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November 3, 2008 Forrester TechRadar™ For Vendor Strategists: Enterprise Web 2.0 by G. Oliver Young for Vendor Strategy Professionals Making Leaders Successful Every Day For Vendor Strategy Professionals Includes a Forrester TechRadar™ November 3, 2008 Forrester TechRadar™ For Vendor Strategists: Enterprise Web 2.0 by G. Oliver Young with Gil Yehuda, Kyle mcNabb, Peter burris, Sara burnes, and Zachary Reiss-Davis How Product Strategists Should approach a maturing Web 2.0 market, Q4 2008 ExEcuT i V E S u m ma RY Vendors looking to sell into the market for enterprise Web 2.0 collaboration tools face a distinct landscape of technologies and ecosystem players. Navigating this maze will be critical to building long-term client customer value and profitable business. Tracking the maturity of enterprise Web 2.0 technologies is critical to timing strategic initiatives and tactical actions. In a careful examination of the marketplace and trends for enterprise Web 2.0 tools, we reveal that organizations find wikis valuable, forums stable (though underutilized) and blogging success mixed. Enterprise social networking tools stand ready to redefine workplace collaboration, becoming the major battleground in the fight to sell Web 2.0 tools to the enterprise. Tabl E O F cO N TE NTS 2 Overview: Forrester’s TechRadar For Enterprise Web 2.0 Why Do These 11 Technologies appear in The TechRadar? 8 Enterprise Web 2.0 TechRadar: Content Plus Social Context Will Drive Adoption creation: Despite Hype, microblogging is Just Not Ready For The Enterprise Survival: Three challenge The Status Quo; Enterprises can Transform With Social Networks Growth: Wikis Help Transform collaboration; RSS underperforms at Work Equilibrium: Stable Technologies Provide moderate Value, but Only When Put To use Decline: improving Enterprise adoption Keeps Web 2.0 Technologies From Decline REcOmmENDaTiONS N OT E S & RE S O u RcE S For this TechRadar™ evaluation, we reviewed Forrester’s past research on Web 2.0, interviewed more than 10 industry experts, more than 45 vendors responsible for building or implementing these technologies, and also spoke with more than 125 enterprise customers and users using varying Web 2.0 technologies. Related Research Documents “Vendors: Prepare For Falling Prices For Enterprise Web 2.0 collaboration and Productivity apps” October 9, 2008 “iT Departments Play Key Role in The acquisition and Deployment Of Web 2.0 Technologies” July 10, 2008 “The mashup Opportunity” may 6, 2008 “Global Enterprise Web 2.0 market Forecast: 2007 To 2013” april 21, 2008 22 Vendors Must Work To Build A Market-Proof Suite Of Tools And Services © 2008, Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Forrester, Forrester Wave, RoleView, Technographics, TechRadar, and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies. Forrester clients may make one attributed copy or slide of each figure contained herein. Additional reproduction is strictly prohibited. For additional reproduction rights and usage information, go to www.forrester.com. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. To purchase reprints of this document, please email resourcecenter@forrester.com. 2 Forrester TechRadar™ For Vendor Strategists: Enterprise Web 2.0 For Vendor Strategy Professionals OVERViEW: FORRESTER’S TEChRADAR FOR EnTERPRiSE WEB 2.0 Although it’s no longer new, most enterprises still treat Web 2.0 with doubt, waiting to see strong evidence of business value before adopting it within their mainstream business processes. At the end of 2007, one in three firms was planning to invest in some Web 2.0 technology for 2008.1 When we narrow this down to enterprise collaboration use, Forrester — through inquiry, interviews, and ad hoc conversations — has anecdotally seen strong interest coupled with serious concerns about the adoption of Web 2.0 in their workplace. Many executives fear changes that will result from open sharing and transparency. And many feel these tools are not yet ready for enterprise use, either. To help vendor strategists plan their next decade of investments in enterprise Web 2.0 and to lead with the most proven solutions today, Forrester investigated the current state of the market’s 11 most important technologies. We examined past research; interviewed more than 10 industry experts and more than 45 vendors; and experimented with early versions of their products and services. We also conducted detailed research with more than 125 current or potential customers and users of each of the technologies. We used the data collected to assess four things: 1) the current state of the technology; 2) the technology’s potential impact on an enterprise’s business; 3) the time experts think the technology will need to reach the next stage of maturity; and 4) the technology’s overall trajectory — from minimal success to significant success.2 Why Do These 11 Technologies Appear in The TechRadar? We focused on the Web 2.0 technologies most appropriate for employee collaboration needs. We included 11 technologies in this TechRadar: blogs, forums, mashups, microblogs, podcasts, prediction markets, RSS, social bookmarks, social networks, widgets, and wikis (see Figure 1). We selected these technologies based on the following considerations: · We picked the obvious Web 2.0 tools. Most vendor strategists recognize blogs, forums, and wikis as the top-of-mind Web 2.0 tools for enterprise buyers. These tools have been around for many years and therefore users and experts have much to say about their use in the enterprise. We also included microblogs; they’ve emerged as a new form of blogging with enough sufficiently distinct characteristics to warrant a separate category.3 · We looked at the Web 2.0 ecosystem. Mashups, RSS syndication, social bookmarking, and social networking are next in line when people think of Web 2.0. Each of these technologies color a different but complementary part of the Web 2.0 tapestry. · We thought about related tools that fit Web 2.0 patterns. Podcasts, prediction markets, and widgets fit in the category of Web 2.0 as they are social, viral, and support the inclusion of perspective in a manner that is accessible to end users. We included tools that have evidence of usage within a mainstream enterprise employee collaboration environment, or those for which there appears to be a strong appetite. We excluded November 3, 2008 © 2008, Forrester Research, inc. Reproduction Prohibited Forrester TechRadar™ For Vendor Strategists: Enterprise Web 2.0 For Vendor Strategy Professionals 3 technologies that currently focus on consumer use, or have only limited use in enterprise environments. For example, we did not include social search, event management and invitation systems, rating and reviewing tools, virtual world collaboration, or life streaming. Figure 1 Forrester TechRadar™: Enterprise Web 2.0, Q4 ’08 Technologies Evaluated Blogs Definition Blogs allow authors to submit time-based information, which is then displayed in reverse chronological order. Typically, blogs have a specific point of view associated with an author and provide a feedback channel for comments. Use workplace blogs to express work-related insight, direction, status, and news. Thought leaders use blogs to converse with and inform employees. Employees use blogs to update activities, priorities, or upcoming events. Blogs work well in instances where you want people to be aware of potentially helpful information, but you don’t feel compelled to send an email to everyone. Blogs allow readers to comment publicly, perhaps asking for clarification or providing more insight into a blog post. Automattic WordPress, IBM, Microsoft, Six Apart, Traction Software Minimal expense. Open source solutions abound, and enterprise-class paid solutions average $15,000 for a typical enterprise. Forums allow users to post content organized by topics, typically in the form of questions and answers. Forums are used to facilitate discussion. Users post text via a Web interface, and in many cases, they are able to edit their postings (but cannot edit the posts of others). Service delivery organizations such as an IT help desk or HR employee services group use forums for customer service. Employees ask and answer questions in the forum, allowing other employees to benefit from the answers provided and shared to all. Innovation forums allow ideas to be submitted and discussed. Topical forums allow practitioners to share information with their peers in the open (rather than in a limited email conversation). EllisLab, IBM, Invision Power Services, Jive Software, Microsoft, Groupee’s UBB.threads, Jelsoft Enterprises’ vBulletin Many free and open source forum server solutions are available for download. Low-cost options are available, ranging from about $100 to $300 per year for a server license. Higher-end solutions that license per user are available, are either hosted or downloaded, and can run $2,000 to $10,000. Source: Forrester Research, Inc. Usage scenario Vendors Estimated cost to implement Forums Definition Usage scenario Vendors Estimated cost to implement 46893 © 2008, Forrester Research, inc. Reproduction Prohibited November 3, 2008 4 Forrester TechRadar™ For Vendor Strategists: Enterprise Web 2.0 For Vendor Strategy Professionals Figure 1 Forrester TechRadar™: Enterprise Web 2.0, Q4 ’08 Technologies Evaluated (cont.) Mashups Definition Mashup Web applications combine multiple, disparate data sources into something new and unique. Mashup platforms allow nontechnical users to create and consume their own mashups with visual tools. In their most basic form, mashups within the enterprise become easily architected and developed rich Internet applications; however, this usage scenario greatly undersells the value of mashups. Enterprises can use mashup platforms to allow individual business users, or more likely business analysts, to create highly customized process- and context-specific applications, dashboards, and portals. In this scenario, mashups allow the business an economical way to obtain highly relevant applications even when only a small number of users might ever use them. IBM, JackBe Corporation, Kapow Technologies, Serena Software, StrikeIron, Xignite The average enterprise mashup deployment cost ranges from $50,000 to $300,000 for the mashup platform, and the cost can grow quickly as external data services are added. This does not take into account internal enterprise service creation — often an SOA implementation — which is not a prerequisite for mashups but is highly recommended. Usage scenario Vendors Estimated cost to implement Microblogs Definition Microblogging allows blog posts with a short message (e.g., 140 characters). Authors publish short messages that are visible to everyone or just to a restricted group, chosen by the author. Microbloggers publish messages using any Internet-connected device, including phones, mobile devices, desktop software, or Web sites. This allows bloggers to post content from virtually anywhere, at any time. Microblogs can be either a feature within another application, or a standalone service. People subscribe to a microblog to watch a stream of short informational alerts posted by other people or applications. Examples include: informing subscribers at the completion of an automated business process, letting people know of a business accomplishment, and indicating when a server reaches a capacity limit. In addition to browser and desktop clients, microblog users can submit their posts from a phone or mobile device, allowing the user to communicate on the intranet even when she is nowhere near her work computer. Automattic’s Prologue for WordPress, CoreMedia’s Trillr, Event Robot’s Socialcast, Yammer Enterprise costs for secured microblogging will retail from $1 to $5 per month per user. Free services are available with limited security features. Source: Forrester Research, Inc. Usage scenario Vendors Estimated cost to implement 46893 November 3, 2008 © 2008, Forrester Research, inc. Reproduction Prohibited Forrester TechRadar™ For Vendor Strategists: Enterprise Web 2.0 For Vendor Strategy Professionals 5 Figure 1 Forrester TechRadar™: Enterprise Web 2.0, Q4 ’08 Technologies Evaluated (cont.) Podcasts Definition Podcasting is the syndication of audio content. Podcasting leverages RSS and is very much like a blog for sound clips. Users download podcasts on demand or subscribe to a podcast service to get an ongoing series of audio content that is delivered directly to their computer or digital music device. Organizations use podcasting in a manner similar to blogs, but there are some key differences. Podcasts are audio streams, so there is no text to read or pictures to view. Use audio streams when you want workers to download and listen to information when they are traveling. Corporate training is a great example of content that you might want to package in a 5- to 10-minute audio stream and provide to workers to help reinforce the workforce with fresh content they can listen to on the go. Brainshark, Genetic Hosting’s PodKive, PodTech.net, VoloMedia, Whatiwantpodcasting.com Podcasting deployment can run as little as $500 for basic audio recording software, but it typically runs between $8,000 and $12,000. Some podcasts allow audio segments to be recorded via phone, whereas other systems recommend professional recording equipment, which costs between $300 and $800 for a portable field recorder and microphone. At their most basic, prediction markets support speculative markets in which traders make money or earn points by correctly predicting future events. In practice, prediction markets provide a forum for community members — “traders” — to surface information, opinions, and competitive intelligence. The mechanism that enables this connection and aggregation of information and ideas is a market mechanism, one that closely resembles a typical stock market like the New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ. Enterprises can get substantive value from using prediction market technology to tap into the wisdom of employees for everything from quarterly sales projections for Wall Street guidance to major strategic moves by competitors. Qualcomm, for example, effectively uses prediction markets to gauge the performance of product ideas and features, while Corning used prediction markets to forecast the retail sales of LCD TVs, a major consumer of its glass products. Consensus Point, Inkling, Gexid, NewsFutures, and Spigit Cost varies by the number of users; however, enterprises spend on average between $40,000 and $100,000. Open source solutions are available. Source: Forrester Research, Inc. Usage scenario Vendors Estimated cost to implement Prediction markets Definition Usage scenario Vendors Estimated cost to implement 46893 © 2008, Forrester Research, inc. Reproduction Prohibited November 3, 2008 6 Forrester TechRadar™ For Vendor Strategists: Enterprise Web 2.0 For Vendor Strategy Professionals Figure 1 Forrester TechRadar™: Enterprise Web 2.0, Q4 ’08 Technologies Evaluated (cont.) RSS Definition Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds are XML files that specify and deliver Web content (such as text, graphics, and links) to Web or desktop clients called “readers.” RSS readers operate somewhat like an email client and indicate when Web sites such as blogs, wikis, or news sources get updated. For the purposes of this report, we include all RSS and ATOM content-syndication protocols and versions, the reader clients, and enterprise syndication services in this technology category. Employees subscribe to RSS feeds to receive updates on the content that matters most to them. Organizations use a syndication service to provide aggregated, syndicated content from the intranet and Internet and feed this content to targeted segments of the workforce. RSS allows workers to keep on top of changes on the intranet rather than periodically revisiting Web sites to see if something has changed recently. Attensa, NewsGator Technologies, /n Software’s RSSBus RSS feeds can be created and maintained through free or low-cost blogging or XML software. However, RSS reaches its full potential with an enterprise RSS server which typically runs from $40,000 to $80,000 for an average enterprise. Social bookmarks enable people to mark Web pages of interest and to share those Web locations with others. As people browse Web sites relevant to their work, they mark those pages by selecting a button on the Web page or on their browser application. They then add tags and textual descriptions to remind themselves about the page so they can easily find it again. These bookmarks are shared on a Web site for others to see. Anyone can score or vote on the page to indicate a measure of relevance to others. Over time, the more-popular sites rise to the top of the list as more people bookmark them and comment on them. This results in a list of pages that a group considers important to share among its members. In the workplace, social bookmarks are used to provide a common set of links for people to share in a way that builds a community around topics of interest. Social bookmarks also discourage the behavior of emailing links to teammates (a common but ineffective way to share information.) Connectbeam, Cogenz, IBM Minimal. Standalone social bookmarking applications top out at approximately $12,000 to $15,000, though they are more typically rolled into other suites of Web 2.0 technology. Open source options such as Akarru and Scuttle are free (and licensed via GPL). Source: Forrester Research, Inc. Usage scenario Vendors Estimated cost to implement Social bookmarks Definition Usage scenario Vendors Estimated cost to implement 46893 November 3, 2008 © 2008, Forrester Research, inc. Reproduction Prohibited Forrester TechRadar™ For Vendor Strategists: Enterprise Web 2.0 For Vendor Strategy Professionals 7 Figure 1 Forrester TechRadar™: Enterprise Web 2.0, Q4 ’08 Technologies Evaluated (cont.) Social networks Definition Social networks support the use of self-generated user profiles to help facilitate and mediate social interactions. Typically, social network users share details about themselves, search for others with similar interests, exchange messages, and work together. Within the workplace, social networking sites augment (or replace) the old-fashioned employee directory. Typical directories provide a very limited and highly function-based view of employees (their name, office location, phone/email contact, and manager name). Social networks allow the employees themselves to add more personal information about themselves and their interests — such as their skills and aspirations. They create informal connections with other employees aside from the organizational structure to model a realistic view of virtual teams and communities of interest. IBM, IGLOO, Jive Software, Microsoft, NewsGator Technologies, Telligent Systems On average, full featured standalone offerings cost anywhere between $20,000 and $300,000, while emerging social networking functionality within other applications is often bundled for free, or a nominal fee. Widgets are highly portable, stripped-down Web applications. Widgets make it easy for nontechnical users to add dynamic content or functionality, such as search tools or maps, to Web pages, portals, desktops, and mobile devices. Within the enterprise, developers and technology-savvy employees use widgets to move data and content into more relevant, contextual, and accessible locations. Implementations often focus on broadcasting public data, performing simple data aggregation, sending time-sensitive data and alerts, providing mobile workforce support, and delivering data/product syndication to high-traffic areas. Clearspring Technologies, Gigya, NewsGator Technologies, Widgetbox, Worklight The average enterprise will spend around $25,000 for a widget implementation, not including developer time, which for widgets can be substantial. Source: Forrester Research, Inc. Usage scenario Vendors Estimated cost to implement Widgets Definition Usage scenario Vendors Estimated cost to implement 46893 © 2008, Forrester Research, inc. Reproduction Prohibited November 3, 2008 8 Forrester TechRadar™ For Vendor Strategists: Enterprise Web 2.0 For Vendor Strategy Professionals Figure 1 Forrester TechRadar™: Enterprise Web 2.0, Q4 ’08 Technologies Evaluated (cont.) Wikis Definition Wikis allow any authorized person to edit the content of Web pages on a Web site. Wikis encourage the open sharing of information and facilitate the aggregation of knowledge onto a shared online Web space. Use wikis when you want employees to collect and contribute information that should be shared with others. Enterprises commonly use wikis to collect workplace knowledge, facilitate project documentation, and bring together user-contributed insight. Atlassian’s Confluence, IBM, MediaWiki, Microsoft, PBWiki, Socialtext, Traction Software, Twiki Organizations can set up a wiki server at minimal cost. Open source solutions, collaboration platform solutions with bundled wiki functionality, and user-priced SaaS solutions keep prices low, while the average enterprise will pay between $10,000 and $50,000 for a full-featured enterprise-class wiki. Source: Forrester Research, Inc. Usage scenario Vendors Estimated cost to implement 46893 EnTERPRiSE WEB 2.0 TEChRADAR: COnTEnT PluS SOCiAl COnTExT Will DRiVE ADOPTiOn In mapping the future of enterprise Web 2.0 technologies, we found that (see Figure 2): · No enterprise Web 2.0 technologies are on the verge of obsolescence. Outdated technology can create a significant liability to vendor strategies during periods of rapid industry change. None of the technologies we studied are at risk of obsolescence. While some, like podcasts and social bookmarks, have gone through their life cycles particularly quickly, there are no new technologies on the horizon ready to quickly supplant them, which reduces the risk for strategists and product managers. · Business value will accrue at a relatively slow pace. The entrance of Web 2.0 tools into the enterprise has felt like a swift development over the last two to three years; however, in general we do not expect real business value to materialize nearly as fast. While consumers can dramatically alter their behavior in weeks and months, it’s much more difficult to move thousands of workers in an enterprise to go in one direction. Further, enterprise business processes and politics are not readily changed. The players and market conditions are likely to continue change rapidly as the market matures, but the fundamental business value will move at a much slower pace. · RSS’s function for repurposing content is underappreciated in the enterprise. Despite the value that an RSS strategy could bring to an enterprise looking to manage the rollout of Web 2.0 tools, RSS remains underutilized in the enterprise computing landscape. More infrastructure needs to be put in place within enterprise software before mainstream developers concern November 3, 2008 © 2008, Forrester Research, inc. Reproduction Prohibited Forrester TechRadar™ For Vendor Strategists: Enterprise Web 2.0 For Vendor Strategy Professionals 9 themselves with RSS. Enterprises now don’t pay much attention to enterprise RSS servers, and employees don’t leverage RSS feeds or use RSS readers to anywhere near their potential. · Social networks will become the focal point for Web 2.0 in the enterprise. Social networks provide context to content. Whereas information management traditionally focused on the information itself, employees will seek to connect with the people who created and care about the same information they care about. These become the people employees reach out to for help and collaboration. Social network products now package other Web 2.0 features and will be the most effective way to get a manageable and integrated set of Web 2.0 tools inside the walls of an organization. Going forward, they will serve as the jumping-off point for other tools and content in the enterprise. Creation: Despite hype, Microblogging is Just not Ready For The Enterprise Technology within the Creation phase is often not commercially available or is only available in an early version or for limited use. Cutting-edge IT shops often experiment with the technology, rarely rolling it out to production except in specialized use cases. We included one technology in the Creation phase (see Figure 3): · Microblogs. The current darlings of media attention, microblogs appeal to both the egocentrism and the voyeurism of Web 2.0 aficionados. While few enterprise microblog solutions are more than a year old, there is significant buzz about the approach. Many blogging vendors, like Six Apart and Automattic, have already begun to incorporate microblogging support into their product sets. In all, Forrester expects enterprise microblogs to become a feature, not a standalone product category, though in either case the technology is in its infancy. © 2008, Forrester Research, inc. Reproduction Prohibited November 3, 2008 10 Forrester TechRadar™ For Vendor Strategists: Enterprise Web 2.0 For Vendor Strategy Professionals Figure 2 Forrester TechRadar™: Enterprise Web 2.0, Q4 ’08 Trajectory: Significant success Moderate success Minimal success Time to reach next phase: < 1 year 5 to 10 years 1 to 3 years > 10 years 3 to 5 years High Business value-add, adjusted for uncertainty Wikis Medium RSS Social networks Blogs Mashups Low Widgets Forums Social bookmarks Podcasts Negative Microblogs Prediction markets Creation Survival Growth Ecosystem phase Equilibrium Decline 46893 Source: Forrester Research, Inc. November 3, 2008 © 2008, Forrester Research, inc. Reproduction Prohibited Forrester TechRadar™ For Vendor Strategists: Enterprise Web 2.0 For Vendor Strategy Professionals 11 Figure 3 Forrester TechRadar™: creation Phase Technologies Microblogs Why the Creation phase? We find only a miniscule number of enterprises experimenting with the use of microblogging for internal collaboration, despite the availability of public microblogging tools on the Internet for more than two years. While vendor startups targeting the enterprise proliferate (offering many new features including voice, video, and filtering), no market exists yet for microblogging implementation consultants, evangelists, or customer support professionals. The basic capabilities of microblogging are still evolving rapidly. Negative. We consider a technology this early in the Creation stage to have a Negative business value. This means we are certain that experimentation will cost an enterprise, but we have no evidence of any resulting business value. No solid ROI metrics have been established or demonstrated. At this stage, organizations experiment with new technology in the hope that early adoption will yield competitive advantage or advanced understanding of technology trends. But, from an investment perspective, this is far from a sure thing. 1 to 3 years. Businesses will have to overcome many barriers to adoption before enterprise microblogging becomes market-viable. Current hype will propel interest in microblogging, but entry into the Survival phase requires evidence of growth in complementary organizations and significant growth in customers and end users. Minimal success. Due to message size constraints, microblogs provide very limited contextual information, and thus have limited use in business environments. Microblogs may become suitable for alerting, but less so for informing or gathering information. Employees will be reluctant to update their status unless the microblog is integrated within a business process. Although we believe we will see microblogging eventually become more mainstream in enterprise environments, we will see its value only when packaged with other software and integrated in an automated process and not as a standalone message pump (unlike its current use in the consumer space). Source: Forrester Research, Inc. Business value-add, adjusted for uncertainty Time to reach next phase Trajectory (known or prospective) 46893 Survival: Three Challenge The Status Quo; Enterprises Can Transform With Social networks Typically, within the Survival phase, the very first commercial products hit the market, initial large-scale production environment deployments take place, and the ecosystem expands to include suppliers, customers, and partners like systems integrators. Leading-edge customers and end users begin to share their experiences using the product with others. Many vendors compete to earn plaudits and early customer wins. In this TechRadar evaluation, we placed three technologies in the Survival phase (see Figure 4): · Prediction markets. This technology promises to provide a way to aggregate information into meaningful (and often remarkably accurate) predictions. Proponents point to impressive success stories in both the public and private sectors, but the opposition to the idea of a © 2008, Forrester Research, inc. Reproduction Prohibited November 3, 2008 12 Forrester TechRadar™ For Vendor Strategists: Enterprise Web 2.0 For Vendor Strategy Professionals prediction market is too fierce to ignore. Prediction market tools will enter the mainstream only when they become a feature within a product, such as an innovation management solution, not a product itself. · Social networks. For the enterprise, this technology addresses the need to connect information to the people associated with that information. Enterprises can see a perfect storm brewing ahead, as the demand, interest, and options for social networks grow at a rapid pace. Although cultural resistance exists for technology with a mixed reputation on the Internet, in time the resistance will break, and social networks will allow workers to discover new work relationships within their organizations — and beyond. · Widgets. Portable Web parts empower nontechnical users to take valuable content wherever it is would make the most impact: across the desktop, Web portal, or mobile device. With widget engines available from Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!, and tool kits that target all major computing and mobile devices, business analysts will find it easier to develop, customize, and share parts of their computing environment driving value and relevance to users. Figure 4 Forrester TechRadar™: Survival Phase Technologies Prediction markets Why the Survival phase? Prediction markets have just begun to gain real traction within the enterprise, and while a number of high-profile companies use them, the technology deployments remain limited. Further, the vendor landscape — including consultants, systems integrators, and value-added resellers — has yet to emerge. Low. Enterprises will not find it particularly difficult to obtain prediction market technology; however, they will find the cultural transformation and process engineering required to generate activity within the application and make use of the results considerably more intensive. In addition, prediction market results can often undermine the political and corporate power of traditional decision-makers, making a successful deployment very uncertain. One national retailer Forrester spoke with indicated that while the firm generally has an open culture, a good number of managers were uncomfortable with and put off by prediction market technology, slowing adoption and muting impact. 3 to 5 years. Despite the explosion in prediction market vendors, Forrester expects the technology to remain niche for the next three years. Prediction markets will get wrapped into innovation management suites and find a logical champion with the market research or competitive intelligence departments within the enterprise, moving the technology into the Growth phase. Moderate success. For particular forecasting and research projects — especially within the manufacturing and consumer packaged goods industries — prediction markets will find a permanent home and provide real business value. They will, however, remain a complement to traditional market research and forecasting processes, muting their impact on most enterprises. Source: Forrester Research, Inc. Business value-add, adjusted for uncertainty Time to reach next phase Trajectory (known or prospective) 46893 November 3, 2008 © 2008, Forrester Research, inc. Reproduction Prohibited Forrester TechRadar™ For Vendor Strategists: Enterprise Web 2.0 For Vendor Strategy Professionals 13 Figure 4 Forrester TechRadar™: Survival Phase Technologies (cont.) Social networks Why the Survival phase? Technologies in the Survival stage demonstrate significant growth in the number of customers, vendors, and complementary organizations within the marketplace. Early social network technology adopters report successes, including well-publicized examples in the press, helping to drive the technology into large enterprises. Moreover, existing collaboration applications targeting enterprises now offer social networking features. Medium. Knowing who you work with in a way that engenders trust is an increasingly important part of working in a global environment. Social Computing is the way young people use computers today, and they are bringing their successful computing behaviors to the workplace. Social networks address real business needs of adding context to content and connecting information to people. As more workers find themselves working with people they will never meet, work-based social networking will fill the gap created by the lack of face-to-face interactions. It’s still early in the life of this technology, but the future looks bright for enterprise social networks. 1 to 3 years. Fueled by the viral success of social networking in the Internet and the land grab from traditional enterprise collaboration vendors like Oracle (BEA), IBM, and Microsoft, we see social networking entering the growth stage rapidly, even before many enterprises will be ready. Significant success. Although corporate culture in many organizations significantly inhibits the implementation of social networks, feedback has been positive from those enterprises implementing this technology. Our long-term perspective is that enterprise social networking is the enviable way of organizing businesses in the future. And the technology is therefore on track for significant success. Source: Forrester Research, Inc. Business value-add, adjusted for uncertainty Time to reach next phase Trajectory (known or prospective) 46893 © 2008, Forrester Research, inc. Reproduction Prohibited November 3, 2008 14 Forrester TechRadar™ For Vendor Strategists: Enterprise Web 2.0 For Vendor Strategy Professionals Figure 4 Forrester TechRadar™: Survival Phase Technologies (cont.) Widgets Why the Survival phase? The widget ecosystem is just now emerging, and thus far has been focused primarily on Web widgets. Desktop and mobile widgets have yet to garner significant attention from enterprise customers, and in general, we do not see nearly the number of champions and evangelists within the enterprise that we see with more mature Web 2.0 technologies. Low. Today, a successful deployment requires not only a well-developed and deployed widget, but also employee training and awareness to ensure effective usage. Also, widgets will require more data and content services for them to syndicate useful information in a business setting. In addition, many enterprises have not committed fully to a mobile platform for employees (beyond simple email access), necessitating more institutional change before enterprises could begin to take full advantage of widget portability. 1 to 3 years. Enterprise widgets are primed to see strong adoption growth in three years, as enterprises refresh their corporate intranets and portals in the wake of a Microsoft SharePoint release. In addition, as mobile network and hardware improvements continue to accrue, the impact of mobile widgets will grow. Moderate success. Enterprise widget deployments are, in many cases, duplicative of traditional enterprise data access tools like BI and portals. While we believe that widgets provide a more valuable consumption mechanism, the content contained therein is not fundamentally new. As a result, Forrester sees broad usage and adoption, but only moderate business transformation. Source: Forrester Research, Inc. Business value-add, adjusted for uncertainty Time to reach next phase Trajectory (known or prospective) 46893 Growth: Wikis help Transform Collaboration; RSS underperforms At Work Within the Growth phase, the ecosystem either reaches a level of diversity and resilience that sustains the technology’s existence, or the ecosystem lacks momentum and the technology slowly slumps into decline and obsolescence. Widespread implementations produce piles of evidence, which allows potential customers to make better-informed decisions. The technology’s value proposition has crystallized and stabilized. Vendor consolidation begins, and new entrants must acquire an existing player to enter the market. We placed four technologies in the Growth phase (see Figure 5): · Blogs. Within the enterprise, blogs have yielded mixed results.4 We don’t see blogging going away, but we do find that blogging alone does not capture or hold the attention of an enterprise audience. The problem of email overuse is not going away, and therefore we see blogging — and potentially microblogging — as effective methods to offload some information exchange into more effective asynchronous, searchable channels. Social networks will breathe new life into internal blogs by providing more context to blogged content. November 3, 2008 © 2008, Forrester Research, inc. Reproduction Prohibited Forrester TechRadar™ For Vendor Strategists: Enterprise Web 2.0 For Vendor Strategy Professionals 15 · Mashups. Composite Web applications generated by combining data from disparate sources help create integrated and valuable perspectives on information. Mashups can combine public feeds, such as news and stock quotes, with private feeds, such as customer orders, to correlate them or place them onto a chart, map, or calendar. New mashup platforms, such as IBM’s Lotus Mashups, JackBe’s Presto, and Serena Software’s Business Mashups, support more sophisticated business data analysis and should gain greater enterprise attention.5 · RSS. This rather ubiquitous technology goes underappreciated. XML-based syndication allows Web content to escape the bounds of a single Web container. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) provides a mechanism to get content to people where they need it, rather than expecting people to find it. Syndication is a great enabler for repurposing content and for delivering information streams to employees.6 · Wikis. One of the more promising of the Web 2.0 technologies for the enterprise, wikis show good evidence of helping transform collaboration in the enterprise. Users report success with many wiki endeavors when they’re sponsored by business leaders and connected to business processes.7 And the Wiki market shows signs of strong growth. 8 Figure 5 Forrester TechRadar™: Growth Phase Technologies Blogs Why the Growth phase? Blogging within the enterprise has yet to become a mainstream activity in most organizations. Blogs now integrate with other corporate software packages, such as Microsoft SharePoint, IBM Lotus Connections, and most enterprise social networking tools, indicating that it’s out there and becoming available. But the lack of significant use of blogging in the enterprise for employee collaboration keeps this technology in its Growth phase. We expect more development before reaching equilibrium. Medium. As blogging becomes more mainstream, many types of corporate communications will find blogs as a more effective way to inform employees. Blogs allow the publication of comments, which enable a two-way conversation. Blogs give a new channel for leadership communication and potentially a new voice to the next generation of leaders. But many companies are uncertain of the value of blogs for internal communications, and some have reported mixed success with early experimentation. Moreover, few organizations have a model in place to account for the time it takes for employees to compose or read blogs. 3 to 5 years. Blogging tools have to be further refined for mainstream use. Even today’s better blog authoring tools have much room for UI improvement. Blog tools have to become integrated into work processes for blogging to reach its next phase of maturity. Moderate success. Blogs provide a much-needed break from email-based communications. Once workers learn how to use blogs well, they will take their place alongside other communication channels for important workplace content. But we see little evidence that blogs will have a profound or transformative impact on corporate communications. Source: Forrester Research, Inc. November 3, 2008 Business value-add, adjusted for uncertainty Time to reach next phase Trajectory (known or prospective) 46893 © 2008, Forrester Research, inc. Reproduction Prohibited 16 Forrester TechRadar™ For Vendor Strategists: Enterprise Web 2.0 For Vendor Strategy Professionals Figure 5 Forrester TechRadar™: Growth Phase Technologies (cont.) Mashups Why the Growth phase? While only a small number of enterprises today have a mashup strategy, the mashup ecosystem is already in full swing, with three major classifications of vendors: platform vendors, data service providers, and service creation and metering vendors. In addition, consultants and evangelists continue to emerge delivering on the promise of major software vendors like IBM. It is still quite early in the Growth phase, but mashups are starting to experience true growth. Low. Mashups and mashup platforms bring value in two distinct realms. First, they provide strong value to business end users who are provided with user-centric, contextual applications to improve productivity and streamline business processes. Second, they provide a release valve to IT departments looking to get out from under the weight of custom application development and integration demands from the business. This value, however, depends on the availability of data services to mash, and a link between business requirements and IT capabilities. Those capable of filling this role, business analysts, remain in small numbers in most enterprises. The current low level of adoption increases uncertainty for success, keeping mashups at the low-value stage — for now. 3 to 5 years. Forrester expects mashups to grow steadily for three to five years. During this time, end user confusion around the types of vendors in the mashup ecosystem will clear, and major enterprise software vendors like IBM, Microsoft, and SAP will build mashup features and functionality into their standard collaboration and productivity offerings. Moderate success. High resource demands on both IT and the business will keep the price point high for mashups, while few businesses will see mashups as critical to success. Mashup applications will gain users and provide value, but the most transformative of these will still need to be formalized through a more traditional enterprise application development process, dampening the impact. Source: Forrester Research, Inc. Business value-add, adjusted for uncertainty Time to reach next phase Trajectory (known or prospective) 46893 November 3, 2008 © 2008, Forrester Research, inc. Reproduction Prohibited Forrester TechRadar™ For Vendor Strategists: Enterprise Web 2.0 For Vendor Strategy Professionals 17 Figure 5 Forrester TechRadar™: Growth Phase Technologies (cont.) RSS Why the Growth phase? Figurevendor landscape for enterprise RSS has actually contracted in the last The X Forrester TechRadar: Growth Phase Technologies year, with one of three major vendors (KnowNow) exiting the market. The usage scenarios are now well-established and, relatively speaking, little innovation is occurring in the space. Adoption is still growing, and will continue to grow for the next five or six years; however, the market has become established and is approaching an equilibrium phase. We find, though, that enterprises are very slow to adopt reader clients and syndication servers. When so many organizations have yet to take advantage of RSS in any significant way, it prevents us from indicating that this technology has reached equilibrium. Medium. Enterprise RSS success requires training as well as process and application engineering. Few employees understand how to use RSS technologies effectively, and even fewer enterprises have embraced RSS readers. Many employees resist having an additional tool to get content, and many enterprise applications don’t provide effective RSS capabilities. However, RSS is a foundational technology that proves to be worthy in environments that spend the effort to make it work. Despite providing effective cross-platform, easy-to-use, and ubiquitous capabilities, RSS continues to be underappreciated. 5 to 10 years. All things considered, a small proportion of enterprises have RSS technology at their disposal today, so we expect slow, steady customer acquisition over the next five to six years. Also, no heir apparent has yet emerged that would replace the flexible publish-and-subscribe paradigm that characterize enterprise RSS solutions. Moderate success. The value of content and data delivered via RSS can be quite transformative; however, it is highly dependent on other technologies and requires a strong commitment from employees to resist the temptation to revert back to less efficient — but familiar — communications channels like email. Further, no new content is actually created with RSS. Existing content is moved from less-valuable to more-valuable real estate. Finally, the collaborative promises of employees sharing feeds and recommending content appear to be largely unfulfilled. In balance, we predict this to be successful, but only for those who embrace it. Source: Forrester Research, Inc. Business value-add, adjusted for uncertainty Time to reach next phase Trajectory (known or prospective) 46893 © 2008, Forrester Research, inc. Reproduction Prohibited November 3, 2008 18 Forrester TechRadar™ For Vendor Strategists: Enterprise Web 2.0 For Vendor Strategy Professionals Figure 5 Forrester TechRadar™: Growth Phase Technologies (cont.) Wikis Why the Growth phase? Both wiki evangelists and Forrester have seen the conversation shift from “Why would a wiki be useful?” to “How do I make the wiki work for my organization?”. This indicates, as does the growth in wiki support in a number of vendor products, the move from the Survival phase to the Growth phase. Although not yet used pervasively, an increasing number of firms now look to wikis to solve long-standing collaboration and productivity problems. In addition, the inclusion of some wiki functionality in SharePoint 2007 helps bring wiki technology to the mainstream. Medium. Reports of success with piloted enterprise wikis indicate that when organization use wikis well, they have a significant impact on the organization’s transparency and effectiveness. The low cost to implement a wiki contributes to the positive impact that comes from having more shared and discoverable information related to work processes. The barriers to wiki growth can be dealt with by a combination of management support and targeted evangelism. However, enterprise wikis are not yet mainstream tools, so we adjusted the business value to Medium to account for the uncertainty of mainstream success. 1 to 3 years. Three barriers to adoption have to be dealt with before we see wikis as a standard, ubiquitous tool. First, most current wikis are still not intuitive to use. Second, any organizations still have to find the right use cases that benefit from open sharing of information within their organization, as well as the perception that wikis inherently attract misinformation and page vandalism. And third, Microsoft’s SharePoint 2007 is becoming pervasive in organizations, yet its current wiki capability provides a very narrow perspective on the potential use of wikis. A new version of SharePoint, expected to start adoption in about three years, along with rapid growth in the wiki marketplace, point to a rapid growth phase. Significant success. Eventually wikis will be a highly successful part of many information-dependent organizations in support of employee collaboration needs. It will take a while for the convergence of three factors to take place for wikis to enjoy full success. First, wiki user interfaces have to improve and become integrated with business processes and workflows — wiki markup will not be acceptable to mainstream knowledge workers. Second, corporate cultures will have to figure out how to balance the real issues surrounding information protection which limit sharing and the need to share information for business to thrive. And third, enterprises will have to redesign email-based business processes. But as the factors are addressed, existing experiments point to a high-value trajectory for wikis. Source: Forrester Research, Inc. Business value-add, adjusted for uncertainty Time to reach next phase Trajectory (known or prospective) 46893 November 3, 2008 © 2008, Forrester Research, inc. Reproduction Prohibited Forrester TechRadar™ For Vendor Strategists: Enterprise Web 2.0 For Vendor Strategy Professionals 19 Equilibrium: Stable Technologies Provide Moderate Value, But Only When Put To use During the Equilibrium phase, which can last for several years — or even decades, for hardware — the ecosystem is large and resilient. The benefits and limitations of the technology are documented and well-known. At the end of this phase, installed customer numbers fall as some companies switch to new technologies. The market becomes highly consolidated, customer numbers flatten, and revenues level off or decline. In this TechRadar evaluation, we placed three technologies in the Equilibrium phase (see Figure 6): · Forums. The old stalwart of user-generated content and communal information sharing, forums deliver value and will continue on as a fundamental enabling technology for collaborative behaviors. The marketplace for forum tools is flat, and forums will become a part of larger community-focused packages. · Podcasts. An early example of intranet social media that has direct value for enterprises, podcasting now finds itself leaning to decline, despite how easy people find it to produce content that employees could use as they commute or take a walk during a break. We hear from users that podcasts are neither very engaging nor immersive, and the vendor landscape has been contracting, not expanding. · Social bookmarks. Social bookmarks provide an effective stopgap for the overload of interesting content and Web sites that employees want to share with each other. Although there is no slowing down the torrents of information that splash across a worker’s desktop, the demand for social bookmarking is not growing with much fervor, and the pace of innovation in the category has mostly halted. Connectbeam, a leading enterprise social bookmarking vendor, has shifted more fully into the social networking market for just these reasons. © 2008, Forrester Research, inc. Reproduction Prohibited November 3, 2008 20 Forrester TechRadar™ For Vendor Strategists: Enterprise Web 2.0 For Vendor Strategy Professionals Figure 6 Forrester TechRadar™: Equilibrium Phase Technologies Forums Why the Equilibrium phase? Forums have been available to Internet users for a long time — well before the World Wide Web itself. Since forums are included as part of all versions of SharePoint and many Lotus products (Notes, QuickPlace, Quickr), most enterprises already have the capability to support online discussion forums, though many are not taking advantage of the tools they already have. Vendors are adding new features to forums, such as tagging and rating, to make them more relevant in the Web 2.0 space, as they can be easily categorized and searched. But they are also looking to package forums as part of larger social networking suites. Medium. The cost to implement a discussion forum is low, and there is a potential for a very high value in many business use cases. However, internal discussion forums are not viewed to be strategic to many organizations. Forrester believes that enterprises can gain a lot of value from the use of online discussion forums, but the fact that so many organizations neglect to take advantage of this potential makes us drop the value to Medium. More than 10 years. Forum technology is mature and stable. We do not see a tendency for decline in the marketplace. Rather, we predict that forums will continue to exist in every enterprise, but productive usage will slowly grow by virtue of new packaging with other technologies, such as social networking or document sharing technologies (e.g., IBM Lotus Connections, Jive Clearspace, and Microsoft SharePoint). Moderate success. There are few barriers to success for most organizations. Once implemented and attended to, forums will prove helpful to many businesses. But the success is limited by corporate cultures and by the prevalence of current forum tools that create islands of conversations. Source: Forrester Research, Inc. Business value-add, adjusted for uncertainty Time to reach next phase Trajectory (known or prospective) 46893 November 3, 2008 © 2008, Forrester Research, inc. Reproduction Prohibited Forrester TechRadar™ For Vendor Strategists: Enterprise Web 2.0 For Vendor Strategy Professionals 21 Figure 6 Forrester TechRadar™: Equilibrium Phase Technologies (cont.) Podcasts Why the Equilibrium phase? The podcasting ecosystem has been settling for more than a year now, with vendors exiting the space, and little innovation occurring. Podcasting evangelists are an increasingly rare breed, despite Forrester’s belief in its business value. Low. Podcasting has not made an impact on many businesses. The most valuable use case for podcasting is to shift training, communications, and other passive employee activities to a less-demanding time or location, like their commute home or during workouts. The average enterprise today does not have much — if any — content that can be easily podcasted without a strong effort to record and syndicate. This poses a significant barrier to success. Further, because the most common way for employees to subscribe to content is via iTunes this will either require retraining of employees to a new syndication service or the corporate sanction of iTunes. In either case, corporate inertia greatly increases the effort required to get started with podcasting. It does not help that employees express resentment at yet another infringement of their work/life balance. 5 to 10 years. Podcasting is likely to find a small, but mostly permanent, home within the training organizations of most enterprises. We don’t see it being offset in the near term. However, as Web video matures and becomes more economical for the enterprise, podcasting is likely to be replaced. Minimal success. Podcasting never really took off in the enterprise, and despite offering what Forrester believes to be good value and promise, few enterprises seem interested in investing in the technology. This apathy will greatly reduce the impact of the technology, ultimately resulting in minimal success. Source: Forrester Research, Inc. Business value-add, adjusted for uncertainty Time to reach next phase Trajectory (known or prospective) 46893 © 2008, Forrester Research, inc. Reproduction Prohibited November 3, 2008 22 Forrester TechRadar™ For Vendor Strategists: Enterprise Web 2.0 For Vendor Strategy Professionals Figure 6 Forrester TechRadar™: Equilibrium Phase Technologies (cont.) Social bookmarks Why the Equilibrium phase? Few enterprises today have invested in enterprise social bookmarking technology; however, the innovation within the category has mostly run its course. Very few vendors are entering the space, and investment for enterprise productivity and collaboration solutions has mostly dried up. Evangelists and enterprise champions are becoming more and more difficult to locate. Low. Hardly any employees use consumer-oriented social bookmarking tools today, and as a result, major training must be undertaken to ensure that employees can find any value at all with the tool. In addition, much of the value within the enterprise centers on finding content, a problem that is best solved with a well-executed search implementation. 3 to 5 years. The basic value of social bookmarking is not expected to change anytime soon, and while the semantic Web promises to eventually render these investments obsolete, semantic technologies are a long way from reaching ubiquity. That social bookmarking gets bundled into other content-centric applications and suites will guarantee its use for at least another decade, though with limited impact. Minimal success. Social bookmaking is a feature of a well-designed and well-implemented intranet, and as portal and collaboration technologies mature, social bookmarking is likely to become just another navigation mechanism. Source: Forrester Research, Inc. Business value-add, adjusted for uncertainty Time to reach next phase Trajectory (known or prospective) 46893 Decline: improving Enterprise Adoption Keeps Web 2.0 Technologies From Decline In this phase, forcing factors — such as new regulations, changes in the business environment, a shrinking talent pool, or the launch of disruptive competing technologies — destabilize the ecosystem. Customers, vendors, and complementary organizations, such as service providers, bail out. Some companies continue to run the technology, but vendors stop supporting it. In this TechRadar evaluation, we placed no technologies in the Decline phase. R E c O m m E N D aT i O N S VEnDORS MuST WORK TO BuilD A MARKET-PROOF SuiTE OF TOOlS AnD SERViCES The enterprise Web 2.0 collaboration market is maturing, but it is far from settled. Forrester believes that this will become a $1.8 billion market by 2013, and nearly all of that spend is still up for grabs. To capture a large chunk of the opportunity, Forrester recommends that vendors: · Build suites of tools that spread risk across several technology categories. Strikingly, when Forrester sat down and crunched the numbers, we found that of the 11 technologies we examined, no two looked the same. Each technology has its own unique business value, November 3, 2008 © 2008, Forrester Research, inc. Reproduction Prohibited Forrester TechRadar™ For Vendor Strategists: Enterprise Web 2.0 For Vendor Strategy Professionals 23 ecosystem players and maturity level, and risk profile. While many vendor strategists have already begun to provide suites of tools in response to customer demands, Forrester believes that this approach will also serve strategists well by mitigating the risk inherent in any one technology ecosystem. Going forward, a suite approach for Web 2.0 will become mandatory for survival. · invest in social networking capabilities today. Only two of the technologies we examined — social networking and wikis — will see true significant success in the enterprise for collaboration. if you are not offering one or both of these features in your product the market is going to look increasingly limited. While we still see some innovation in the wiki market — atlassian’s microsoft Office connector comes to mind — social networking is the battleground to jump into: it is far from a settled market, a multitude of approaches are still gaining traction, and social networking will serve as a jumping off point for other content in the enterprise. · Don’t expect customers to achieve business value without serious effort. When examining the business value of the 11 Web 2.0 technologies, a clear trend emerged: The full promised business value has rarely manifested itself in practice. Enterprise RSS, for example, tells a sexy story about collaborative content digestion and discussion which is almost never realized. most customers will not have the talent or expertise to build truly valuable implementations on their own; you as the vendor strategist must help with strategic partners and a dedicated services arm, or you risk losing the account. · Foster strong ties with VARs, systems integrators, and consultancies. Since few enterprises are equipped today to really drive value from their Web 2.0 implementations, third parties like systems integrators and consultants will become a critical part of the Web 2.0 ecosystem. in general, this third-party support structure is the least developed part of the ecosystem today, but it should fill in rather aggressively over the next two years as these players build expertise and develop methodologies. a strong relationship with one or two of these players can be the difference between a successful offering and a failed one. · Pick off up-and-coming, but simplistic, technologies. None of the technologies we examined are likely to be replaced in a wholesale manner in the next five to 10 years; however, new technologies like microblogging and prediction markets are still just emerging. Vendor strategists must make sure they have an answer to the inevitable buzz around these new tools and should provide similar capabilities quickly. You will, however, need to be discerning: it will be much easier to build for relatively simplistic tools such as microblogging, while more complex tools like prediction markets are better bought. · Market to the buzzwords. Web 2.0 within the enterprise has been one long procession of buzzwords. Vendor strategists, and more specifically their product marketers, must continue to jump on these flashes of interest and demand. both automattic (the makers of WordPress) and Six apart introduced microblogging tools back in January of this year. Since that time, there has been nary a peep out of either around the availability of these features. it is not enough to provide the function — you must market it, as well. © 2008, Forrester Research, inc. Reproduction Prohibited November 3, 2008 24 Forrester TechRadar™ For Vendor Strategists: Enterprise Web 2.0 For Vendor Strategy Professionals SuPPlEMEnTAl MATERiAl Online Resource The underlying spreadsheet that exposes all of Forrester’s analysis of each of the 11 technologies in the TechRadar (Figure 2) is available online. Data Sources used in This Forrester TechRadar Forrester used a combination of three data sources to analyze each technology’s current ecosystem phase, business value adjusted for uncertainty, time to reach next phase, and trajectory: · Vendor meetings. Forrester discussed market ecosystem, growth, competitive landscape, and customer case studies with more than 45 technology vendors. · Expert interviews. Forrester interviewed experts on each technology, including academics, developers, and evangelists. Forrester interviewed more than 10 industry experts. · Current and prospective customer and user interviews. Forrester interviewed current and potential customers and users for each technology to understand current and prospective uses for the technologies and their impact on the customers’ businesses and the users’ work. Forrester performed more than 125 of these detailed interviews. The Forrester TechRadar Methodology Forrester uses the TechRadar methodology to make projections for more than a decade into the future of the use of technologies in a given category. We make these predictions based on the best information available at a given point in time. Forrester intends to update its TechRadar assessments on a regular schedule to assess the impact of future technical innovation, changing customer and end user demand, and the emergence of new complementary organizations and business models. Here’s the detailed explanation of how the TechRadar works: · The x axis: We divide technology ecosystem maturity into five sequential phases. Technologies move naturally through five distinct stages: 1) creation in labs and early pilot projects; 2) survival in the market; 3) growth as adoption starts to accelerate; 4) equilibrium from the installed base; and 5) decline into obsolescence as other technologies take their place. Forrester placed each of the 11 Web 2.0 technologies in the appropriate phase based on the level of development of its technology ecosystem, which includes customers, end users, vendors, complementary services organizations, and evangelists.9 · The y axis: We measure customer success with business value-add, adjusted for uncertainty. Seven factors define a technology’s business value-add: 1) evidence and feedback from implementations; 2) the investment required; 3) the potential to deliver business transformation; 4) criticality to business operations; 5) change management or integration problems; 6) network November 3, 2008 © 2008, Forrester Research, inc. Reproduction Prohibited Forrester TechRadar™ For Vendor Strategists: Enterprise Web 2.0 For Vendor Strategy Professionals 25 effects; and 7) market reputation. Forrester then discounts potential customer business valueadd for uncertainty. If the technology and its ecosystem are at an early stage of development, we have to assume that its potential for damage and disruption is higher than that of a betterknown technology.10 · The z axis: We predict the time the technology’s ecosystem will take to reach the next phase. Vendor strategists need to know when a technology and its supporting constellation of investors, developers, vendors, and services firms will be ready to move to the next phase; this allows them to plan not just for the next year but for the next decade. All technologies fall into one of five windows for the time to reach the next technology ecosystem phase: 1) less than one year; 2) between one and three years; 3) between three and five years; 4) between five and 10 years; and 5) more than 10 years.11 · The curves: We plot technologies along one of three possible trajectories. All technologies will broadly follow one of three paths as they progress from creation in the labs through to decline: 1) significant success and a long lifespan; 2) moderate success and a medium to long lifespan; and 3) minimal success and a medium to long lifespan. We plot each of the 11 most important technologies for enterprise Web 2.0 collaboration on one of the three trajectories to help vendor strategists allocate their resources and technology research time more efficiently.12 The highest point of all three of the curves occurs in the middle of the Equilibrium phase; this is the peak of business value-add for each of the trajectories — and at this point, the adjustment for uncertainty is relatively minimal because the technology is mature and well-understood. · Position on curve: Where possible, we use this to fine-tune the z axis. We represent the time a technology and its ecosystem will take to reach the next phase of ecosystem development with the five windows above. Thus, technologies with more than 10 years until they reach the next phase will appear close to the beginning of their ecosystem phase; those with less than one year will appear close to the end. However, let’s say we have two technologies that will both follow the moderate success trajectory, are both in the Survival phase, and will both take between one and three years to reach the next phase. If technology A is likely to only take 1.5 years and technology B is likely to take 2.5 years, technology A will appear further along on the curve in the Survival phase. In contrast, if technologies A and B are truly at equal positions along the x, y, and z axes, we’ll represent them side by side. EnDnOTES 1 Among North American and European firms in Q3 2007, one in three respondents familiar with their firm’s Web 2.0 strategy indicated that their firm would adopt some Web 2.0 technology in 2008. An additional 14% of respondents indicated that their firms would at least consider Web 2.0 tools in 2008. See the February 6, 2008, “The Web 2.0 Buyer Profile: 2008” report. © 2008, Forrester Research, inc. Reproduction Prohibited November 3, 2008 26 Forrester TechRadar™ For Vendor Strategists: Enterprise Web 2.0 For Vendor Strategy Professionals 2 For further details on the TechRadar methodology, see the Supplemental Material section of this document and our report introducing this new type of research. See the August 1, 2007, “Introducing Forrester’s TechRadar™ Research” report. Not to imply that microblogging is brand new. Forrester has covered microblogging in past research. See the October 16, 2007, “Microblogging For Marketers” report. Readers should note that the “enterprise blogging” technology category was evaluated in a Q2 2008 Forrester TechRadar report. See the June 27, 2008 “Forrester TechRadar™: Enterprise Content Management, Q2 2008” report. In that report, enterprise blogs were found to be in the Growth phase. The ECM TechRadar looked closely at technology used to capture, manage, put to use, and retain the breadth of any enterprise’s content used in transactional business processes, business and employee collaboration, and persuasive multichannel initiatives. The latter, persuasive multichannel initiatives, where marketers regularly use blogging to improve the customer experience, was a scenario this enterprise Web 2.0 TechRadar did not include as this research focuses on employee collaboration needs. 3 4 5 Forrester projects that the enterprise mashup market will reach nearly $700 million by 2013; while this means that there is plenty of money to be made selling mashup platforms, it will affect nearly every software vendor. Mashup platforms are in the pole position and ready to grab the lion’s share of the market — and an entire ecosystem of mashup technology and data providers is emerging to complement those platforms. Those vendor strategists that move quickly, plan a mashup strategy, and build a partner ecosystem will come out on top. See the May 6, 2008, “The Mashup Opportunity” report. In a Forrester survey conducted prior to the research done for this Web 2.0 TechRadar report, we found that one in five firms adopting RSS indicated substantial business value from their deployment. See the July 10, 2008, “Firms Adopting RSS See Very Strong Business Value” report. In a Forrester survey conducted just prior to the research done for this Web 2.0 TechRadar report, we found most respondents indicated moderate to substantial business value from their enterprise wiki initiative. See the July 10, 2008, “Most Wiki Deployments Show Solid Business Value” report. Readers should note that the “enterprise wiki” technology category was evaluated a Q2 2008 Forrester TechRadar report. See the June 27, 2008, “Forrester TechRadar™: Enterprise Content Management, Q2 2008” report In that report, enterprise wikis were found to be in the Survival phase and on the “moderate success” track. The ECM TechRadar looks closely at technology used to capture, manage, put to use, and retain the breadth of any enterprise’s content used in transactional business processes, business and employee collaboration, and persuasive multichannel initiatives. This enterprise Web 2.0 TechRadar focuses more closely on employee collaboration where wikis address the intersection of content and collaboration. 6 7 8 9 Note that the five phases are not of any prescribed length of time. For the typical technology ecosystem profiles for each of the five phases, see Figure 3 in the introductory report. See the August 1, 2007, “Introducing Forrester’s TechRadar™ Research” report. November 3, 2008 © 2008, Forrester Research, inc. Reproduction Prohibited Forrester TechRadar™ For Vendor Strategists: Enterprise Web 2.0 For Vendor Strategy Professionals 27 10 We outline the detailed questions we ask to determine business value adjusted for uncertainty in Figure 4 of the introductory report. See the August 1, 2007, “Introducing Forrester’s TechRadar™ Research” report. Forrester will include relatively few technologies that we predict will take more than 10 years to reach the next ecosystem phase. Expect to see these 10-year-plus technologies only in the Creation phase for fundamental hardware innovations and in the Equilibrium and Decline phases for hardware and software on the “great success” trajectory. We provide details on how we predict the amount of time that a given technology will take to reach the next phase of technology ecosystem evolution in the introductory report. See the August 1, 2007, “Introducing Forrester’s TechRadar Research” report. We provide detailed information and examples of how we predict the amount of time that a technology will take to reach the next phase of ecosystem development (alternatively called “velocity” or “velocity rating”) in the introductory report. See the August 1, 2007, “Introducing Forrester’s TechRadar™ Research” report. 11 12 © 2008, Forrester Research, inc. Reproduction Prohibited November 3, 2008 making leaders Successful Every Day Headquarters Forrester Research, Inc. 400 Technology Square Cambridge, MA 02139 USA Tel: +1 617.613.6000 Fax: +1 617.613.5000 Email: forrester@forrester.com Nasdaq symbol: FORR www.forrester.com Research and Sales Offices Australia Brazil Canada Denmark France Germany Hong Kong India For a complete list of worldwide locations, visit www.forrester.com/about. For information on hard-copy or electronic reprints, please contact the Client Resource Center at +1 866.367.7378, +1 617.617.5730, or resourcecenter@forrester.com. 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