Michael Fauscette

2009 Retrospective

It's that time of year again, you know, the time to look back at the year and think about all that's happened (and hopefully what we've learned that might help look forward into next year). It was a tough year from many different fronts, the economy spawned hardships that ranged from slower business to loss of jobs and houses on unprecedented scale. No industry was immune from the downturn and high tech certainly has seen its share of troubles. In spite of all the negatives there were some bright spots. Several tech trends that were emerging only last year moved mainstream with the help of the economic crisis.

Every year at IDC in Dec / Jan we do a series of predictions that start with high level predictions developed by a team of senior analysts that support IDC Chief Analyst Frank Gens and then move on through each major research group. Last year my group published the following predictions:

1. The 2008 Financial Crisis Will Drive Accelerated Growth of Software-as-a-Service–Based Solutions

2. Several Large Software Vendors Will Restructure Their Partner Program Tiers in 2009.

3. Open Source Software Gets the Boost to the "Mainstream" by the Effect of the Economy and the Subsequent Change in Buying Behaviors.

4. Partner Analytics Will Come of Age in 2009 as Vendors Seek Partner Quality over Partner Quantity.

5. Compliance, Litigation Preparedness, and Business Process Efficiency Will Continue to Drive Content Management Budgets.

6. Partners Will Create Several New "Partner Run" Partner-to-Partner Communities in 2009.

7. Consumer-Born Web 2.0 and Social Networking Tools Will Permeate New Customer and Partner Initiatives.

8. An Economic and Technological Perfect Storm Will Raise the Enterprise 2.0 Ship Higher than Others.

9. Platform as a Service Will Create a "Custom" Alternative for Vertical-Specific Solutions, Putting Pressure on the Major Enterprise Software Vendors to Develop or Acquire a Platform-as-a-Service Offering.

10. Next-Generation Enterprise Applications Vendors Will Win the Trifecta of Business Models.

Looking at the predictions the first thing that strikes me is that we need to make these more measurable and in fact that is our plan for this year. That said, how did we do in calling this year? #1 is pretty easy, SaaS (or cloud apps) did see very strong growth, well over 30%, in an enterprise software market that was just about flat overall. Most of the SaaS vendors saw good to very good growth as was evidenced by the strong quarterly reports from the public pure-play SaaS vendors. I'd say we get an A+ on this one and I feel confident that SaaS / cloud apps are now an accepted deployment option in both the SMB and enterprise markets that will continue to see rapid growth for the next several years.

For #2 we also did fine, several large SW vendors make changes to their partners programs that ranged from redefining criteria for program levels to adding things like specialization certification as a new differentiator (Oracle Specialized). I'd say this one gets an A.

Open Source SW, much like SaaS, did see a boost from the economy and we put the overall growth this year at ~34%. The rest of the story though is that in talking with CIO's in companies that ranged from mid-sized all the way to large enterprise it is now very common for IT organizations to have an OSS strategy and to have incorporated some use of OSS in the stack. Often now the use of OSS has grown out of just system infrastructure software and is moving up into the middleware and apps layers. I'd give us an A on this one as well.

Partner analytics is an area of partner program development that IDC has supported for quite some time. Using deep analytics to support partner program decisions and policies is a best practice. Sometimes selecting and collecting the "right" metrics on partners is difficult and while many programs do use them, the use of deeper analytics could still be improved. I'd say some progress was made last year but I don't feel like the inroads were as good as we had hoped. I'd give #4 a C.

Compliance, litigation preparedness and business process efficiency are still key factors in enterprise software deployments and their impact continued to drive some spending in content management in spite of the economy, although growth dropped to flat or slightly negative as the economy stayed weak and companies delayed SW spend decisions. We do see a good bounce-back next year though, with growth jumping up above 5% as budget controls start to relax a little. I'd have to call #5 a B-.

Partner-to-partner (P2P) networking has been a hot topic for the last few years. The major vendors have tried to build programs and offer assistance that encourages go-to-market relationships among its partner ecosystems. A few independent organizations have grown up among partners as well (IAMCP for Microsoft partners, for example). We expected to see more of these independent organizations this last year but in reality, it seems like the severity of the economy took the attention off any of these new initiatives for the most part. Grade on this one, D.

#'s 7 & 8 were probably the biggest home runs this year. We've watched as social networking and social media turned into social software solutions and social business initiatives. There's tremendous momentum across internal and external business processes and operations to look to the social web for the next generation of tools to facilitate relationships and collaboration. We're now talking about things like social CRM, social product design, social marketing and social supply chain management. Internally we are starting to see the convergence of collaboration, search, content management, and communications into social software as well. We also saw most of the major SW vendors use social tools in their partner programs. We're seeing widespread use of social software to change the way vendors interact with partners including blogs, wiki's, and even customer facing initiatives like SAP's Ecohub. Overall I'd give both 7 & 8 and A+.

Platform as a service (PaaS) has increased in importance and is getting much more attention from ISV's and SI's. Much of the progress this year was driven by Salesforce.com's Force.com PaaS and its efforts to recruit new partners. Netsuite also rolled out its PaaS offering, Suitecloud and hired a new ISV partner executive to build a community. While both of these initiatives are gaining momentum its still slow going on both the ISV and the prospect sides. The vendors are gaining traction though and some very strong hybrid partners are emerging (for example Appirio, who is a partner with salesforce.com, Google and Amazon). There's also movement from the major SW vendors with Microsoft launching Azure and SAP announcing the intent to have a PaaS offering next year. Overall I'd have to rate this prediction a solid B+, good progress but maybe not as much traction yet.

The hybrid business model, or vendors that offer on premise, SaaS and outsourced processes is gaining among larger SW vendors. Particularly the blending of, or offering customer flexibility through both on prem and SaaS seems to be the prevailing model moving forward for Oracle, Microsoft and even SAP (although most of their offerings are slated to launch next year). The third option is getting renewed attention as software in a service or cloudsourcing, although non of the major vendors have moved in that direction directly. It now seems that cloudsourcing will be a fertile ground for a new generation of process outsourcing partners that are emerging and taking advantage of the SaaS model with a services wrapper. Overall on this prediction I'd say we hit a solid B, with a new model emerging around outsourcing that wasn't really on the radar last year.

So there you have the report card from 2009. Look for our new set of predictions mid January and if you'd like to discuss them in person join Henry Morris, Steve Hendricks and me for a complimentary breakfast briefing, Envisioning the New Normal: IDC Software Predictions 2010 on Jan 26th in Burlingame, CA.

Happy Holidays!

As we move into this holiday season it's a great time to slow down, spend time with family and friends, and take a few minutes to look back and reflect on the past year. I know that for a lot of people this last year was one of the hardest ever. Many of our friends and colleagues found themselves out of work and had a tough time providing for themselves and their family. Even the lucky ones who stayed employed saw their incomes drop and their savings vanish. Yet with all of the troubles we also saw a world that grew closer and became much more interconnected. For many of us this new hyper-connected world brought us great new friends, help us reconnect with old friends and helped us help each other when we were in need. I watched as several of my friends used their hardship and their new connectedness to create something new and exciting for themselves.

So as I reflect back on this year I see that my world has gotten bigger and yet seems closer and, well, better than it has ever been. I'm really thankful for the opportunities I have to learn from and interact with so many of you. I'm also thankful for being able to do something I love in an industry that has given me so much.

I also like to use this quieter time to start to look at and plan next year. There's a lot of optimism and hope for next year. We will work together to define the "new" normal and to figure out the ways of reinvention. So here's to all of you, thank you for making my world so much fun and so much richer!       

What I've discovered about Twitter

Over the last weekend I noticed a Tweet from analyst colleague Esteban Kolsky (@ekolsky) about a interesting project. The idea, dubbed #MonTwit, is to get a group of blogger / analysts to write about the same topic on the same day (today, to be exact). I love the idea and of course I'm a big fan of Twitter so I figured I'd join in.

I joined Twitter in June of 2008, somewhat late to the party in reality but I was experimenting with several types of social media at the time and got around to Twitter in June. There were only a few IDC analysts on Twitter back them and most of them were not that active. I went through the standard use cycle (at least from what I've seen); for the first month or so I was a Twitter voyeur (or as some people say a Twitter lurker) and mostly observed. Once I started to get the basic rhythm down I went into stage 2, the "ham sandwich" stage where the mundane was supposed to somehow be interesting. In fairness I also started sharing some of what I was working on and who I was talking to and over time I evolved out of the mundane and started to develop my own style and use cases. Getting followers was very slow going at first until I decided to just go out and find people in my industry and follow them. I stumbled across Carter Lusher (@carterlusher) from SageCircle (actually he follow me, he's great at finding analysts on Twitter) and realized he followed a lot of the people I was interested in so I used his list as a good start at my expansion. This was 3 or 4 months into the experiment and I think that was really when I found my own use cases and felt like I understood "Twitter etiquette". Most importantly I started to recognize that it was a conversation and that the more you gave into the community the more you got back.

Once I was over around 500 followers I realized that I couldn't stay on top of the noise through the Twitter web client so I asked my Twitter community for advice and started trying different desktop and iPhone clients. For quite a while I used Tweetdeck on my MacBook but earlier this year I switched to Seesmic Desktop, which I still use today. The key for the desktop for me is a strong ability to segment my community into groups so that I can get what I need when I need it. I also like the support for Twitter lists and the Facebook integration. On my iPhone I use several clients, mostly Tweetdeck and Tweetie 2 presently. On my Blackberry I like Seesmic for BB.

I am often asked how I use Twitter and what benefit do I get from that use from people who are not on Twitter or who have not used it for any length of time. One of the first discoveries for me was that you really can't understand Twitter until you use it for awhile. It's like most social networks, immersion is really the only way to gain that understanding. I use Twitter for: 1. sharing information (relevant links, live Tweeting events, interesting things I learn from clients and end users, what I'm working on as well as post on this blog), 2. real-time breaking news, 3. information gathering (especially useful to follow events to which I am unable to attend), 4. short, quick data trending (ask a question, get lot's of relevant answers), 5. "meeting" people in my industry, networking, 6. communication (for me, much more effective for real-time comms than email, but then I hate email), and 7. conversations. One of my favorite fallouts of my involvement in Twitter has been the Tweetups and the people I've transitioned from just a Twitter connection to a real, face-to-face connection. I've met some very interesting people and connect with many of them both here in San Francisco and when I visit other cities. The community grows all the time and more and more I am able to connect on and off line with some great people.

Twitter is definitely an acquired taste and everyone defines their own use cases. That's one of the great things about it, you can make it what you want...be involved a little or a lot, it's your choice. The confined nature of the Tweet keeps things direct and clear for me. A day never goes by that I don't learn something from Twitter, so for me, that's real value. The more you put in, the more you get out...

Google in talks to acquire Yelp?

The rumors hit the street yesterday that Google is in talks to acquire Yelp. Google has made it no secret that they want (or maybe need is a better word) to gain access to local businesses in what might be thought of as their own bid for the "long tail". As the enterprise ad / search market gets more saturated the only place to look for new business is with these small and medium companies. Of course Google already has the Google Local Business Center which was its first real attempt to gain access in a more local environment. Yelp lists local businesses and has a community of reviewers that provide content and is by far the 800 lb gorilla in the local business market from a web perspective. It is also capitalizing on the mobile and location-based trends by providing a GPS enabled iPhone app.

So what's all the fuss over the local ad market? According to the NYT the fuss is that the local ad market is an almost untapped $29B market that has historically relied on print like the yellow pages and does not, for the most part understand the online ad world. To reach this audience requires local reach, something web behemoths like Google do not have. Yelp, on the other had has ~200 ad sales people, 2/3's of its total staff. The deals not done yet and of course some other web giant (Microsoft or AOL for example) could also join in the bidding which at present is rumored to be over $500M.

I certainly understand the "why" from a Google perspective, but I was thinking about the deal in the context of some of the predictions that I'm working on for next year and I have to say I wonder if the Yelp paradigm might be a bit dated (and yes, I know they were founded in 2004, but trends in the online world are changing rapidly). Recently I was in Boston for a couple of events and some meetings and I was looking for a good place for dinner near my hotel. Now in the past (say 6 mos ago), I would have probably checked Yelp for some reviews of local places near by, I do value the idea of crowdsourcing these types of questions. This time though, I decided to try GraffitiGeo, a context aware iPhone app that I have been trying out for a few weeks that let's users tag locations and leave short (Twitter style) remarks and reviews on the virtual walls of the venue. I quickly found a restaurant, read the tags and headed out. I checked in on FourSquare when I got there (no deals nearby) and left my own tag about my meal on GraffitiGeo. In fact, over the last few months I've used several context aware, location based and augmented reality apps to find and evaluate local businesses. So why the shift away from the collective intelligence type reviews on Yelp? Yelp has a broad community of reviewers and they tend to be fairly verbose in those reviews (something Yelp seems to reward). I don't in general have a way to establish a level of commonality with the reviewers either. In the newer types of context aware apps, I can build off of my already established trust networks from Twitter and Facebook so I can much more easily establish that common link with the reviewers. 1 good review from someone in my network I trust is worth 100 bad reviews from strangers. Augmented reality like Wikitude and Cyclopedia, and proximity based networks like FourSquare, Gowalla, Brightkite and GraffitiGeo are more relevant to me and to my network than Yelp, its that simple. Trust filtering is a significant factor in our online social networking world. Most of these new networks build on what you already have established, which makes them an extension of your network, not a new venture. And let's face it, our networks are becoming more and more interconnected all the time as more services open up API's like Facebook Connect. As more of these proximity based, context aware networks gain in popularity I think they supplant directory type services because they are extensions of my current online comfort zone.

SAP coming out from behind the Clouds?

This has been a tough year for many enterprise software companies but in many ways SAP seems to have suffered more than most. The core ERP and ERP upgrade business has been near a wasteland of activity. Maintenance revenues have sustained many companies as new license sales faltered. We're starting to see some evidence of moving out of the worst of the economic troubles but even so I believe that next year is really about establishing a "new normal", not about "recovering". In Boston this week SAP reviewed its strategy with a group of industry influencers and started to reveal what SAP leadership sees as its "new normal".

The morning general sessions were heavy with marketing buzzwords but did start to show the extent to which SAP seems to be embracing some change. It was a little odd to hear the words "cloud" and "on demand" used as common fare for SAP executives a mere 7 months after I heard CEO Leo Apotheker answer, when asked about SAP's cloud plans at the Business Suite 7 launch, with something like "we are researching cloud but we don't think its scaleable." The buzzword barrage included cloud, on demand, real-time, mobile, innovation, sustainability and of course the new SAP technical mantra of in-memory database / applications, which they have used in the Business Objects BI Accelerator that was demo'ed at the last Sapphire. The overall theme from SAP CTO Vishal Sikka was "Timeless Software". Most significantly though, we did start to see a much clearer strategy around cloud (which they still usually call on demand).

I have to admit that I've been very confused over SAP's SaaS strategy for almost 3 years. The initial positioning of the Business ByDesign (ByD) as a lower mid-market solution (and as a stepping stone to A1, I think) was quickly refined within a few months and the initial release was a mid-market offering. With obvious technical and quality issues, sales of ByD were basically shuttered for some time and SAP has been mostly silent on SaaS until the last few months. In the afternoon session by John Wookey (ex-Oracle Apps Exec now leading SAP's Enterprise On Demand strategy) and Peter Lorenz (who leads the ByD and SME business), we had a much more detailed explanation of the overall on demand strategy. SAP now has three on demand initiatives: 1. Line of Business On Demand (LOB OD), 2. Business Objects On Demand (which I have been briefed on in the past but did not get an update this week, as the session conflicted with the broader on demand session) and 3. ByD.

1. LOB OD: The basic concept is to build SaaS applications that are deployed as extensions to the core SAP ERP suite by enterprise customers. This is a little reminiscent of a strategy that SAP talked about 2 years ago called "side-by-side", where they laid out this idea that customers could keep the on premise "core" and add new functionality through SaaS. The apps are built on the platform acquired with the purchase of Frictionless in 2006 (which also will be offer to ISV's as a Platform as a Service offering like Salesforce.com's Force.com and Netsuite's SuiteCloud). Currently there are 4 apps available, HCM (a partner app from Northgate Arinso), CRM, e-sourcing, and Carbon Impact. Planned for release next year SCM, Travel & Expense, Services Management and a new version of BOBJ project Kona.

2. ByD: The current ByD release (2.0) has ~100 customers in several industries (mostly services focused) and includes some partner add-ons. BbyD is model driven, with the business logic in deployment units, has an open msg based architecture, integrated under SOA & configurable. The next release, 2.5 (slated for mid-next year) according to Lorenze will be the true "ready for prime time" release adding things like true multi-tenancy. The UI is now built with Microsoft Silverlight and frankly, during the demo, look a bit dated. Using Silverlight does provide good MS Office interoperability features. The UI model is decoupled from UI rendering and the UI model is used for mash ups, mobile (which will be available for several mobile OS), etc. ByD uses in-memory technology and has real-time analytics. The 2.5 release will also include a full partner SDK for partner extensions and integration. SAP will take ByD to market through 2800+ partners.

According to SAP they're now serious about the cloud and at least the strategy is becoming more clear. A lot of details are still missing from the story and there's still a lot of "next year" in the strategy. SAP seems to be learning from its competition and emulating the best of what is in the market today. The focus areas for LOB OD, for example, are clearly aimed at speciality SaaS vendors that have made inroads in the SAP base through innovative features like HCM/talent management solutions from Taleo and Successfactors, salesforce automation from Salesforce.com, Services management from Netsuite OpenAir and Travel & Expense from Concur. The PaaS offerings are certainly aimed at Salesforce.com and Netsuite and the in-memory technology is already in use by Workday and Salesforce.com. Next year will be a challenging year and we will no doubt see if SAP can execute against its strategy of redefining a new normal.   

Taking the Internet out of it's current boundraries

We live in a connected world, no one disputes that. Connectivity and the onramps to that connectivity are constantly evolving. I can get on the Web with my MacBook (and a wired, wireless or cell connection), my Netbook (wired or wireless), my iPhone and my Blackberry (OK, not very often). The Internet also reaches out to me even when I'm not directly connected with email (way too often) and SMS (and other push services) from Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare, etc. As far as social interaction I use the Internet in a variety of ways and on a daily (hourly or more, really) basis. For business I couldn't imagine working without it; I do research, communicate, collaborate, publish, and broadcast. Connectivity though, ends at the person today, but the technology to extend that connectivity is converging at a rapid pace. The consumer scenario that "futurists" have used to explain the concept is the idea that your refrigerator could monitor food levels, shelf life, etc. and reorder for you when you need it and based on pre-defined parameters. There are really three keys, context awareness, mobile and embedded, that enable the scenario.

From an enterprise perspective these ideas of extending the Internet out of its boundaries and connecting other devices (or making other devices "aware", "smart" and connected) could be very powerful. In an announcement this week, Fedex provided an excellent example of this concept. In its new Senseaware service, which is in beta for this next year, Fedex embeds a sensor in shipments that combines cellular, thermometer, accelerometer, GPS and photosensor. Critical or perishable shipments can report parameters to the Internet that clients can then review and make actionable. For example, if a perishable medical shipment had a reduced shelf life in transit due to higher than normal temperature exposure, the shipment could be re-routed to a closer facility where it could be used before it expired. The package can report environmental conditions, location, whether it is dropped, opened, damaged, etc., in effect becoming a "smart" package. Here's a pic of the device:

Add to the ability of creating smart devices an enterprise trend of event driven architecture in software systems and the next step would naturally be deploying systems that could interact with all sorts of smart devices and even take actions without human intervention. In the supply chain there are certainly many good opportunities to utilize these devices but it would likely extend all over the enterprise.

Guest Post: Challenges For Workplace Collaboration In An Individualist Culture

This is a guest post from IDC colleague Caroline Dangson, who covers Enterprise Collaboration and Social Software (Join Caroline for further discussion during her webinar with Awareness Networks "Who Owns Social Media" on Thursday December 10th at 2pm EST):

Why is it so difficult to collaborate? This is a question I ask myself a lot these days, especially as an analyst covering collaboration for IDC. Software applications for business collaboration are popping up everywhere, even from salesforce.com, but are employees more aligned in their goals and seek a greater common good?   Mike and I have talked extensively about how software enables collaboration but does not guarantee it. We view corporate culture as key ingredient to making or breaking these desired social behaviors in the workplace. In this blog post, I make the case that if the individualistic nature of American culture is woven into our workforce culture, this could be negatively affecting worker eagerness and willingness to collaborate, especially if interests are misaligned and money is on the table.

Let's take a look at the definitions we find in Wikipedia (a unique example of successful mass collaboration with no monetary gain*)

A study by Geert Hofstede of 53 countries across 5 continents found the United States to be the most individualist country in the world along a continuum of individualism versus collectivism. We live in a nation that places high value on achieving personal goals and dreams. This is not to say that Americans do not share common interests or goals – we certainly do. I just want to point out that when our personal goals are not aligned with a larger community of people, then our personal goals are more likely to take precedence given, especially when monetary gain is involved and especially when the individual is competing with members of the group for monetary gain.*

What sets collaborative initiatives up to fail for businesses? In one sentence, I say an individualist corporate culture lacking in trust and composed of competing business units.

Key Barriers to Business Collaboration

1. Competing business units

2. Rewards and incentives focused on individual achievements

3. Managers who hoard information

What sets collaborative initiatives up for success for businesses? A corporate culture that promotes trust among carefully aligned business units, rewards the act of sharing information, and where executives lead by example.

Key Ingredients for Business Collaboration

1. Trust

2. Employee incentives to share information and resources

3. Executive role modeling and support

Trust is the #1 ingredient here. If employees do not trust each other with information, they will not volunteer information to an open community. If employees think there is a chance that information they share will be used against them, they will not share.

Employee incentive structures are a major driver of behavior. If your organization focuses on measuring and rewarding the individual, don’t expect employees to volunteer information and contribute to the community. Collaborating with colleagues takes a lot of time and this is often not accounted for in the planning process. Organizations reward employees on results, not an improved process. Ideally, collaboration improves both the process and the results. But if the process of collaboration carries a heavy burden with workers, either because of the lack of easy-to-use tools or competing personalities, workers will be inclined to want to work on their own (independently) in achieving what they believe will be the same desired results, especially if these workers are process-oriented folks.

I believe knowledge workers will have the toughest time adjusting to these new ways of working. In a business where employee expertise and knowledge is the differentiator, workers may be inclined to hoard information, not share, especially during these unstable economic times. I say this because for knowledge workers, information is power. This means if I know more than you know, then I have more influence over you. Ironically, the social media movement flips this power dynamic on its head. With social media, influence comes to those who share the most open and freely. Social puts a spotlight on how antisocial business can be. While this movement is entering the workplace bottom up, I believe it will take many years before this transformation is complete. Until then, it takes a culture that supports and incentives that encourage these employee behaviors. This is where executives play a key role.

Executives set the tone and should lead by example. Why would workers trust in the collaboration process if executives don't? By using the tools and undergoing the process themselves, executives can better understand the opportunities and challenges unique to the company's operations and culture for worker collaboration. If executives experience first hand the challenges for internal collaboration, the necessary adjustments to tools, business processes and/or culture are escalated as executives carry weight in the organization to make these changes happen.  

Email, argh!

I apologize in advance because this post is something of a rant. I promise that there is a point to this though. OK, just let me say that without a doubt the thing that makes keeping up, getting work done and in general staying sane pure hell is email. I hate email! Last Sunday night, in frustration because I was so far behind in email, which of course happens ever time I have tight deadlines to make (you know, when I have actual work to get out) I worked till after 1am trying to get my IDC account down to 1 browser window. I succeeded only to sleep for 4 hours, get up, go to the gym and then come back and find the very same inbox that I had left with no unread emails once again, bogged down with all sorts of email (I hate to say useless email, because I'm sure someone thought what they were writing and sending to me was useful, but...). It's a signal to noise issue I guess, there's just so much that I can't get to what's actually important anymore. My email falls into several categories, 1. important information that I really need to know / take action on (this includes targeted briefing request from vendors that are clearly in a space I'm interested in and some meeting requests), 2. things I'm copied on that are really someone else covering their own backside with the ability to say quite defensively later, "well, I copied you on the email", 3. random information that someone thought I might find interesting (if I had the time I probably would find it interesting and on random occasions I do), 4. jokes (I like to laugh, jokes are ok, as long as I can tell from the subj line, then save for casual browsing later), 5. random, disassociated briefing request from PR / vendors that are not even remotely related to what I'm interested in, 6. spam, and 7. URGENT COMMUNICATIONS THAT NEED REAL-TIME RESPONSE (I know, it amazes me, I have not 1 but 2 mobile phones and fairly consistently monitor Twitter DM's but it happens fairly regularly, which speaks to another issue that I'll talk about later, the perception of reasonable response time).

Email is out of control, not that it didn't or does serve a purpose but its current state is clearly "broken". Volume is one of the primary problems but not the only one. It's very hard to concentrate on email when the noise level is so high but I find that the unboundedness of the format might be just as much of the problem. People often ask me why I like Twitter so much and why it's more effective than email for me. It's really simple, there's a 140 character limit so you have to get to the point pretty fast and there are simple ways to segment Twitter into things I care about, things I need to take action on and things I will read when I have some spare time. If every email was written with a clear subject line AND would fit cleanly into a preview window I could deal much more effectively. Also, why would you put an action request at the END of a very long email, don't you think I might get distracted or bored with the detail and not finish reading it? Put the action requests at the beginning or at least identify in the subject "action required / requested". Attachments are a whole different thing. Sometimes it is necessary to send me something that I just need for my records, that's fine. Or maybe the attachment is information sharing, that's fine too. If we're collaborating on something though, there are much more effective ways to work together over the versioning nightmare of email attachments. Personally I don't like behind the firewall, difficult to access content management solutions either, not that security isn't important, it is. I find that content management systems are really good at the management part of the workflow but maybe not so good at the working together part of it. Something like Google Docs, Zoho Docs, Google Wave, Etherpad (which Google just bought), wiki's; they're all good ways to work collaboratively.

Part of the problem is the perception of the timing of responses, or I should say a misperception of urgency and priority. Somehow we have become a culture that thinks emails are near real-time communication when in fact, they are anything but. Yes, Blackberrys and other smartphones have certainly done their part to make response time less, at least when I have the time to look at them. Just because I have more than one way to see email doesn't necessarily mean I can answer in real-time. It's an asynchronous method of communication. Phones (excluding voicemail) are synchronous / real-time, IM is synchronous, even Google Wave and Twitter can be synchronous but email is not. I feel like putting a tag line on every email or better yet an autoresponder (and yes that would be creating more useless email) that says "email is not answered in real-time, I will respond to your email if it warrants a response when I have some time to read it. If your matter is urgent, critical or needs a response in under 3 days, please call, IM, or Tweet". OK, overkill I guess but I do like the idea. IM can be annoying but there is presence built in so if I want to be left alone I can say so (or just not log in). Maybe there should be presence on email.

No email isn't going away anytime soon. There are lot's of ways to communicate that are more effective though, depending on the message. Maybe we need a communication manual for the Internet that helps people figure out the right channel to use for each type of communication. For example (and this is just an example, not complete, doesn't include all the vendors or solutions, etc.):

task	1:1	1:many	many
casual communication / information sharing	email, Twitter @reply, Facebook, phone, IM, Google Wave, Salesforce.com Chatter, SMS	blog, video OD, email, digital signage, Salesforce.com Chatter	Google wave, wiki
communication needing response	Twitter DM or @reply, IM, email, Facebook, SMS	email, video conference, Facebook	Google wave
emergency / urgent communication	phone, Twitter Direct Message, SMS	Twitter, digital signage, video	Twitter
collaborative work	Google Docs, Google Wave, Etherpad, Wiki, Zoho Docs, MSFT Online	Google Docs, Google Wave, Wiki, Zoho Docs, MSFT Online, video conference, webinar	Google Docs, Google Wave, Etherpad, Wiki, Zoho Docs
Channel	Mode
email	asynchronous
Twitter	asynchronous & synchronous
Facebook	asynchronous & synchronous
Phone	asynchronous (voice mail) & synchronous
IM	synchronous
Google Wave	asynchronous & synchronous
Salesforce.com Chatter	asynchronous & synchronous
Google Docs	asynchronous & synchronous
wiki	asynchronous
Video	asynchronous & synchronous

What do you think?