite of related features. In late January, the folks at Joomlapolis released version 1.2 stable of their popular Community Builder extension for Joomla! (news, site) and Mambo. Now select CB users can check out release candidates of five CB plugins.

To bring together academics, researchers, public policy makers, administrators and families, the University of Kansas Beach Center on Disability has implemented community of practice technology. The Center has selected Tomoye Ecco 2.0 from Tomoye to build an online community where people can share information and connect with their peers.The solution will be tightly integrated with the organization's existing Microsoft Office SharePoint infrastructure. The Center is moving from an earlier version of Ecco to take advantage of new features that further simplify participation, such as e-mail, more networking capabilities, improved capacity for collaborations (wikis using SharePoint) and the ability to create Web logs, according to a recent press release from Tomoye.

Advances in technology and emerging trends in community-driven web platforms have changed the ways we communicate, manage, and share knowledge.  As organizations continue to address key knowledge management challenges, one-way communication platforms are being eclipsed every day by tools that  facilitate richer dialogues and leverage the collective wisdom of experts throughout the organization.SAVO’s award-winning on-demand application offers more than just knowledge management. As the industry’s leading provider of sales enablement solutions, SAVO maximizes a sales organization’s ability to communicate value and differentiation in clear, consistent, and compelling ways.By harnessing the collective genius of the entire organization, by sharing best-in-class insights from experts across the enterprise, and by driving that expertise into every customer conversation, SAVO delivers profound front-line results to companies of all sizes.

Independent Health Association, Inc., is consistently ranked among the top HMOs nationwide for member satisfaction. Independent Health credits its achievements to a steadfast focus on its mission to "improve the health and well-being of the community." This includes the use of REVEAL as its enterprise reporting system for the pastdecade.

Broadening Web site membership and loyalty were two results sought by Mercury Interactive in its mission to improve its online community.Mercury provides enterprise testing and performance management solutions to help clients identify and mend performance bottlenecks in their IT infrastructure. Customers and consulting partners use its customer support Web site to access tips, updates, product documentation and solutions related to the company's software products. The site also includes an online user community with discussion forums, a "Knowledge Base" area and "

The web analytics marketplace is in the middle of a significant transformation, with new features coming out nearly every week, plus the occasional acquisition. In my role as Principal Analyst for the Web Analytics Report (to be released next Tuesday), I’ve tried to interpret these trends from the perspective of a buyer and user of these solutions. Enterprise analytics customers too numerous to mention were very generous providing their tips and best practices for planning, implementing, and maximizing value from an analytics initiative. The report also benefited from the input of a host of top web analytic gurus, including: Nicholas Aucher, Gary Angel, Justin Cutroni, Stephane Hamel, and Robbin Steif.My goal is to help you succeed. Any questions or issues you have? Thoughts on specific vendors? By all means, drop me a line.

Sometimes, destruction can be creative. Such was the case when Macromedia decided to discontinue the former Allaire CM product, Spectra, and put the code into "community source" for any other firm to play with. This begat a bonanza of ColdFusion-based, branded product offerings from regional integrators around the world. But the following e-mail that recently crossed our in-box from an integrator in Iowa, USA may be indicative of the tough times for services companies who took that approach: "[We] thought you might be interested in a new Enterprise Content Management System that we have developed in ColdFusion. This software is available for acquisition..." Visit Macromedia and note all the Sitespring banner ads

One of today's keynotes at the Enterprise 2.0 conference featured a couple of guys from the CIA discussing the Intellipedia project to create an internal wiki shared by the entire U.S. national intelligence community. They shared many good nuggets about overcoming institutional and cultural resistance. (My favorite line, "in our work, 'collaborator' has a very different connotation.") They also quoted from the now famous, "Section 11: General Interference with Organizations and Production," from the 1944 OSS Simple Sabotage Manual (OSS -- Office of Strategic Services, predecessor to the CIA). To quote: Insist on doing everything through "channels." Never permit shortcuts that would expedite decisions. When possible, refer all matters to committees, for "further study and consideration." Haggle over precise wordings of communications. Advocate "caution

Developer bulletin boards echo a lot of sturm und drang about the apparent failings of enterprise-class CMS products. Traditionally, industry leader Vignette took the biggest hits, but lately it seems to us that Interwoven is seeing an unusually high dissatisfaction index among the developer community. We could speculate why that is: Perl coders never like each other's work? Interwoven salespeople downplay its ample implementation challenges? All CMS products are touchy and TeamSite -- with greatest marketshare -- simply gets the most exposure? The underlying technical foundation is too weak for the (impressive) layers of functionality on top? Hard to say. But we wonder if there isn't some fire underneath all the smoke...Check out this flaming thread on Slashdot