Glovia's roots go back to the 1970s, when Xerox Computer Services launched a time-sharing application for manufacturing companies. The product went through several iterations and was eventually relaunched in client-server form in 1990 as Xerox Chess. The company was acquired in 2000 by Fujitsu, who renamed it Glovia. But about two or three years ago, Glovia suddenly fell off my radar. I knew they were still in business--I just never saw them in deals or even in press releases. In our briefing with Glovia last week, we soon found out why.

Who will be the first vendor to take their usage stats and create infographics which can be displayed on people/community profiles?
 

Sure many vendors have stats, reports, charts... but I've not seen a product with integrated infographics.

It would be fun to see them shared in activity streams.

Should we dub it "Visua.ly for the enterprise"?

On Feb 16th I'm presenting at the Virtual E2Conf on Social Analytics. The way I've structured my presentation is to first define how I see social analytics, then provide examples we see in our consumer lives, then map those to examples at work. I'll be covering the business use-cases via examples from various e2.0 vendors, but no I'm not endorsing one over another.

If you have not yet signed up, please register here.

Here is a teaser version of the slides I'll be using. (the full deck is about 40 slides)

"Sharing" was the training wheels of social business software.

For the last few years social software has been explained by talking about use-cases such as:

• Employees can now share status updates, links and files with everyone
• Ask questions and get answers back from people in any part of the company
• Everyone now has a voice and can provide ideas for improving products or business processes

These are all great ways to get people started using blogs, wikis and activity streams. But now it's time to focus on getting real work done.

One of the major concerns about cloud computing is the speed and availability of the network to access the application or data in the cloud.  Let’s face it: the network is no longer the computer!  There is a need for offloading data networking demand to others as needed to make cloud computing more viable and more like what user demands are for on-premise systems. We can do that for systems and software, but up until now, more difficult to achieve with networks.

Activity Streams - Jambalaya or Steak and Potatoes?

In my last post "Don't Cross the Streams" I challenged the idea that integrating multiple sources of information into activity streams is a good thing. This struck a nerve with some people (mainly vendors) while others completely agreed with me. A friend of mine an fellow industry analyst suggested that I follow up by posting possible solutions, so below are the few of the areas I think can help:

1. Don't put stuff in there that doesn't belong
2. Display multiple streams
3. Allow people to organize lists
4. Provide several notification options
5. Manual filtering
6. Crowd (friend) sourced curation
7. Automated filtering via analytics

Silos Are Not Necessarily A Bad Thing

January proved an eventful month for Constellation Research, Inc. We participated in our second annual Winter Wonderland company retreat, we expanded the team, analysts spoke at a number of events, and published a range of research. 

Constellation's Winter Wonderland Retreat

Once a year, the entire Constellation Research, Inc. team meets at the Stanford Faculty Club for Constellation's Winter Wonderland Retreat. During this three day event, we plan our research agendas, discuss how we can better serve our clients, and gain inspiration from external speakers. Highlights from this year's retreat include:

Mind Expanding Speeches by Notable Speakers

Roman Stanek, CEO GoodData - shared his view on the Future of Mobility

Nigel Cameron, Constellation Board of Advisors - shared the latest on the political trends affecting the tech industry

Christian Gheorghe, CEO Tidemark - shared his view on the Future of Applications

I've found myself discussing the pros and cons of activity streams a lot lately. While streams, or news feeds, can be a great way to display information and encourage conversations, they can be a huge contributor to information overload. I'm sure your first reaction is to quote Clay Shirky's famous "There's no such thing as information overload, only filter failure" line. Yes, filtering is EXTREMELY important, and the combination of manual controls, automated filtering via analytics, and crowd-sourced curation can be very helpful in managing overload. But what about looking at the root cause of the issue, putting too much information into the stream.

My favourite way to illustrate this point is the following scene from the 1984 movie Ghost Busters:

Constellation Research, Inc., an award-winning research analyst and advisory firm helping clients navigate emerging and disruptive technologies, announced today the addition of Phil Fersht to the Board of Advisors.  Fersht is the founder and CEO of the acclaimed IT services and business process outsourcing analyst advisory organization, HfS Research. He will provide valuable guidance and insight to Constellation Research, Inc. analysts as their research deals with IT services, Business Process Outsourcing, shared services, and global business operations management.