Shared Spaces Services

Collaboration Intelligence Service: Annual Subscription Service

A subscription-based analyst service focused on issues pertaining to departmental and enterprise IT in the collaboration vein.

The Collaboration Intelligence Service from Shared Spaces is a subscription-based market research service focused on helping organizations make intelligent decisions about collaboration technology. The focus of the service is the delivery of market research on:

• Collaboration Product Reviews. A review of a collaboration product against the 7 Pillars. If you have read any of the free 7 Pillars white papers, you will know that the framework is vendor-neutral and entirely independent. The product reviews will be too. These reviews will cover major platforms that cross multiple pillars, as well as individual products focused on a single pillar.


• Collaboration Technology Tutorials. What to look for in a collaboration technology area, such as the decision criteria that you should use when approaching a new class of collaboration technology. My intention is to help you demystify a technology area, and give you an independent perspective of the lay of the land. These will help you think clearly about what you need to put in place to enable an effective technology strategy and deployment.


• Effective Collaboration Infrastructure. How to evaluate the effectiveness of a collaboration infrastructure and its impact within a team, business unit or organization. Topics explored will include reducing email overload, and justifying investments in new collaboration technology.


• Strategic Viewpoint Reports. Continuing in the same vein as my Microsoft and Groove paper, this series will detail how an organization should respond to a significant marketplace change.

Technologies and areas covered will definitely encompass the breadth of the 7 Pillars material, although I summarize those up into three key areas: collaborative workspaces, wireless messaging and collaboration, and instant interaction technologies.

Annual Service Deliverables
Subscribers to the annual Shared Spaces Collaboration Intelligence Service will receive the following deliverables over-and-above the current publications on the Shared Spaces site:

1. 12-15 reports a year, across the four main areas outlined above. These can be distributed within your business unit or department.


2. Attendance at web seminars hosted by Shared Spaces. These will focus on presenting a summary of a research report, and provide a forum for further discussion, elaboration, and interaction.


3. Phone-in, IM-in, and email-in consulting, for receiving quick answers to your questions, or a quick reaction to something you are working on.

Note that in all cases, Shared Spaces is impartial, independent, and not vendor-aligned. We don’t write about a vendor’s products because they pay us to do so, but rather because the product offers something of benefit to organizations.

Pricing Details
Please contact Michael for the annual service cost for organizations, or the annual service cost for vendors of collaboration software and technology.

Messaging & Collaboration Technology Audit

The Shared Spaces Research & Consulting Messaging & Collaboration Technology Audit provides an audit of your current messaging and collaboration technology from an independent expert. Michael Sampson, who has been an active researcher, analyst and consultant in the messaging and collaboration field since 1994, will work with your internal people to understand your current technology platform, your future-oriented business strategy, and then advise on the best alignment of technology and business strategy.

Key questions answered during the Messaging & Collaboration Technology Audit are:

• Does the technology platform we have in place today align with the communication and collaboration needs of our information and knowledge workers for the next 5 years?


• How do we design an overall architecture for enterprise communication and collaboration? What specific communication and collaboration capabilities should we offer?


• What products make most sense for communicating and collaborating with supply chain partners?


• What technologies should we be using for internal and external communication and collaboration? Is email sufficient for our needs? Should we investigate instant messaging? What about collaborative workspaces? Do weblogs have a place in business? What wireless strategy should we investigate? Is there scope to consider collaboration auto-discovery technology?


• Are the products we currently use best-of-breed, or are there more effective communication and collaboration products on the market?


• Is our choice of messaging infrastructure provider the best alternative, or should we consider other platforms?

The Messaging & Collaboration Technology Audit follows a proprietary methodology, and is delivered for a fixed professional services fee.

Contact Michael to schedule the initial meeting.

Reducing Email Overload

The Shared Spaces Research & Consulting Reducing Email Overload consulting service helps overloaded information professionals deal with the root causes of email overload. Michael Sampson, who has been an active researcher, analyst and consultant in the messaging and collaboration field since 1994, will work one-to-one and with a small team to catalog the sources of email, to determine which of those sources are inappropriate for email, and to advise on alternative cultural and technological approaches to reduce the overwhelming volumes of email.

Key questions answered during the Reducing Email Overload service are:

• What are we doing to contribute to the email overload issue?


• What technologies can we embrace to prevent certain emails from clogging up internal inboxes?


• What cultural changes do we need to make to reduce the number of emails being sent throughout the business?


• What technological changes do we need to introduce into the business to shift messages out of email, and into other more appropriate systems for team-based communication and collaboration?


• What are the best practices we should follow to embed our new styles of communication and collaboration into the way we do business?

The Reducing Email Overload service follows a proprietary methodology, and is delivered for a fixed professional services fee.

Contact Michael to schedule the initial meeting.

Enterprise IM & Presence Strategy

The Shared Spaces Research & Consulting Enterprise IM & Presence Strategy service enables organizations and government departments to decide how to embrace instant messaging as a communication and collaboration tool. Michael Sampson, who has been an active researcher, analyst and consultant in the messaging and collaboration field since 1994, will facilitate the understanding needed to develop a strategy to embrace-or-reject the technology, and the specific action points needed to follow either path. Michael is the author of the longest and most comprehensive analyst report on instant messaging, which totalled over 400 pages and described the technology, reviewed and compared over 60 vendors of IM offerings, analyzed key customer criteria for IM, projected market adoption growth through to 2007, and reviewed the future trends with IM. Now you can leverage that expertise for your organization.

Key questions answered during the Enterprise IM & Presence Strategy service are:

• Do the communication and collaboration needs of our staff suggest that IM and presence are valuable additions to our communication and collaboration toolset, or merely technology offerings that will distract people from getting their work done?


• If we embrace the technology, what vendors should we be investigating ... who should be on our short-list?


• If we decide to reject the technology, what products and solutions do we need to investigate to prevent staff from using the technology?


• How do we manage the business risks associated with adopting IM and presence in the enterprise?


• What best practices do we need to embed into our culture to ensure that IM and presence deliver a positive business benefit?


• Into what business applications should we embed the notion of presence and availability, for what reason, and for what return?

The Enterprise IM & Presence Strategy service follows a proprietary methodology, and is delivered for a fixed professional services fee.

Contact Michael to schedule the initial meeting.

Vendor Product Strategy Review

The Shared Spaces Research & Consulting Vendor Product Strategy Review aids vendors by providing a neutral, third-party, independent analysis of a communication or collaboration product strategy, delivered by Michael Sampson, and based on his expert and wide-ranging understanding of the communication and collaboration market. Michael has been an active researcher, analyst and consultant in the messaging and collaboration field since 1994 and will work one-to-one and with a small team to understand the strategy in its current form, and then provide expert feedback on whether the strategy aligns with key market needs, key customer concerns, and key decision criteria for customers.

Key questions answered during the Vendor Product Strategy Review are:

• Does the communication or collaboration product make sense as a go-to-market offering, or is further maturation in key capabilities required? What are those?


• What are the unique features and benefits that could or should be communicated to specific target market segments?


• What specific market segment should be targeted in the initial marketing phase, in order to establish a beachhead from which to build further successes?


• What are the key decision criteria that customers will use when evaluating the product, and how well does the product answer those key concerns?


• How does the strategy need to change to be successful?

The Vendor Product Strategy Review is delivered for a fixed professional services fee.

Contact Michael to schedule the initial meeting.