The Enterprise Rss Value Chain

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The Enterprise RSS Value Chain By James Dellow. Pretty much the defining information management challenge of our time is the question of getting the right information to the right person at the right time. In practice, IT departments are often caught between a rock and a hard place, desire to access available technologies, and being asked to do more with less: less staff, less budget and a growing list of tasks and projects just to keep the lights on. A typical reaction to this problem, is to adopt the most popular social computing technologies, particularly blogs, wikis. But along the way, an important allied Web 2.0 technology has been largely neglected. This technology is Enterprise RSS and if you can understand how to harness it, the possibilities are endless. While not everyone understands yet why Enterprise RSS is important, there is a growing acknowledgement from many commentators that it will play an important role in the evolution of Web-oriented intranets and Enterprise 2.0.

This is because while Web 2.0 technologies are enabling us to create and make available more data and content than ever before, we are still left with the challenge that too little or too much information results in poor business and operational outcomes. Unfortunately this vision of the role RSS can play may not be enough for organisations to make a full investment in Enterprise RSS right now. Email has of course already created a precedent – since it first appeared on mainframe computers in the 1960s, its use as a business tool has accelerated exponentially during the last decade such that it might be considered the de facto standard for communication and even human-centred system integration. But by providing a vehicle for organisations to deliver a vast amount of information to their employee’s Inboxes, this has ultimately both enabled and constrained collaboration and growth. Naturally, users are now loath to augment email with yet another technology in fear of receiving yet more information.

©2003-2008 James Dellow/Chief Technology Solutions. Web: http://www.chieftech.com.au/ Phone: +61 414 233 711 Disclaimer: The information in this article is of a general nature. Please seek advice for specific circumstances.

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The reality is that you do need to understand the role of Enterprise RSS.

They are not ready to see how RSS can be the defining approach to mediating the flow of information to the Inbox. In fact, they should never even need to know that they are using RSS.

summarised text, plus meta data such as publishing dates and authorship. Web feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content quickly and automatically.

But if you are a technologists, social media champion, knowledge manager or an information professional of any other description who is pushing for the adoption of social media tools into the enterprise, then the reality is that you do need to understand the role of Enterprise RSS.

The RSS (“Really Simple Syndication”) protocol (which you might also hear referred to as ATOM as this is a variation of a family of evolved RSS protocol standards) is one of the oldest ideas in the Web 2.0 cloud. However, no one ever really gets excited about protocols, even if they are simple but powerful standard like RSS. Still, as has been pointed out before, no one ever championed the use of SMTP (Simple Mail Transport Protocol) but everyone wanted email. In other words, understandably, people are only really interested in what a technology can do for them, not what it is and there is a lack of knowledge around the tactical and strategic benefits of RSS.

You also need to be able to demonstrate the the fit between this new technology and the benefits it might provide in order to describe a compelling business case that will make sense in the short term. This is not about trying to sell a dream, as the reward for understanding the role Enterprise RSS is that it can deliver immediate tangible benefits while also providing a platform that can do so much more in the future. So why exactly is it difficult to position the value of Enterprise RSS? Well, first, RSS is not a well understood concept. RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works – such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video – in a standardised format, also known as a protocol. An RSS document (which is called a "feed", "web feed" or "channel") includes full or

A challenge for Enterprise RSS is one that many modern IT practitioners will recognise: the apparent simplicity of the Web experience. Many things on the Web have been engineered to make the simple for the end user – who of course believes that therefore it’s easy. Using feeds creates an assumption that there is nothing to do - the gap between RSS on the Web and Enterprise RSS is very much like the gap between Web search and Enterprise Search. They are in many respects vastly different

©2003-2008 James Dellow/Chief Technology Solutions. Web: http://www.chieftech.com.au/ Phone: +61 414 233 711 Disclaimer: The information in this article is of a general nature. Please seek advice for specific circumstances.

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applications of similar technologies. Getting the maximum benefits from RSS inside the firewall takes more than simply giving users a method to consume RSS using a corporate endorsed desktop RSS reader (in the same way that it is difficult to satisfy the request for ‘Google-like-search’ in the enterprise).

For IT departments in particular this kind of feed syndication infrastructure provides the means to effectively manage supply and demand of syndicated content and data.

Yet it is the very potential of Enterprise RSS to provide a platform for brand new information and social computing solutions that makes it so important. Enterprise RSS provides the necessary support for the effective use of feeds within an organisation as part of the overall enterprise information environment. In fact, Enterprise RSS is an absolutely critical element of Enterprise 2.0 “plumbing” without it, disparate social computing tools like blogs and wikis just add to the problem of the information flooded silos that already exist. Enterprise RSS achieves this by: •

Providing tools to make composite feeds from other feeds and data, including legacy systems;

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Making it easy for people to find the feeds they need and the feeds they want;

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Making sure feeds are available, readable and bandwidth efficient;

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Finding out what people are reading (and what they are not)… and feeding this back into the Enterprise RSS system; and

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Protecting users from malicious code and support for secure feeds that only authorised users can access.

While end-users are less concerned about some of those benefits, for IT departments in particular this kind of feed syndication infrastructure provides the means to effectively manage supply and demand of syndicated content and data through the corporate network. And as far as the end-user is concerned, they simply get reliable access to the right information, at the right time in the way they want to access it. Of course a major weakness of arguing the case for Enterprise RSS based on these benefits is that it assumes you are actually trying to build a Web 2.0orientated intranet. The fact is that the information workplace created by many organisations is unplanned. So if you have barely scratched the surface of enterprise social computing or are simply looking for more cost effective tactical approaches to information management, then

©2003-2008 James Dellow/Chief Technology Solutions. Web: http://www.chieftech.com.au/ Phone: +61 414 233 711 Disclaimer: The information in this article is of a general nature. Please seek advice for specific circumstances.

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the value of Enterprise RSS may not make immediate sense.

The Enterprise RSS Feed Value Chain consists of four steps that describe the flow of syndicated information through a feed system.

What is needed is further analysis to understand when, where and how Enterprise RSS can contribute to your immediate goals. Typically, an investment in a new information technology requires a business case. But calculating a credible return on investment (ROI) on any kind of information technology can be difficult at the best of times and Enterprise RSS is certainly no different. Identifying hard benefits for syndication tools may be the best starting point – for example: •

Lowering messaging system overheads by reducing email volumes;

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Eliminating paid subscriptions for content that is actually available for free online; and

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Faster and cheaper application development by leveraging syndication for information integration.

However, identifying softer or less tangible benefits can be more difficult without deliberate analysis of the link between the capabilities Enterprise RSS offers and other corporate or information system objectives.

So, how can you effectively analyse these higher order benefits of Enterprise RSS? The Enterprise RSS Value Chain provides a model to help you to identify where an Enterprise RSS system can generate value and to decide which of those Enterprise RSS elements you might need. The Enterprise RSS Feed Value Chain consists of four steps that describe the flow of syndicated information through a feed system: 1. Publish - The data source of the feed publishes its content; 2. Process - The feed is processed in some way; 3. Republish - Access to the feed is managed; and 4. Consume - The feed content is consumed by an end-user or some other independent system. Surrounding this value chain is a bubble representing user and activity flow, while the whole system sits on top of a management layer. At the most simplistic level, this value chain only consists of the Consume step, with no management process or flow feedback loops. This is the “out of the box” configuration of Enterprise RSS and it describes the environment most

©2003-2008 James Dellow/Chief Technology Solutions. Web: http://www.chieftech.com.au/ Phone: +61 414 233 711 Disclaimer: The information in this article is of a general nature. Please seek advice for specific circumstances.

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Wallem used Enterprise RSS to save the company nearly US$400 million annually.

organisations have when they say, “yes, we’re using RSS”.

reader, Web, Blackberry and also email.

To apply the value chain as an analysis tool you need to create a matrix between the value chain steps and one or more corporate or system objectives. After following the flow of feed content and data through the value chain from each source to the end-user, you then need to take a helicopter view of all these flows to look for common threads and issues. Finally, map these flows back to your corporate or system objectives. Once this is completed you can determine the appropriate technologies needed to support each step in the value chain (see the example solution profiles at this end of this article).

Based on triggers from the workflow system when a ship enters a port, information can be pushed to the ship’s captain and it is this information that has enabled cost savings through better decision making.

Shipping company Wallem used Enterprise RSS as an information technology solution to save the company nearly US$400 million annually in fuel oil costs. As a complete solution the Wallem procurement system integrates the K2 Blackpearl (www.k2.com) workflow management engine, Microsoft SharePoint (www.microsoft.com) and Attensa’s Enterprise RSS platform (www.attensa.com) in its Enterprise RSS Value Chain. In this instance K2 Blackpearl manages the Publish and Process steps (with some data published in SharePoint), while Attensa looks after Republish step allowing procurement data alerts to be “consumed” via desktop RSS

The Wallem Enterprise RSS case study has three key organisational benefits that can be mapped to the Enterprise RSS Value Chain: •

It uses a simple, but robust Web-orientated IT architecture built from commodity software components – this reduces the cost of development, risk and total cost of ownership (Management);

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It allows information to be shared effectively in a shipping environment where remote end-users can be affected by poor bandwidth and connectivity (Republish, Consume); and

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The information shared through this solution results in real and immediate direct cost savings to the business (Publish, Process).

Of course while the Wallem example is a very practical example of light weight integration using Enterprise RSS, the value chain still has

©2003-2008 James Dellow/Chief Technology Solutions. Web: http://www.chieftech.com.au/ Phone: +61 414 233 711 Disclaimer: The information in this article is of a general nature. Please seek advice for specific circumstances.

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application in other enterprise social computing scenarios. Enterprise RSS is the “glue” for Enterprise 2.0.

For example, media communication agency Universal McCann wanted to implement a Facebook-inspired internal social networking system for its employees who are spread across 90 offices in 66 different countries. However, they needed to do it without creating something from scratch and in a way that would fit easily into their Microsoft-based IT environment.

These two examples demonstrate that while we might have discovered the need for Enterprise RSS because it is the “glue” for Enterprise 2.0, enterprise feed syndication tools can also be applied to solving existing real world information management problems right now. And regardless of your objective, the Enterprise RSS Value Chain can help you to understand how to apply the power of RSS inside your organisation and to develop the business case for investing in it.

In this instance, the solution was based on Newsgator’s Social Sites for Microsoft SharePoint. We can map the following benefits from this solution to the Enterprise RSS Value Chain: •

It used an off the shelf system that worked with existing technology (Management);

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It enabled RSS content to be aggregated within SharePoint that increased productivity (Republish); and

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It provided support for social networking and social information discovery that was based on activity feedback collected automatically by the Enterprise RSS system (Process, User and Activity Flow).

Solution Profile: Newsgator Newsgator is one of the leading commercial Enterprise RSS vendors. Along with an Enterprise RSS platform, they also offer a suite of RSS related software tools such as RSS readers and a widget development framework. They also provide a third-party extension for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server that integrates the capability for collaboration, social networking and information sharing around communities of interest. Newsgator describe RSS as the “glue” for Web 2.0, so naturally if you are trying to bring social computing or implement Web 2.0-based technology strategies inside your organisation then Enterprise RSS needs to be part of your solution.

©2003-2008 James Dellow/Chief Technology Solutions. Web: http://www.chieftech.com.au/ Phone: +61 414 233 711 Disclaimer: The information in this article is of a general nature. Please seek advice for specific circumstances.

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Demonstrating that Enterprise RSS is a universal phenomenon, Newsgator say that interest in their software extends well beyond the United States market with a strong up take in a range of knowledge-intensive industries around the world, including clients in Australia – for example, in the financial services sector. However, Enterprise RSS is also being applied in other industries where it is used to reduce the cost of integrating legacy systems and other transactional systems, such as ERP and CRM. www.newsgator.com Solution Profile: Xenos Xenos is a different class of Enterprise RSS tool and is designed for information professionals and other communicators who want to create tailored newsletters and feeds from existing feeds. A Xenos user can setup a series of profiles pointing at different RSS feeds that they can then review, filter and augment with internal metadata before forwarding on the feeds they selected to be the most valuable or relevant to other people.

collections of related feeds are presented in context, which increases the relevancy for the intended audience. This is particularly beneficial for people who have not yet started reading feeds themselves and prefer email – in some cases, Xenos can help to expose them to information that they would not previously been aware of, such as blogs and other user-generated content sources. Xenos can help information professionals to effectively tap into that sea of premium RSS content and while reducing expenditure on subscriptions to other commercial content aggregators. www.metanews.biz

A version of this article appeared in the November/December 2008 edition of Image & Data Manager magazine, titled ‘Enterprise RSS benefits go ignored’. http://www.idm.net.au/

The aim of Xenos is not to copy content, but to provide a tool for “human aggregators” who can link other people to useful content that appears through the RSS back channel. By creating custom newsletters with links back to the original content the experience of using RSS is improved and ©2003-2008 James Dellow/Chief Technology Solutions. Web: http://www.chieftech.com.au/ Phone: +61 414 233 711 Disclaimer: The information in this article is of a general nature. Please seek advice for specific circumstances.