PEW recently published the results of its study "The Future of Cloud Computing" comprising an opt in online poll in which 895 IT decision makers and critics participated. The study yielded some interesting insights, and matched the general perception that cloud computing will come to dominate the future of cloud computing. Some conclusions are as follows:-

- 71% of the respondents agreed that the cloud will be the primary way to access enterprise solutions by 2020, where the solution will be accessible over a variety of networked devices like PCs, mobile phones, tablets etc.

- Some experts believed that "private clouds" will be an important part of the future where users will be able to access cloud solutions over local networks.

- People believed that the desktop will not die out completely, but will evolve new ways to work in tandem with cloud based solutions. Many people saw this "hybrid" model as a way of the future.

- People expressed concern that domination of the cloud by a small number of large firms may constrict innovation and customer choice.

- Security continued to be the main concern of people in adopting cloud based solutions.

- Large companies are least likely to opt for cloud computing because of control and security issues. Low income people in developing countries are most likely to access cloud solutions on handheld devices because of the cost benefits.  

- People felt that rather than being a thing of the future, cloud computing is already here in the market with wide use of social networks like Facebook, document managers like Google Docs, and consumer and business email services like GMail and Yahoo Mail.  

"Social intranet" is a catch phrase which is a very recent invention. With all the talk of social media, social collaboration, social enterprise etc, it was certainly on the cards. All this "social" talk represents a shift towards the user base, a bottom up, democratic approach rather than a top down approach if you will. It encourages collaboration, and sees innovation as something which emerges from below as a result of these collaborative efforts. 

However, the question remains, in the context of intranet software, what is a social intranet? To answer this, I found a very good definition from Toby Ward, a widely recognized intranet expert. 

An intranet that features multiple social media tools for most or all employees to use as collaboration vehicles for sharing knowledge with other employees. A social intranet may feature blogs, wikis, discussion forums, social networking, or a combination of these or any other Web 2.0 (intranet 2.0) tool with at least some or limited exposure (or as an option) from the main intranet or portal home page. 

Toby goes further to say that a smattering of top executive blogs do not go to make a social intranet. It requires wide participation, or at least oppurtunity for wide participation.  

So, is your intranet social? 

Thanks Andrew, for this blog post. 

A lot of intranet initiatives, the pet babies of CEOs and CIOs, end up in the dump. Intranet adoption is a problem creators of intranets and intranet software have grappled with for years. The following is Andrew's advice on the things to keep in mind to make for a successful intranet:-

Requirements

The idea is to start at the beginning. Not to first implement your intranet and then start thinking about what intranet requirements are. The first stage of successful intranets is the drawing board. One must identify the end objectives of the intranet. Not just in terms of high level organizational objectives, but also the day to day user needs, and what they stand to gain out of the intranet. So intranet implementation needs to be preceded with an extensive requirement gathering phase, involving both high level management and end users. The following list of questions may help clarify the requirements:-

• What applications or collaboration software do users access often?
• What content do users need quick access to, and where is it located?
• What knowledge, data, documents do you need to share across departments?
• What information should be presented to users at the start of the day?
• What organizational level information would you like users to have that isn’t necessarily related to work tasks?
• Where is all this information currently located?
• How do you collaborate across the organization currently?

Functionality and Integration

Often people tend to view intranets as a set of static web pages where they can view information, download document etc. But this view of intranets is very outdated. Nowadays, intranets are the place where users access not only information, but also all the software tools they use on a day to day basis. Intranet software these days come pre built with tools like document manager, project manager, forums, surveys, workflow tools etc.In addition to pre built tools, the intranet should have the ability to integrate with third party software tools seamlessly.

Performance

As rightly pointed out by Andrew, intranet performance is all important. An intranet which takes ages to load or is slow is bound to end up turning off users. For all your planning and implementation, your intranet will be destined for failure.  

Maintenance

The intranet should allow for easy updation of information. The intranet administrator, or group administrators should be able to update information daily without having to go through complex coding. In addition, the intranet should require minimal maintenance effort. If you need to expend constant resources in upkeep, the intranet will be self defeating its purpose. Modern software-as-a-service intranet software score highly on this count. The backend is handled by the intranet vendor, while all administrators ever need to interact with is easy to use user facing dashboards. 

Barb Mosher of CMSWire is conducting a poll on intranet software capabilities which runs till July 21. Although the survey is ongoing it yields some interesting insights into the intranet market. A majority of the replies reflect the increasing capabilities of intranet software, as well as the awareness of intranet capabilities amongst respondents. Collaboration tools seem to be an important part of intranets these days, as opposed to the static repositories of content they used to be in yesteryear.

At the same time, a certain segment, although in minority, still lacks awareness of basic intranet concepts. The following are the results of the poll so far. You can participate here.

A late 2009 article at Networkworld lists out 12 words you never say at your workplace anymore, or you would be considered "old fashioned". These words are - Intranet software, Extranet, Web Surfing, Push Technology, Application Service Provider (ASP), Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), Internet Telephony, Weblog, Thin Client, RBOC.

Although I am in agreement for the most part, (i don't even know what RBOC means), but I also have some contentions. Push technology may not mean the same as it did, but it is still used in the context of push email, calendars, contacts and tasks for mobile devices. Extranet is rightly mentioned as it has been replaced by "customer portal" or "portal" in general. 

My main contention however, is with the author calling "intranet" outdated. The replacement term according to the author is "portal". Although "collaboration software" may roughly be being used in the same sense, in my opinion, intranets are growing ever more important in organizations, as they look to enable communication and collaboration amongst employees scattered across the globe, and harness organizational learning. The best measure of whether the term is alive or kicking is to see if it is still being searched on Google. 

A quick visit to the Google Keywords Tool yeilded the following results for global monthly searches for the following terms:-

Intranet - 4,090,000

Intranet software - 27,100

Do they seem like dying terms?