The Problem

Traditional web marketing experiences take too long to implement, are expensive, and have questionable ROI. As a marketer, how long from when your creative team first showed your new web concept was it actually implemented? 3 months? 6 months? More…? What if customers don’t end up engaging your idea? Or they initially engage, but traffic drops after just a few days? How many other cooler ideas have you seen out there while you were waiting for your site to be developed?

If only there was a way to engage customers with new marketing experiences as quickly as your creative team can generate concepts without the use of IT…

The Benefit of the Cloud

Fortunately the cloud is starting to offer an answer. Amazon offers customers the ability to host static websites on AWS, often for mere dollars a month. The site itself is stored in AWS S3 storage buckets. The site can be tied into the CDN service CloudFront to offer ultra-fast download times around the globe. Domain DNS records can even be managed through Route 53 to centralize the whole offering.

The feature is about a year old at this point. Jeff Barr at AWS posted a good starting walk through article if you are interested in looking through some of the implementation details.

What has changed over the last year is the increase of HTML5 expertise, examples and adoption (supported browsers and compatible devices). For many companies the entire creative experience can be managed through HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files that can be hosted on AWS. 

Not convinced? Try this exercise. List all the tasks involved in building your last web initiative. Would a team using workable prototypes that could be deployed when approved have provided a shortcut to endless review cycles of static wire frames, mock ups, and development?

Offer Cloud Services as a Base IT Offering

Now before we get too far into this, I am not advocating Marketing does not need IT. Instead IT needs to provide Cloud Services as a core offering. This would include managing cloud setup, DNS, billing, any EC2 servers (if needed), and governance.

Once enabled, a properly managed Cloud Service can allow Marketing to create new campaigns without involving IT in day to day business activities and decisions.

Think Hybrid or Feel Limited

Hosting sites on AWS S3 is not a panacea and there are some limitations. The first a team will likely encounter is that any server side functionality (PHP, ASP.NET) is not available. This is again where a properly managed Cloud Service comes into play. IT can serve dynamic server content either through the cloud on EC2 servers or on local infrastructure. Many companies try to lump Marketing and IT services together into a combined solution. Problems arise from this approach usually involving enterprise data and other dynamic functionality. The end outcome is the new marketing experience schedule gets aligned to the implementation timeline and maintenance processes.

An Example AWS Website

I am an independent management consultant running a practice in Seattle called Collistic. Recently I launched my website Collistic.com on AWS. The model allows me and others to quickly update my web experience and see cost savings.

Remembering Your IT Guy

Every IT department I’ve ever walked into has a linchpin. This individual is a stakeholder on all major technology initiatives, understands the organization’s platform code base and configuration, and is on every support email thread from business users.

A lot of managers and consultants will flag this as a problem, and it is, but let’s analyze the reasons why and what a technology department can do to turn this situation into a opportunity to build value.

The Problem

There are reoccurring problem points I hear from technology and business leaders around this topic.
1. Technology projects are not being completed efficiently. Pending actions on the part of IT are viewed as the holdup.
2. Business users report low satisfaction levels on custom applications.
3. Enhancements and bug fixes to existing platforms take months to deliver. A long backlog of business requests goes untouched.
4. The department worries what will happen if IT Guy leaves.

The Real Problem

My favorite part of a technology governance presentation is the Resource slide. A department has just spent months deploying a new software platform and receives a presentation from a software vendor or consulting company on the departmental roles needed to support the new technology. The roles are too theoretical to map to real people and departments know that even if this wasn’t the case 9 times out of 10 they won’t get additional headcount approval anyway.

So what is the real problem here?
1. Technology departments have limited headcount to utilize across new and existing initiatives.
2. A-list employees are misaligned to work that does not maximize value for the organization.
3. Projects are not planned and executed in a manner that can result in success for business partners and are sustainable by IT.
4. The current team size is inadequate to support and upgrade a custom code base.

The Solution: Rebooting Your IT Guy

I could go into a lot of detail here about how a technology leader can go about restructuring their IT department. However, most of these points involve long term changes. The following solutions revolve around the theme of a simple realignment to existing IT staff as the changes are simple to implement along with generating quick results from both business stakeholders and in improving team work satisfaction.

1. Align IT Guy to partner with business stakeholders
Business knowledge and problem solving are generally the most valuable skills of the A-list IT Guy. Aligning these individuals to program management functions allows more partnership time with stakeholders. Many organizations utilize non-technical staff to engage the business which generally increases frustration with IT and generates longer backlogs of unmet requirements. The IT guy can generally offer quick solutions based on a mix of organizational and technical experience.

2. Focus on getting business stakeholders and users to adopt then build.
IT has traditionally used a model of build then adopt. A solution is developed based on detailed business and functional requirements, adequately tested then deployed. After all this happens someone may start to focus on who will utilize the technology. Realigning IT Guy in this model will fail because the problem solver will over commit to custom application solutions. The rebooted IT Guy must instead approach business stakeholders with a model of adopt then build. Get business users using technologies through existing tools or free solutions. Plan ways of integrating a solution into the enterprise IT ecosystem, but only execute on that plan if the technology takes off.

3. Stop new custom development projects that are not supportable.
Many IT organizations do not properly calculate TCO around projects. Department focus can shift to managing issues on existing platforms by not properly anticipating lifecycle costs and skill sets that will need to be retained. Minimizing in-house custom development projects can allow more time to focus on business benefits that require less IT overhead.

4. You have to take a stand and shut off some applications.
Yes that’s right. That mission critical application that can only work with IE6 and has daily support requests from its 5 users needs to go. Like with any business, strategies that are not working within the IT portfolio need to be cut in order to focus on activities that will drive value. Many IT leaders will not take this step for career management reasons. However, not cutting failed strategies leaves IT Guy attempting to clean up the mess.

Brook Buchanan is the Founder and Principal Consultant for Collistic

Great copy around this @MailChimp campaign http://j.mp/cyulWG. Single page site layout definitely a growing trend esp for mobile.

SharePoint 2010 integrates with Microsoft SharePoint Workspace 2010 to provide offline access to SharePoint resources.  This functionality however causes users to receive an ActiveX message when browsing through the site.  For internet sites I’ve found it helpful to disable offline functionality so users don’t receive this prompt.

Offline client availability settings are configured on each site.  To disable, browse to Site Settings and click Search and Offline Availability.

Change the Offline Client Availability setting to No.

Happy designing,

@BrookBuchanan

Last week I attended Microsoft’s FASTforward ‘09 conference in Vegas.  The event, which was by far the best MS conference I’ve been to, showcased vision and trends in search technology and set the stage for the next wave of FAST products.

Search Trends, SharePoint 14, and the Net Generation

The traditional model of information portals is fading in favor of search driven experiences like topic pages that allow for greater ease of publishing and information access.  Social software is becoming part of everything and has stopped being a mere feature.  The vision, business value, and technology that will drive the next several years of enterprise search is available to you today.  What is not as easily accessible are the answers of how do we get there and what change the technology will bring to an organization.  The answers will come as more search driven solutions are developed and best practices shared.  Dell for example gave an excellent presentation on their work with SharePoint and FAST.  I expect there will be at least some search implementation sessions at SharePoint Conference 2009 in the fall.  There definitely needs to be.

SharePoint 14 is poised to drive intranet search experiences for the masses similar to what SharePoint 2007 did for information portals.  FAST Search for SharePoint, the next evolution of FAST ESP shipping with Office 14, along with the recent inclusion announcement of PerformancePoint, is building a solid value-add story for SharePoint enterprise customers.  Microsoft has worked out a licensing model where customers can, and in my mind should, start planning for search solutions using the current FAST and SharePoint 2007 toolsets.  The benefit of search is there, but in most cases is going to require considerable planning.

There was much talk of the Net Generation (Millennials/Gen Y) during the conference, and how this generation is changing the shape of business as they enter the workforce.  While this discussion was very thought provoking, the demand generated by this cohort is not the business case for search within your organization.  While the younger members of your workforce can help speed adoption of new technologies, greater ease of access and management of information is the reason to move toward newer capabilities in enterprise search.

Tweetstream at #ffc09

The Twitter activity at FASTforward was a very exciting thing to watch.  I had TweetDeck open for the majority of the conference and activity was constant especially during the keynote presentations.  Some people acted as reporters, tweeting comments from the speakers in realtime.  Others engaged in further discussion on some of the topics.  Conversation like this a few years ago would have happened in delayed blog posts and not been as candid.  Especially with the virtual conference option for FASTforward, there was a way to keep connection between those in Vegas and remote.  A few speakers even looked at the Tweetstream while on stage to catch the pulse of how the presentation was being received and any questions.  Twitter as much as FAST technologies had a win from FASTforward.

A Changing Microsoft

The talk is turning into action as I saw a changing Microsoft at this event.  This Microsoft was focused on the user experience aspects of search design and providing value to customers.  The technology was there, but not in the frame of technology for technology sake that I have seen in the past.  As the recession continues, it was reassuring to see the energy and innovation at this conference as the work in enterprise search is really just getting started.

Partner Awards

EMC walked away with the User Experience Solution of the Year from FASTforward.  Many people stopped by the booth to see the live demo which incorporated Microsoft Surface.  It was great getting to talk with some of you and hearing some of the current SharePoint implementation challenges facing your businesses.  I’ve included a video of the solution.