If you have visited this blog recently, you my have noticed a lack of updates. Due to pressure of other work, I was struggling to write regular posts. And a growing voluntary commitment to the …
Former UK BIM Task Group head Mark Bew, also co-founder of the PCSG consultancy business acquired by Bentley Systems in 2020, has stepped down as CEO of Bentley’s Cohesive group. The opening day of Bentley …
At an in-person London event, UK-based collaboration technology Revizto gave insights on efficiently implementing technologies. Today, Extranet Evolution is at the Institution of Civil Engineers in London, attending a briefing to learn more about Revizto, …
Thanks to mobile apps such as Buildiro, Skrap and now TeekIt, London streets are increasingly busy with deliveries of equipment and materials to construction sites, large and small. In late 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, …
UK Government is aiming to make open, standardised data drive an improved local plans system. Legislation will ensure data is delivered in consistent formats, and make some data publicly available and reusable. In June, I …
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Further to my 24 February post regarding the UK’s Construction Industry Computing Association, I today received a letter (though I would have thought an email would have been more appropriate for an IT organisation) from Roy Harper (chairman of the CICA Advisory Board) updating me on developments. The most significant has been the launch of a new CICA website.
It certainly looks much more professional, but unfortunately the overhaul has not extended to an update of the site’s content. Its case studies and guidance notes and its briefing notes on "extranets" are very out-of-date, and do the sector no favours at all.
If the CICA is serious about offering its membership "a valuable, but also a valued, set of offerings" (to use Harper’s own words), then it should set about updating this material as soon as possible. As a first step, I suggest the CICA should approach the NCCTP to reuse some of its material.
Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/04/long_overdue_ci/
I was very interested to read yesterday that Carphone Warehouse might offer free broadband. From Silicon.com today, it appears that Sky and Virgin might also start trying to lure entrenched dial-up users (35 per cent of the UK internet population) to switch to broadband by offering free service bundles (according to JupiterResearch, 33 per cent of dial-up users will not switch to broadband if it means paying greater subscription costs).
I should declare an interest. I recently switched our household telephone service from BT to Carphone Warehouse’s TalkTalk landline service. TalkTalk made a compelling case for switching telephone service and the changeover went without a hitch and with no discernible impact on quality of service. If they can do the same with respect to my broadband connection as well and offer it ‘free’ (the BBC reports here that the service costs £20.99/month, plus one-off connection fee of £29.99 – BT has condemned it as a "clever marketing ploy from a clever marketing team", says The Register), then it will be goodbye BT Broadband from me.
Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/04/carphone_wareho/
Public relations can be a double-edged sword. When a business has something to announce, it is a vital tool, but get the timing wrong and the business can regret ever opening its mouth. Take Salesforce.com for instance.
I have discussed this ‘Software as a Service’ (SaaS) business before, notably for its service outages earlier this year. Last Wednesday, in a classic example of hubris ("n: insolence: arrogance, such as invites disaster"), it trumpeted its investment in new hardware and software to put an end to those problems and its achievement of 99.999% planned uptime and availability during March. Twenty-four hours later, another problem kept some North American customers from accessing Salesforce.com for some hours. Word got around, and shares dipped 3% in US trading last Thursday (and the press release quietly disappeared from the website, and a little "service disruption" red cross appeared in its service performance history).
TheStreet.com columnist Bill Snyder quotes JMP Securities analyst Patrick Walravens: "To have this kind of downtime the very next day raises concerns about Salesforce.com’s understanding of its own system issues, in our opinion. Second, the premature press release suggests to us that the sales interests at salesforce.com may have pushed for a public answer to customer concerns about reliability issues."
As a PR professional for another ASP, I can appreciate the stress Salesforce.com’s PR team might be facing ("pride comes before a fall" and all that). From time to time, BIW Technologies issues news releases related to its hosting infrastructure’s reliability and availability, and I sometimes wonder if these announcements might later prove hollow. Thankfully, I haven’t had cause to regret them yet (at least, not so far). I also sometimes have similar worries relating to the BIW website, particularly just after I have blogged about a competitor’s website being unavailable (last week, for example). Is this post tempting fate….?
Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/04/salesforce_outa/
Through Cadwire.net, I notice that US collaboration provider e-Builder has launched the e-Builder Wireless Edition – a new wireless service enabling BlackBerry connectivity to meet the communications needs of AEC professionals in the field.
Registered users will be able to receive and process information from any location, thereby reducing the time needed to respond to requests like action items, correspondence, submittals, transmittals, RFIs, etc.
Requirements are simple: a Java based BlackBerry device and an active email address associated with the BlackBerry device is all that is required (support for the Treo is expected in August as well). Individual users will be able to purchase the service in quarterly or annual installments, while groups can benefit from volume discounts available for 10 users or more. The program will be in beta until August 2006.
(Cadwire picked up the news release via PRweb. It isn’t displayed on e-Builder’s website – indeed, the last press release there is dated September 4 2003! Poor show for a business backed by McGraw Hill which you would expect to show more PR savvy.)
Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/04/ebuilder_launch/
Earlier this week, I met Matt Parsons of Building sister title QS News for a coffee and chat at a bar in London Bridge. He told me about a forthcoming revamp of the publication (more pages, fortnightly) and improvements to QS News’ website (rolling daily news, new blogs, podcasts).
Afterwards, I had a look at the site and registered (it’s free!). I have read the magazine occasionally since its launch last summer, but I clearly missed one useful article relevant to extranets.
On 27 January 2006, solicitor Anthony Lee (with colleague Janet Lane) of Fladgate Fielder wrote: "Avoiding the pitfalls – a guide to extranets" (probably drawing on the workshop presentation he delivered alongside me at the NCCTP conference last November), urging potential customers and users to be aware be aware of contractual issues, legal admissibility, security/confidentiality, intellectual property rights, defamation, limiting risk and anti-discrimination concerns.
A search for "extranet" related items also reveals a review of my book (see 9 December 2005 post), and my views on Autodesk’s Constructware acquisition (see also various previous posts, starting here).
Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/04/qs_news_legal_a/
Thanks to AECCafe.com, I was alerted to an Interwoven press release announcing an alliance with Data Builder to market a new electronic project control system (Data Builder e-PCS) for the US construction industry (available as both a hosted or managed service).
Interwoven is well-known for its enterprise content management solutions, and through its Data Builder partnership will now be competing in the collaboration market with AEC-specific US software firms such as Meridian, eBuild.ca, Autodesk Buzzsaw/Constructware, Primavera, Citadon, etc.
The strategy may appeal to existing Interwoven customers who are involved in construction projects and can mandate use of the system to their chosen project team, and the alliance with an existing provider of software to the AEC market will help overcome objections that Interwoven has little track record in the AEC sector.
(Incidentally, the Interwoven release scores high on the ‘leveraging’ count – using that word or ‘leverage’ five times in five consecutive sentences in the first two paragraphs alone.)
Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/04/interwoven_ente/
Keeping my eye on the competition, I looked at UK collaboration vendor ePIN’s website today, noticing that it too has recently undergone an overhaul (following the recent revamps by Causeway and Cadweb). While it is very informative in some areas – its description of its hosting by Verizon is very detailed, for example – it lacks what for me, as a PR professional, is a website essential: a news section (it isn’t alone: this fault is shared by several other smaller vendors’ websites, including those of e-Box/PFInet and Worksmart).
ePIN’s site has a nice professional feel to it, and as a piece of bland marketing collateral it probably works quite well. But if I was a journalist, there is nothing to tell me about how well the company is doing, what major landmarks have occurred recently, etc. In short, there is a shortage of the latest facts and figures. Their ’employment’ page says they are looking for a marketer – maybe that person could then create some online PR resources for them?
While on the subject of vendors’ websites, 4projects’ site has returned after yesterday’s temporary outage.
Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/04/epin_overhauls_-3/
According to a Silicon.com article, UK telco BT is backing "Work Wise UK", which aims to increase the number of people benefiting from ‘smarter working’ from 3.1 million to 14 million by 2009. "Work Wise Week", 3-9 May 2006, is intended to promote debate between government, unions and UK businesses on styles of working.
BT leads by example, boasting 11,500 employees who work from home and 64,000 who are able to work outside the office as needed. This policy results in cost savings through high worker retention and low absenteeism rates, according to the telco.
Given the high number of sole traders and other SMEs in the fragmented and highly mobile AEC industry, I suspect remote working and working from home are already familiar practices. As an industry, however, I suspect that the work-life balance issues are not always addressed. Web-based collaboration technologies such as ‘project extranets’ can help by making information available anywhere anytime, but – like many other IT solutions – they can also tempt users to spend longer than usual sitting at the keyboard.
Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/04/work_wise_uk/
While browsing the other UK collaboration vendors’ websites, I was unable to access 4Projects’ site. A colleague tells me that it’s been offline at least all afternoon – not a good sign for a business promoting on-demand web-based services.
Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/04/4projects_websi/
I see Cadweb is deliberately misleading visitors to its website again. By carefully editing out any mention of any other firms in its quoted extract from Contract Journal, it would have you believe that consultant Cyril Sweett’s favourite extranet is Cadweb, and that Cadweb is the solution most used at Sweett’s. The edited extract is even shown under a headline (linked from the website home page) reading: Cadweb Ranked as Favourite by Cyril Sweett.
"The project collaboration tools we make most use of are… Cadweb. We are part of the design team on a lot of large construction projects and most of them operate by way of internet-based collaboration technology. The exact tool depends on our role. We are often able to recommend systems to clients that we have already used, as we have been in the IT collaboration territory for 10 years or so. I’d rank Cadweb…… favourites."
I reproduced the full extract in this blog last week, where it is clear that Cadweb is actually one of two solutions favoured by Sweett’s, and one of three solutions used overall. If I was John Hadji-Michael, I would be a bit miffed about Cadweb’s misrepresentation of my remarks.
(Cadweb also starts its extract: "In this month’s Contract Journal…". Wrong! CJ comes out weekly)
Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2006/04/cyril_sweett_on/
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