By Jon Stokes | Published: December 18, 2008 – 09:35PM CT

Two of the biggest knocks against the use of SSDs in the enterprise have been size and lifespan, but both of those arguments have taken a hit this week with two recent announcements. These announcements will also have an impact on the mobile client, as well.

The first announcement comes from Sun and Micron, who claim to have cooked up a way to increase the the lifespan of an SLC SSD by about ten times by enabling up to one million write cycles. This is a pretty huge boost, and it definitely diminishes concerns that SLC just doesn’t have the lifespan for enterprise use.

Unfortunately, I can’t find any details from either Micron or Sun on how they get the write cycles up so high, but whatever trick they’re using also works for MLC NAND. This means that MLC, which is larger in capacity but lower in performance and lifespan than SLC, will have lifespans that rival the current generation of SLC lifespans. Because of its lower lifespan, MLC is typically used in consumer electronics and some consumer-oriented SSDs (Intel and Toshiba, among others, make MLC SSDs). SLC is preferred for SSD applications where performance and lifespan are more critical than raw capacity, and that includes the higher levels of the enterprise storage hierarchy where SSD is finding effective use as cache. So a tenfold increase in MLC lifespan could make it newly viable as enterprise cache storage.

Boosting capacities

The other big SSD news today is Toshiba’s announcement of a half-terabyte (512GB) SSD, the price of which hasn’t been revealed. The new drive has a maximum sequential read speed of 240MB/s and a max sequential write speed of 200MB/s, making it plenty fast, especially relative to its 2.5-inch magnetic competition.

I’ve no doubt that this 2.5-inch MLC drive will set you back quite a bit, but I also don’t doubt that its price is headed way down, and at a more rapid rate (thanks to larger market conditions) than we might have previously expected. Either way, this is a pretty significant size milestone, and it was achieved on a 43nm half-node process.

All told, flash’s rising capacities, falling costs, and increased lifespans are all poised to drive flash even deeper into the enterprise, both on the server side and on the mobile client side. The latter especially will benefit dramatically, because these flash trends will give an added boost the cost-sensitive netbook market that’s currently eating into the low end of the laptop space.

If you’re interested in hearing me ramble on at some length about portability, then check out a webcast that I recently did. Click through to this site and then look for the large gray box on the right, “Breaking Portability Barriers in the Enterprise.”

by Josh Bernoff

I just got back from a trip to Bentonville, Arkansas, home of America’s largest and perhaps most controversial retailer. While there, I met with the company’s top management, IT staff, and a couple of social media folks.

You may believe that this company will never “get it” – and that in any cases, it has so many enemies that entering the social world would be suicidal. Let’s see if I can convince you that Wal-Mart will become social media’s biggest success story.
Wal-Mart’s social saga starts with a couple of missteps, including a blog that was revealed to be funded by Wal-Mart’s PR agency, Edelman, and a Facebook application for college students that attracted lots of negative comments from Wal-Mart haters. But when 138 million Americans go into your stores every week, you shouldn’t ignore social media, and you can’t hide from it. Wal-Mart didn’t give up after these setbacks, they got up off the mat and tried harder.

Exhibit A: ratings and reviews. Walmart.com is one of the biggest Bazaarvoice installations in the world, powering a site that sells over a billion dollars worth of stuff every year. Wal-Mart is not afraid of negative reviews from customers – for example, the top rated bicycle on the site had 139 reviews including “7th gear skips fairly frequently. . . but at $150, you can’t expect not to find problems.” Wal-Mart is famous for driving hard bargains with its suppliers; we met their PR folks in one of the very windowless, grey rooms where those prices get beaten down. Reviews on walmart.com have most likely extended that power, as the company now has concrete evidence about which products consumers consider to have acceptable quality, and which not.

Exhibit B: the checkout blog. Wal-Mart’s buyer blog is still growing in popularity, but has enabled the company to join the conversation about products. It’s a genuine voice for Wal-Mart’s product folks, enabling them to explain decisions like choosing Blu-Ray over HD-DVD, (a choice that basically put the final nail in the coffin of the HD-DVD format). A post on Wal-Mart buying only milk from cows that don’t receive growth hormone generated a lively and in some cases uncomfortable discussion with 256 comments. Wal-Mart has learned to join the conversation, even in a world full of critics, and is not smothering those that disagree.

Exhibit C: elevenmoms.com. Emboldened by its experience, Wal-Mart tapped a colony of mommy bloggers who write about topics like how to feed your family frugally and how to get ready for Halloween. Don’t sell moms short – these are some pretty sophisticated blogs and Wal-Mart hasn’t changed them at all, they just link to them, and are now bringing the bloggers to Wal-Mart HQ for updates and suggesting products for them to review. Learning from past experience, Wal-Mart and the moms have both made it clear that these bloggers aren’t paid and are under no obligation to slant things Wal-Mart’s way.

Exhibit D: management attitudes. This may be the most powerful of all. Some members of Wal-Mart’s senior HR staff had read Groundswell and asked me to present on the social media topic to 75 senior VP and C-level executives from around the world, including CEO H. Lee Scott. We followed this up with a workshop similar to the ones I run around the country, in which people use the POST method to generate social application ideas. Could a group of C-level executives break into groups and successfully devise social applications? I started to get worried when I saw they’d put all the lawyers together as one of the groups.

What happened next amazed me. When I kicked off the workshop, I mentioned that they might be feeling a little hesitant about these new ideas, since they involve a loss of control. Lee Scott actually interrupted me to say “You’re wrong, we’re not hesitant, we’re ready to embrace this stuff.” And they were. What followed was some of the most rapid ideation I’ve ever seen. I can’t tell you in detail the strategies they came up with – they deserve the chance to develop and announce them when they’re ready – but every single one was a viable, customer-centered idea around concepts like customers saving money or sustainability (that is, green) ideas for Wal-Mart. Even the lawyers came up with a decent application.

(For cynics who might want to believe this was done just to fool me, trust me, the world’s largest public company has better things to do than bring its top management together from around the world to fake out a business book author.)

Having done lots of these workshops, I’m aware there’s no way to know when these plans will see the light of day, but what I saw was a company open and receptive to embracing and empowering its customers and employees online, regardless of what they end up saying. In short, advanced groundswell thinking.

Think about the situation Wal-Mart is in. It has plenty of detractors, hundreds of people who feel the company’s labor practices, effects on small-town America, purchases of products from China, and general ways of doing business are a threat. These Wal-Mart haters have gathered in sites like Walmartwatch.com, tend to be socially savvy, and are ready to pounce on any Wal-Mart news or rumors and spread them using social technologies.

But on the other side of the ledger are hundreds of millions of customers. When these customers think about Wal-Mart, their most likely thought is “they sell the stuff I need at really low prices.” If you don’t believe me, see what they’re saying right now on Twitter – it’s mostly about saving money. Wal-Mart wants to turn these millions of voices to their advantage, to use them as a counterweight to their detractors. And with more and more Americans participating in social technologies, they can do it.

Have I convinced you?

The Wal-Mart haters won’t go away (I expect plenty of them to comment on this post, for example). But this company has legions of people who think of it as a place to get good stuff cheap, and a commitment to pro-social activities like saving energy and responsible sourcing. It’s going to be a battle out there in the social sphere, and Wal-Mart will continue to take its lumps. But with so many customers on its side, I think Wal-Mart will win that battle. Just watch.

It wasn’t long ago that people took a hard look at the social networking world and saw that such activities didn’t quite jive with the typical workplace environment. Some employers solidified that notion by barring visits to such sites via their networks.

Well, here we are in the final days of October 2008, and two individuals at the UK-based think tank Demos, Peter Bradwell and Richard Reeves, have published a 92-page assessment of the potential upsides of social networking within organizations and between organizations and clients.

The text (which, wonderfully enough, has been issued as a PDF [link] under a non-commercial Creative Commons licensing) is titled “Network Citizens: Power and Responsibility at Work,” and it essentially takes what is arguably a sensible view on the present networking situation. They see workplace bans on Facebook and YouTube as “almost impossible to enforce,” and they draw a sort of sociological analogy to such efforts that would entail limits for gossip among colleagues. A nonsensical move, more or less.

Bradwell and Reeves even think that placing restrictions on Web-based networking within Facebook, et al., can be counterproductive, given the fact that modern technologies have allowed the world to transcend ordinary means of interaction and to attain what is ultimately a more collaborative reality for business development.

Yes, it is true that the issues of lowered barriers and intensive PC-based socializing reveal things that can be prone to exploitation in quite negative ways. As the authors of “Network Citizens” state, the networks have a definitive “dark side.” Yet the benefits for the pursuit of a relatively happy medium (my own phrasing) have really become too outstanding to negate.

Such benefits have only grown with developments made in the market specific to business relationship management – which goes as much for workers’ presence on LinkedIn as YouTube, depending of course on one’s area of industry. All things considered, corporations currently exercising no-social-networking policies would do well to browse the ideas delivered via this research.

Companies should not dismiss staff who use social networking sites such as Facebook and Bebo at work as merely time-wasters, a Demos study suggests.

Attempts to control employees’ use of such software could damage firms in the long run by limiting the way staff communicate, the think tank said.

Social networking can encourage employees to build relationships with colleagues across a firm, it added.

However, businesses are warned to be strict with those who abuse access.

‘Intuitive interaction’

Firms are increasingly using networking software to share documents and collaborate in ideas, the research found.

And while more work-specific systems, such as LinkedIn or bespoke in-house software tended to be used for work matters, the likes of Facebook, Bebo and MySpace still had a place, said Peter Bradwell, a Demos researcher and the report’s author.

Banning Facebook and the like goes against the grain of how people want to interact Peter Bradwell Demos

“They are part of the way in which people communicate which they find intuitive,” he said.

“Banning Facebook and the like goes against the grain of how people want to interact. Often people are friends with colleagues through these networks and it is how some develop their relationships.”

Using technology to build closer links with ex-employees and potential customers could also boost productivity, innovation and create a more democratic working environment, Mr Bradwell added.

“In today’s difficult business environment, the instinctive reaction can be to batten down the hatches and return to the traditional command-and-control techniques that enable managers to closely monitor and measure productivity.

“Allowing workers to have more freedom and flexibility might seem counter-intuitive, but it appears to create businesses more capable of maintaining stability.”

‘Business goal’

The popularity of social networking showed that there was a desire to connect with others and socialise, said Mark Turrell, chief executive of Imaginatik, which develops bespoke networking software.

“Being able to see a photo of colleagues, or knowing what they are up to, can be incredibly useful for businesses, especially if a firm employs thousands of people,” added Mr Turrell, whose firm took part in the study.

By focusing the minds of a group of people on a specific task, you can find a solution much more quickly than you would do otherwise Mark Turrell Imaginatik

But he argued the use of networking sites “must be tied to a business goal”.

He said his customers used the software to set out problems which they faced and then threw them open to employees.

“The first people to respond might not know the answer, but they could suggest somebody who does,” he said.

“Within a few days, they are able to get enough people from across the organisation with the right expertise to work on it.

“And by focusing the minds of a group of people on a specific task, you can find a solution much more quickly than you would do otherwise.”

Staff should be told if their use of social networking sites is excessive

Younger employees who have grown up with e-mail, mobile phones and social networking want their employers to adapt to new technology, he added, saying this put pressure on older employees to adapt.

“The key questions are, how do you get the brightest people to work for you, and then, how do you get the most out of them,” Mr Turrell said.

“Organisations need to give their employees physical and virtual space to grow and explore their ideas.

“In today’s new world, employees expect and require sophisticated enterprise social networking tools to shine.”

‘Aware of tensions’

The report’s authors said that clear guidelines needed to be set out about appropriate use of social networking.

And there should be no hesitation in telling employees who spent “unreasonable” amounts of time using technology for non-work related activity that their behaviour must change, they added.

It is good for companies to be aware of the tensions and look at deploying practical guidelines which will protect the positive impact of networks, not hamper it Robert Ainger Orange Business UK

Mobile phone and broadband firm Orange, which commissioned the research, is currently building its own in-house social networking platform for staff.

“The profile and significance of social networking is increasing now, because of the proliferation of new technologies that enable us to connect to each other in our personal and professional lives,” said Robert Ainger, Orange Business UK.

“But it is also good for companies to be aware of the tensions and look at deploying practical guidelines which will protect the positive impact of networks, not hamper it.”

kNow Note: Thanks Jackie, for the link

By David Chartier | Published: October 14, 2008 – 09:17AM CT

Social media tools designed for the enterprise are getting all grown up, and a new report from Forrester Research says its time for a market readjustment. Forrester analysts cite a number of reasons for impending price drops on “enterprise 2.0″ tools like software and servers for blogs, wikis, and social networks, but they conclude that only mashup tools are likely to become more valuable.

Three specific reasons are cited for the price drops: commoditization, bundling, and subsumption. Increased competition and slowing innovation means that there is less differentiation between blogging solutions. Further, many vendors, from Microsoft to Six Apart, now offer a complete, enterprise-oriented suites that bundle a mature set of essential tools, which drives down prices for individual tools and specialized solutions.

The last major factor is subsumption, where incumbents are incorporating web 2.0 tools into existing products, like Microsoft has with SharePoint. By building in features like the hosting of blogs and wikis, as well as establishing partnerships with smaller vendors like NewsGator, Microsoft is maintaining SharePoint not only as a market leader, but making it an endpoint on which smaller vendors can build their own products and services.

The tools that are likely to suffer most are those that manage blogs, wikis, widgets, and social networking, with blogging tools falling “to the lowest average cost per enterprise among web 2.0 tools.” According to Forrester’s report, the space for these is getting crowded with competitors, and blog hosting is also the area that incumbents like SharePoint are cannibalizing the most.

The one enterprise tool that Forrester’s report was optimistic about is the software for handling mashups, saying that they are very early in their market cycle and may see price increases: “IT departments will prioritize mashup technology as part of portal, business intelligence, and business process management software investments as well as a major component of SOA implementations.” There is a lot of room for mashup technologies to grow, especially into the space for mature, end-to-end products that integrate blogging and social network applications.

Forrester’s analysts are certain that the overall enterprise 2.0 market will grow over the next five years as demand increases for ubiquitous information and web-based collaboration tools. That said, we agree with ReadWriteWeb that startups are likely to find new ways to both innovate and integrate with larger products like SharePoint, maintaining their appeal and relevance in an increasingly competitive market.

By Aaron Strout and Joe Cascio

Although experts in the social media space have been talking about how businesses might adopt microblogging tools like Twitter and Plurk, only recently have we started to see a series of new vendors cropping up in the enterprise microblogging space. This has been due in part to businesses needing to figure out how Twitter can benefit the enterprise. The fact that the mainstream press has started covering this topic has also helped to push things along (see Businessweek’s CEO Guide to Microblogging if you need proof).

Given the recent focus on business microblogging and the emergence of some new players like Yammer and Utterli (Formerly Utterz, Utterli has been around for a little over a year but just rebranded and is now becoming more enterprise-centric), it felt like as good a time as any to write a post about the business value of microsharing within the enterprise. Included in this post will be considerations for implementing microblogging and a few of the relevant players in the space.

Just to level set, it probably doesn’t hurt to define what microblogging is. For anyone that uses Twitter, Plurk, Identi.ca or any of the multiple other microblogging tools, microblogging is in some ways like instant messaging or text messaging but instead of it taking place one to one, it’s often one to many or many to many. I could take this entire post explaining what it is, but friend and Commoncraft founder, Lee LeFever, has done a fantastic job in his quick Twitter in Plain English video. I’d also like to clarify that this post is focused on businesses using microblogging within their organization vs. having a corporate presence in the public (like @comcastcares on Twitter). How corporations are using microblogging publicly is an equally relevant topic, however, numerous posts have already covered this phenomena.

Business Value

One of the lessons we learned from Web 1.0 (and the subsequent bubble) was the fact that startups that create technologies in search of a problem fail, even when VCs are stupid enough to throw wads of cash at them. This time around, most companies don’t get funded unless they are solving a business problem or at least offering up a technology that can enhance existing business processes. To that end, here are a few ways companies can tap into the power of microblogging:

    Emergency Broadcast System: First and foremost, any company needs a way to reach all of its employees quickly and efficiently. E-mail is obviously one way to do this but increasingly, it’s hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. With many folks receiving hundreds of e-mails a day, it can take minutes if not hours before we get to an e-mail from the CEO.

    Knowledge Management: Here’s where things get interesting. One of the biggest failings of many companies is the fact that they trap their intellectual property in Powerpoints, spreadsheets and Word documents and store them on shared drives and e-mail inboxes. Once the creator of that content walks out the door, the odds of their years of work finding its way into anyone else’s life are slim. As companies start uploading more and more content onto wikis, or central file repositories, these files can be linked to and indexed by conversational tools like microblogs.

    Training: Any company that has gone on a hiring binge quickly realizes how painful it is to train new employees. If a formal training program exists, the materials are often outdated almost as soon as they are created. By identifying a few key influencers and allowing new employees to see their daily “streaming,” information and best practices can be shared more easily and in real time with little burden on the “trainer.”

    Expert Identification: Another area that many larger companies fall down is in making their resident experts easily findable. If you can see your company’s employees talking (possibly segmented by business unit or group within an organization), it wouldn’t take long to figure out who knows what about whom.

    Seeing the Connectors: Good companies spend a lot of time on succession planning. Unfortunately, most companies don’t have a good handle on who the true connectors are within their organization. By analyzing conversations and watching the conversations of employees, senior managers can easily identify who these connectors are and then ensure these employees compensation and titles match their internal value AND start to add additional connectors if too much information is flowing through any one individual.

    Inclusion of External Stakeholders: Back in the early 2000’s, extranets were all the rage. There would finally be a way for companies to include partners, investors and even certain customers in their daily conversations. Portals obviously began to fill this roll to a degree but none were ever truly conversational. Enter enterprise microblogging with the ability to include these aforementioned stakeholders in the mix.

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by Steve Gillmor on September 30, 2008

SocialText 3.0 is (or will be in the near term) an enterprise mashup of Facebook, FriendFeed, enterprise microblogging, and the wiki. If you were to take any one of these constituencies – social networking, conversation aggregation, Tw*tter, or vanilla wikis and the leveraged sites the technology has produced – you might not think of SocialText as a major player or competitor with the exception of the enterprise wiki space. But add these together and get out ahead of both the market and the logical expansion plans of larger players, and SocialText 3.0 may have something hard to disrupt.

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