James D
Helping organisations to get on, not get by, with information technology
What are your experiences of implementing an Enterprise RSS system in your organization?
Is anyone who has implemented an Enterprise RSS system, like those from Attensa or Newsgator, prepared to share their experiences as a case study for the Enterprise RSS Day of Action taking place on the 24th April? I'm particulary interested to hear about the business case for investing in Enterprise RSS, the technology(s) you are using, the challenges you faced and the benefits such a system has provided to your organisation. For more information see http://enterpriserssdayofaction.wikispaces.com/
Clarification added 5 months ago:
Jack said: I think one thing that might be helpful is if "Enterprise RSS" were clarified.
When I'm talking about Enterprise RSS I'm talking about the use of RSS inside the firewall, including the consumption of both internal and external feeds. What might help are these presentations on SlideShare http://www.slideshare.net/chieftech/chief-tech-enterprise-rss-what/ and http://www.slideshare.net/chieftech/10-things-i-want-from-enterprise-rss/
Answers (5)
James - my company is responsible for implementing and maintaining 100% of the customer-facing RSS content for Intel since 2004. In this particular client engagement, the business requirements are far different from the services provided by NewsGator and Attensa.
We have some insights into this process and how to meet specific requirements for enterprise-level RSS services, but I happen to be on vacation at the moment. However, I've added my co-founder (Andy Seidl) to this answer - feel free to hive him a call at 734-717-8360 or drop him a note at faseidl@myst-technology.com.
bf
Links:
Bill F also suggests this expert on this topic:
Clarification added 5 months ago:
Jack makes a good point - the term "enterprise" is used in overloaded contexts frequently. RSS (itself) is also [frequently] used casually and without specific business requirements in mind.
I like to classify RSS use cases - three that are helpful include customer-facing, employee-facing (which are ideally secure), and partner-facing (which may or may not require a security context). There are others of course, but this is a good high-level starting point.
The issue of feed source is also important - generating feeds for improved employee productivity and awareness is a relatively new and emerging science. For this use case, security and automation are two of the bigger challenges that raise some devils in the details. Is it enough to secure a feed, or does the use case require a security context for each item in the feed? (e.g., are there subscribers that see a subset of the items?)
Most enterprise applications (which contain the bulk of the content that employees might appreciate in RSS form) are unable to produce RSS easily, and even those that can seem to create a feed have not fully entertained the security issues. After all - most enterprise applications *do* have stringent security contexts for each user.
Finally (perhaps;-) we must consider that RSS is just an implementation detail. The more important discussion for anything with the term "enterprise" in the objective must start with business requirements. Maybe RSS is a good implementation strategy - but beginning any conversation with "Enterprise RSS" is probably a mistake and not unlike beginning a conversation with "Enterprise SQL". ;-)
Jack V
Product Manager at AspenTech
Best Answers in: Planning (2), Purchasing (1), Internet Marketing (1), Supply Chain Management (1), Blogging (1), Using LinkedIn (1)
No answer, unfortunately. I think one thing that might be helpful is if "Enterprise RSS" were clarified. When I see that phrase, I think of web feeds being setup inside the enterprise -- but what of??? Then I see that you are specifically referencing Attensa and Newsgator and realize you mean systems that provide web feeds (from anywhere) for consumption internally.
How are these systems different from doing the shortcut version: giving people feed readers and an initial list of feeds? What else could you do with the phrase "Enterprise RSS?" Maybe setup internal software that _generates_ the web feeds for people to consume? (wikis, blogs, the latest version of Sharepoint).
Sorry. More questions than answers.
No, but would love to get there... We have made one small step along the way:
We have a number of paid & free information subscriptions delivered via email. These used to come in to our library service and they would each be forwarded on to email groups that the librarian used to maintain. Now all items go into an internal information sharing blog. The RSS feeds are used as the basis for a self-service information system where people choose the categories of items they want to receive and the frequency. Delivery is via email only at the moment.
As I said, a small step. By the way, the feeds are also used to construct a dynamic intranet page presenting the latest information by category.
Scott N
Director of Marketing at Attensa, Inc.
Best Answers in: Blogging (1), Enterprise Software (1)
Here's some insight into how using a managed RSS platform can be used to efficiently aggregate, manage, channel and measure how information is used in your organization. Instead of focusing on RSS, focus on closed loop communication and collaboration behind the firewall.
http://www.attensa.com/blogs/attensa/2007/11/enterprise_rss_why_not_just_us.php
http://www.attensa.com/blogs/attensa/2007/11/putting_the_flow_in_enterprise.php
We've been helping organizations use managed RSS to streamline communication and collaboration. Feel free to contact me for more specifics.