10 questions you need to ask a collaboration vendor

8/14/2019 10 Questions You Need to Ask a Collaboration Vendor

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Before You Buy!10 Questions You Need To Ask A Collaboration Vendor



Beore You Buy! — 10 Questions You Need To Ask A Collaboration Vendor

© Diversity Limited, 2010 Non-commercial reuse with attribution per mitted

Table of Contents

Is your product extensible to meet

the changing ace o the collaboration

landscape?......................................................1

Does Your Product Support Standard

Governance Frameworks?..........................2

Does Your Collaboration Product

Integrate with My Existing echnology

Landscape? ....................................................4

How Does Your Product Support Access

Standards? ......................................................5

How Flexible Are Your Data Location

Requirements? ..............................................6

How Does Your Product Administer

Security?.........................................................8

Is Your Product Standards Compliant? ... 9

Can Your Product Scale With OurPlanned Adoption Rates?..........................10

How Robust Is Your Solution?.................11

How Viable Is Your Business Model? .....12

In Closing.....................................................13

About the Authors .....................................14

Is your product extensible to meet the

changing face of the collaboration landscape?

Quick Take

Tis is quite possibly the most important question, above all

others, which you should ask collaboration vendors being

evaluated. Te answer will quickly identiy a purpose-built

solution, or a legacy one that has been retrot to be quickly

brought to market to capitalize on a growing market opportunity,designed without the customer in mind. Te objective is to

determine whether or not the solution you are evaluating is

capable o growing with your business – easily integrating

with new applications and data sources, providing an ease o

administration to create new mechanisms (portals, mash-ups,

dashboards, project sites, etc.) to drive a wider adoption o

collaboration internally.

Why it’s So Important In an era when customer demands change as quickly as the

introduction o new technologies, the needs o an enterprise

has become very uid. Tis act requires that any product being

considered must include absolute extensibility, so that it adapts

to match the organization’s unctional needs. raditionally,

Executive Summary

In just the last ew years, the enterprise collaboration sotware market has become one o the most

crowded areas in I. It seems as though new vendors are appearing on a weekly basis while traditional

sotware vendors are working everishly to retrot their legacy oerings by introducing new collaboration

add-ons. Further clouding (pun intended) the issue are the various delivery models available to customers

today – on-premise, on-demand and cloud-based options are available. Tis combination o a multitude

o vendors and delivery models has created a conusing landscape, where messaging collision has become

the rule, not the exception. Tis primer is intended to help those organizations researching enterprise

collaboration by arming them with the most important questions to ask the collaboration vendors they

are evaluating, in hopes o helping them make buying decisions based on empirical evidence, rather than

ashy positioning and messaging.





sotware vendors tend to overlook extensibility o a product

while ocusing on the current day needs. Moreover, the most

innovative collaboration products have put extensibility in the

hands o less technical users by allowing them to create data

mashups, automation o reporting, workow, etc., without any

kind o programming background. Tis not only ensures a level o

“uture proong”, but also osters widespread adoption beyond the

traditional technical user base.

Te extensibility requirement is not just

important or keeping up with the changes

in unctional requirements, it is also very

important or customization and integration

purposes. No two businesses are the sameand needs vary based on the end-user and

customer requirements. Tis demands

an advanced level o customization o the

product in question and it can only be

achieved through an extensible product and/

or platorm. oday’s enterprise ecosystem –

the set o applications and services that drive

the business – are comprised o a healthy mix

o both on-premise and on-demand sotware.Tis landscape requires integration o legacy applications, as well

as with web-driven applications. Most o these legacy applications

were not designed with the Internet, much less collaboration in

mind; this will be discussed in more detail later. Such integrations

need to be easy to administer and should be capable o being

executed without any additional services cost. Tis calls or the

product and/or platorm to not only be extensible but also oer

a rich user experience and interace, which allows users without

programming skills to complete integrations.

Tere are also some technical nuances that should be considered

as well. For collaboration specically, where inormation can be

in many transitional states, collaborative solutions which leverage

RESul implementations have proven to be to have distinct

Te extensibility requirement is not just important or keeping up with the

changes in unctional requirements, it is

also very important or customization

and integration purposes.

E x t e n s i b l e

M o n o l i t h i c

Open Proprietary





advantages over traditional web services architecture. Tese

implementations allow or the consumption o other web services

exposed with XML, rom inside the collaboration application,

without any need to change the existing architecture. Tis puts the

RESul applications at an advantage and makes extensibility very

easy to achieve. Moreover, most o the modern day programming

languages support RES and this makes the product technology/

language agnostic. It should be noted that a monolithic system

cannot oer such extensibility due to the complexities involved

in such architecture. Te greatest advantage o RES, being

lightweight and simple, makes a RESul product/platorm easily

extensible.

Does Your Product Support StandardGovernance Frameworks?

Quick Take

As with the previous question, this probe is designed to

identiy a truly purpose-built solution, rom one that is being

associated with a market that perhaps it isn’t duly appropriate or.

Specically, there appears to be signicant messaging collision

in the collaboration space, where point products or social

networking are being incorrectly identied (most oten by the vendors themselves) as enterprise collaboration solutions unto

themselves. Unortunately, this has created a situation where

many organizations, ater evaluating social networking sotware,

have a tendency to think o collaboration solutions as ‘wide open’

or unsecure, as it relates to governance.

Why it’s So Important

As the velocity o business continues to accelerate, a high degree

o responsibility has been applied to boards o directors to ensurecompliance with standards and regulatory requirements. Tis

includes ensuring sensitive intellectual property remains securely

under the organization’s control. Tis desire or control is being

undermined in organizations across the globe by employee’s

demands or wikis, blogs, social networking and other so called





“Web 2.0” tools. Tus enterprise collaboration sotware comes

under increased scrutiny in terms o governance support.

Organizations need to assess the potential breadth

and depth o deployment o a piece o collaborationsotware. In the event that this solution will potentially

touch sensitive or proprietary inormation (as will oten

be the case with collaboration sotware) evaluators

should ensure that the applications supports standard

governance rameworks and the I department retains

the ability to have visibility over the application, its use

and the security o the underlying data.

In particular organizations should seek an oering that

allows or unied governance over a widely distributed

system. Tis will allow or control over which services

can be used and whom can access the data. Tey

should also ensure the application gives the ability

to measure outcomes against internal policies and regulations.

Unied governance will also mean that users have permissions

that apply over external systems. In this way, or example, a

user in a collaboration oering can access content dynamically

rom external sotware— and the permissions that allow this are

ederated rom the collaboration sotware.

Does Your Collaboration Product Integrate

with My Existing Technology Landscape?

Quick Take

One example o continued ROI when it comes to collaboration

solutions is their ability to integrate with existing technology

investments. Te most valuable collaboration solutions are those

that not only provide the capability to process and share dataand inormation across boundaries, but also those that allow

organizations to breathe lie into legacy applications, in a sense

“cloud enabling” those applications so that they can continue

to drive value in an “Enterprise 2.0” type o environment. Tis

includes not only acting as an eective presentation layer, but

Strategy

MonitoringandReporting

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e r y

D e c i s i o

n

M a k i n

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S t a k e h o l d e r

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m u n i c a t i o n

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GovernanceFramework

In particular organizations should

seek an oering that allows or

unied governance over a widely

distributed system.





also unlocking that data so that it can be shared across teams.

Te technology leaders who originally invested in these legacy

applications will see this as a very positive addition to the overall

inormation abric o the company.


Until recently, most enterprise sotware came rom a small

number o vendors marketing “best o breed” solutions. Tese

solutions were largely comprised o add-on modules, purchased

separately by the customer, which in turn would work with the

central piece o sotware. With a move towards niche collaboration

products, more organizations are using a host o sotware oerings

or discrete point solutions.

While this move has resulted in organizations being more likely

to nd a solution that solves their particular problem, it has led

to issues around integration— both with work processes and with

other sotware solutions, especially those legacy applications that

are deeply embedded within the day to day business operations.

oday organizations need ensure that an integration ramework

is a central part o their due diligence process. Tis capability to

include legacy applications in the collaboration mix, eectively

extends their lietime, urther extending the value they provide tothe business.

Care needs to be taken to identiy and document the employees

likely to come into contact with the sotware and a thorough

assessment o their current workows should occur. Customers

should asses how readily the proposed collaboration sotware can

be customized to their particular use.

Any assessment needs to ensure that the solution has sufcient

records management and archiving options to comply withboth internal organizational policies and the broader regulatory

ramework, described herein.

Similarly, and as aorementioned in this paper, organizations

should assess the data ormats used by the sotware and always

seek to use sotware that supports the relevant open data





ormats. Tis will continue the theme o ‘uture proong’ your

collaboration sotware investment.

How Does Your Product Support Access

Standards?

Quick Take

As will be discussed in this paper, eective collaboration solutions

must demonstrate capabilities in the areas o command and

control, to dierentiate themselves rom the typical “wide open”

nature o social networking point solutions. Enterprise solutions

must provide administrators and data owners with ability to

control access to business data, in a highly modular and tailored

ashion.


Federation is a term used to describe both the inter-operation o

distinct sotware systems, and the ability to assign identity across

multiple pieces o sotware. Elsewhere in this paper the issue o

data portability is discussed, so this particular section will look at

the issues surrounding identity ederation.

As organizations, and the employees within those

organizations, deploy a large number o discrete

oerings, it becomes more apparent that there is a

real need to reduce the duplication involved in user

access and authorization. Tis is especially important

or collaboration solutions which, by denition, tends

to touch more employees, using a greater variety o

other products than almost all other sotware classes.

As organizations become more successul in driving

internal adoption o the collaboration solution, this

challenge is increased exponentially.

Customers should look or sotware that integrates with their

existing directory service— many solutions allow or both user

authentication (ie enabling a user to “sign in” to an application) but

also more granular user permissions, enabling stakeholders and

Customers should look or sotware that integrates

with their existing directory service— many

solutions allow or both user authentication (ie

enabling a user to “sign in” to an application) but

also more granular user permissions, enabling

stakeholders and administrators to set user

permissions and have those reected in the varying

applications an individual employee uses rom

day to day.





administrators to set user permissions and have those reected in

the varying applications an individual employee uses rom day to

day.

Te most common route or ederation o this sort is viaLightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) — prospective

customers should ensure a prospective collaboration application

integrates with LDAP at a granular level that allows advanced

permissions or user groups, user roles etc— in this way the

collaboration product will be highly exible or the organization’s

needs. Tis should be a gating requirement or any collaboration

solution you evaluate.

How Flexible Are Your Data LocationRequirements?

Quick Take

Tere are many options today when it comes to delivery models

available or collaboration solutions. Ultimately you will decide

on which is best or you by weighing many actors, such as

installation, administration and access. One area that cannot

be overlooked, however, is the data location

requirements your organization may ollow.


raditional enterprise sotware typically dictated

that inormation lived on servers within the

enterprise itsel or, less requently, on server arms

rom an outsourcing provider. With the advent o

Enterprise 2.0, the adoption o cloud computing

generally, and sotware as a service (SaaS)

specically, the lines have become blurred as to

where data physically exists at any given moment.

Tis, combined with the emergence o consumer

social networks, has opened user’s minds to data being held

externally, especially given the distributed nature o enterprise

collaboration.

Today there are three broad possibilities for software delivery;

1. Delivered rom servers behind the enterprise

frewall (on-premises)

2. On shared external servers, hosted by the

sotware vendor (SaaS)

3. On dedicated, but externally managed,

servers (hosted)





While purists would argue otherwise, there is no right or wrong

way to deliver sotware. Rather, it is important that customers have

the ability to move data as they see t, to match uid business

objectives. Many collaboration sotware vendors are providing

their oerings in a way that allows customers to choose the

delivery mechanism most appropriate to them.

Many enterprise customers, or example, currently require

sotware to be hosted on their own physical servers. However,

many organizations have been willing to move data o-site as

cost and maintenance benets become more evident. Tereore

it can be seen that enterprise collaboration sotware that allows

or a high level o exibility in terms o data location is preerable

to sotware that is more prescriptive. Whatever your choice, it’smost important that your vendor gives you that ability to choose.

With the continued reduction o traditional boundaries that have

made up networks and computing environments, this exibility is

critical or a successul collaboration deployment.

How Does Your Product Administer Security?

Quick Take

As described elsewhere in this paper, to draw a clear line between

strictly social network sotware rom true enterprise collaboration

solutions, questions in the areas o access and security must be

answered. It’s typically the larger organizations today that are

grappling with the best way to harness collaboration technology—

those same organizations are the ones with the most stringent

security guidelines.


Along with the eature capabilities o the product, security is

clearly a very important item to be considered. Tere are several

aspects o security that must be accounted or: security o the

application; data integrity; access control and, i consumed as a

service, the security o the underlying inrastructure. Tis is not

only or the sanctity o the data in the collaboration process, it is

also crucial or satisying regulatory compliance requirements.





In this era o web based applications, it is important to consider

security proactively.

An enterprise collaboration product should not only be devoid

o vulnerability, it should oer ne grained control over the useraccess to the application. Even here, RES based applications

(described herein) are more helpul than the others when it

comes to security. With the RES’s use o an URI-based (Uniorm

Resource Identier) approach, the enterprise security team can

apply ACLs (Access Control Lists) to the service itsel but also to

every resource handled by the service. In the enterprise setting,

where compliance becomes a crucial issue, the transparent

approach to security employed by RES-based applications

becomes all the more important than the approach used by otherprotocols.

Is Your Product Standards Compliant?

Quick Take

Several standards-related topics are covered in this paper, but it’s

important to tie them together or the reviewer o collaboration

solutions. Ensuring your collaboration solution is standards based

not only contributes to better integration and security posture, but

also drives greater ease when it comes to customization and any

related programming that might be required.


When it comes to data, it is important to take standards seriously.

Tis becomes all the more important when storing data on

third party inrastructure. Even though the standards can be

proprietary, the support or open standards in the product is

crucial. Open standards help deliver good governance, reedom,

innovation, etc. Open standards are crucial or application

interoperability and data portability. Tey are also crucial or the

deployment o the product in many dierent environments.

Once again, there is an advantage to RESul applications. Tey





take advantage o open standards such as XML, JSON, XSL,

WSDL, etc. Moreover, RES speeds up data loading (both into

and out o the solution) using programmable interaces. o

leverage this advantage calls or a collaboration product that

utilizes such open standards. Support or these standards ensures

an improved data interchange and exchange, critical to any

collaboration deployment. aking it a step urther, products that

are both open standards compliant and open source based could

prove to be the most attractive option available or the business, as

they are completely empowered without any vendor lock-in. Tis

allows exibility to reign supreme.

Can Your Product Scale With Our Planned

Adoption Rates?

Quick Take

Many o the topics covered thus ar have been angled toward

ensuring the technology is the right t or your business, prior to

vendor selection. One area that cannot be overlooked is one that

might not be apparent till ater selection and deployment – how

well can the solution scale post-deployment? Tis question is

extremely important or those organizations who wish to see the

collaboration solution widely adopted, not only within their ownnetwork, but also by partners, vendors and customers. As such,

the scaling ability o the solution is a key area to investigate.


wo important parameters to be considered while evaluating the

scalability o a collaboration product are users and trafc. In an

enterprise, as the number o users o the product increases, the

complexity o their actions also increases. I adoption becomes

viral, the increase in number o users could happen overnight.Along with this increase, the volume o data under collaboration is

also growing exponentially. Te solution being evaluated should

be able to scale rapidly to meet these demands. A highly scalable

product is one which oers consistent perormance in terms o

response to users, even i the number o users doubles, triples,





quadruples, etc. In the case o collaborative web applications,

trafc is another important parameter which should be taken into

account. Will the product scale well i and when trafc suddenly

explodes signicantly?

Scalable products not only reduce the deployment

time but, also, reduce the costs signicantly.

Tus, the scalability o the product becomes

one o the important metrics in the enterprise

collaboration sotware checklist. Even here, WOA

(Web Oriented Architectures) and RES hold

advantage over the other traditional technologies.

Programming standards imposed by the RES-

based implementations help the product scalesignicantly. Te underlying architectural model

o RES and any product that takes advantage o

RES can leverage the same level o scalability as

today’s web.

When the sotware is consumed as a service, the underlying

inrastructure must be massively scalable. Along with the

robustness and resiliency requirements, described next, in terms

o perormance and quality, the scalability o the inrastructure

becomes paramount to success. In act, in this era o cloud

computing, a highly scalable inrastructure is easily available at

a very low cost. It is important to consider i the service, while

being highly scalable, is also robust. Tis takes us to our next

qualication.

How Robust Is Your Solution?

Quick Take

Tis question may seem somewhat esoteric, but given therequirements o enterprise collaboration solutions, it’s an

important one. As your collaboration deployment widens and

adoption scales, the underlying perormance will become either a

gating or enabling actor or even wider-spread adoption.

A highly scalable product is one which

oers consistent perormance in terms

o response to users, even i the number

o users doubles, triples, quadruples,

etc. In the case o collaborative

web applications, trafc is another

important parameter which should be

taken into account.






Enterprise collaboration sotware architectures should oer

high perormance in order to improve the quality o the business

process, while keeping risks under control. Te typical bloat

associated with monolithic architecture makes it unsuitable or

the agile collaborative tools needed or today’s enterprises. Tis

‘heavy’ architecture not only aects the perormance but also

increases the risks considerably. Even the pluggable architecture

(add ins, modules) cannot oer the level o perormance needed

by the modern day enterprises.

Tis has led to a strong interest in WOA and vendors,

especially in the collaboration space, are relying on

it more and more. WOA is not only robust but whencoupled with the caching capabilities and low bandwidth

needs o RES, oers a superior perormance needed

or the enterprises. Any evaluation o enterprise

collaboration tools must ensure that the product takes

advantage o WOA and RES. Tis architecture makes

integration, interoperability and ederation (all described

herein) much easier to achieve.

I you are choosing the product to be delivered as a

service (on-demand sotware), along with the above

requirements or the robustness o the sotware,

it is important to consider the robustness o the

underlying inrastructure. Is the inrastructure dynamic and

oers various exible conguration options? Are the application

and inrastructure resilient enough to handle mission critical

processes? Is the service highly available? What is the SLA oered

or the service? Tese are some o the questions one should ask the

provider to veriy the robustness o the inrastructure.

How Viable Is Your Business Model?


Tere is no Quick ake here, as this is one o the most important

questions you can ask or prospective vendor.

Private Cloud(Data Center Server Storage Software)

Customers

. Corporate

. SME

. Consumer

Public Cloud(Cloud Public Provider)

Cloud Platform





As you build your business case and prepare or your evaluation,

one question that should be answered to save both time and

resources, is one that asks how viable is the business model o the

prospective vendor? Are they supplying a vitamin, or a complete

solution to a business problem and need? Do they have examples

o working with many types o organizations (in your space and

beyond), helping them solve their collaboration challenges? Tis

question was placed at this point (the end) o this paper in part to

illustrate a point. Tere may be several solutions that meet some

aspects o requirements set orth, some much better than others.

Tis extreme competence in one area might lead you to consider

them over others, but at the end o the day, you must ensure

the vendor will be around to continue to support you and your

adoption plans.

Modern sotware development techniques along with cloud

development and inrastructure services mean that the barriers

to entry or a sotware company are much lower than ever beore.

Tat, coupled with the act that enterprise collaboration is an

emerging market without dominant incumbents, has created a

prolieration o oerings rom new and unproven vendors.

As such, prospective customers need to assess the ongoing

viability o the sotware company. Tis should be seen as a core

due-diligence test, just as important as assessing the suitability o

the sotware itsel.

Customers would be well advised to seek inormation about the

vendor’s customer successes. Do their customers continue to use

and innovate on top o their oering? Are they so pleased that

they’ve done case studies with the vendor, in essence, linking their

brand with the vendor’s? Have independent industry analysts

positively recognized the vendor based on market evidence andresearch? Does the vendor warrant industry coverage rom

trusted publications? Afrmative responses to these types o

questions should be considered positive additions to your due

diligence activities.





In Closing Te intent o this paper was to provide an impartial view into best

practices or the selection o enterprise collaboration solutions.

Ultimately, you will decide which type o solution is the best or

your business objectives. As you continue to investigate this

rapidly growing market and its innovators, eel ree to return to

the author’s blog (http://diversity.net.nz/) as there may be new

developments or updates to the material.

You can nd more inormation in the Additional Reading section,

at the end o this document.

About the Authors

Te writing team or this paper is comprised o respected industry thought leaders, experts in the areas o collaboration, internet

architectures and open source sotware.

Ben Kepes

Ben is the ounder and managing director o Diversity Limited a

consultancy specializing in Cloud Computing/SaaS, Collaboration,

Business strategy and user-centric design. He is also co editor o

CloudAve, a specialist Cloud Computing blog. More inormation

on Ben and Diversity Limited can be ound athttp://diversity.net.nz/

Krishnan Subramanian

Krish is an entrepreneur, open source researcher and evangelist,

cloud computing analyst and consultant, ex-physicist, and one o

the industry’s most prolic bloggers. He is part o the management

team in two companies in India and sits on the board o a ew

privately owned companies. More inormation about Krish can be

ound at http://www.krishworld.com/.

Additional Reading

1. RESul Application

Development - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

Representational_State_ranser

2. Service Oriented Architecture

(including Web Oriented

Architecture) - http://

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service-

oriented_architecture

3. Uniorm Resource Identier -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

URI

4. Diversity Limited Blog - http://

diversity.net.nz/

5. Krishworld Blog - http://www.

krishworld.com/home

6. Additional industry

commentary on Collaboration

Solutions — Forrester Wave

Report on Collaboration

Solutions

http://campaign.mindtouch.

com/Forrester_Wave

10 questions you need to ask a collaboration vendor

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