“The cloud” is ever-present these days, backed by a huge marketing push from multiple vendors, including Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Apple. Backed by immense data centres located in (often) rural locations, “the cloud” will apparently transform our lives.

While it’s still early days for the cloud, it’s clear that it will ultimately have a big impact on the way we manage our information as consumers. It will also make substantial inroads into the enterprise space.

So with executives and IT alike talking about “the cloud”, what does the intranet team need to know?

1. The cloud means many things

With the cloud still heading up the Gartner hype curve, the marketers have started to apply “the cloud” label to many things, including what used to be called software-as-a-service (SaaS). These days, the cloud encompasses:

• Enterprise mail solutions such as Google’s GMail, with storage spread across countless machines globally.
• Classic software-as-a-service offerings, such as Salesforce and its associated services.
• Hosted-only products, such as Yammer.
• Online data storage and “elastic computing” services, such as Amazon’s S3 and AWS, or Microsoft’s Azure.
• Virtual hosting, providing server space on third-party infrastructure.
• Hybrid offerings, such as Microsoft’s hosted Windows and SharePoint infrastructure.

New products are springing up every day, and the lines between offerings are becoming increasingly blurred. At the heart of all of these solutions is a simple proposition: move software and infrastructure outside the enterprise, to third-party providers who can do a better job.

While intranet teams should know at least a little about all the services listed above, a general sense of the “what and why” is generally enough for business discussions.

2. Some services will definitely move to the cloud

There is great interest in the cloud, particularly from IT teams and CIO’s. There are many benefits on offer:

• better services that are updated more often
• lower “total cost of ownership”
• greater scalability
• more robustness
• greater agility

Most organisations will move at least one or two services to the cloud in the near future. For example, replacing an in-house CRM with Salesforce, or deploying a hosted project management solution. Most of these changes won’t be controversial, and will be the result of routine IT planning.

In some cases, organisations will move most (or all) of their infrastructure into the cloud. While this will be uncommon outside of small organisations for a while, there is some logic to the move.

Either way: expect to see cloud-based solutions popping up in organisations any day now.

3. Intranets will become a hybrid

While some services are a natural fit for the cloud, others will tend to remain in-house, particularly where integration is required with other business systems. Teams should therefore plan for a future where intranets are a mix of in-house and cloud-based solutions, each providing part of the overall solution.

4. Intranets themselves may move into the cloud

With the complexity of some intranet platforms, such as SharePoint, the cloud starts to become very attractive as a foundation for the whole intranet. Office 360, for example, offers a hosted version of SharePoint (plus Exchange, etc) that can be quicker and easier to deploy.

To a large extent, intranet teams need not be too concerned either way. Whether intranet infrastructure is in-house or in the cloud, the same questions remain:

• What functionality will be available?
• How will the intranet be managed?
• What are the limits of customisation and development?
• What technical resources will be available to the intranet team?
• What technical effort will be involved in launching or revamping the intranet?

5. The cloud presents intranet teams with an opportunity

Enterprise solutions have always moved much slower than the consumer world. Smartphones are ubiquitous for consumers, but staff are stuck with old corporate-approved devices. Home PCs run Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 9; offices provide staff with Windows XP and IE 6. Old versions of enterprise solutions abound.

Part of the problem arises from the complexity of testing, upgrading and deploying new software. There are also security, compatability and up-time challenges.

The growing acceptance of cloud-based solutions offers a way forward. New solutions can be deployed much more quickly, and rolled out to the entire organisations, particularly when they are web-based. Yammer provides a great example of how quickly a cloud-based solution can spread.

This can allow intranet teams to finally get access to technology options they have been requesting for some time. Roll on intranet 2.0!

6. The challenge is to connect the dots

Staff have always had one desire and dream: to have single, seamless environment that provides the tools and information they need to do their job. To date, we haven’t done a very good job at delivering this, with dozens of enterprise systems presenting a cacophony of different interfaces and experiences.

The danger is that the adoption of cloud-based solutions will only make this worse. There is often limited options for tailoring or customising cloud solutions, and single sign-on can be more complex to achieve.

Intranet teams should retain a focus on simplifying what’s delivered to staff, ensuring that the experience for staff is productive and usable.

This means looking at some core aspects, such as:

• Ensuring there is only one staff profile (in a single staff directory), and that all systems integrate with this.
• Achieving seamless single sign-on across all applications, whether in-house or in the the cloud.
• Exploring how new functionality, such as social or collaborative tools, can be integrated into the existing intranet.

While many of these are things for IT to address, the intranet team should be acting as the user advocate, asking key questions during the migration to the cloud.

In short: “the cloud” means many things in practice, but the lining is generally silver. Exploit the opportunities that arise, avoid the potential pitfalls, and deliver an even better intranet for staff.

How to give feedback

Delivering good feedback takes preparation to balance positive and corrective messages. Before the feedback discussion ensure you are clear on the behaviour you are trying to reinforce or correct and that you can explain how it relates to team outcomes.

Actual delivery of the message involves displaying confidence, establishing boundaries and taking a balanced perspective. You can do this by:

• discussing and agreeing on what the feedback is trying to achieve
• remaining calm and using unemotional language
• delivering a message that is direct, unhesitating and specific
• describing at least one clear example of behaviour and its results
• avoiding judgement by focusing on the behaviour, not your interpretation of it
• providing suggestions on how behaviour can be improved
• providing the opportunity for the recipient to comment on your feedback
• if appropriate, gaining agreement on a course of action

(June article by Stephen Byrne, read the full article.)

The basic scenario that I’ll be addressing is the rapid and unmanaged spread of collaboration tools alongside an existing intranet. Before you know it, the (not greatly loved) intranet is now surrounded by thousands of individual team sites. As I’ve covered in the past, this is anti knowledge sharing.

The broad strategies I’ll be covering:

• Have a clarity of purpose for collaboration tools
• Establish clear governance
• Over time, integration the intranet and collaboration tools

It should be a fun and friendly evening, with lots of screenshots and discussions. See you there…

A tip to get you started: the Intranet Innovation Awards recognise individual improvements which benefit staff and the organisation. So you don’t have to have the perfect intranet, just a great idea implemented well.

There are lots of benefits to winning an innovation award. These include:

• a beautiful glass trophy
• international recognition
• invitations to speak at major conferences
• video interviews
• magazine writeups
• and more

But don’t take our word for it! These are some of the comments from last year’s winners when asked what the benefits were in winning an award:

Winning an Intranet Innovation Award is an achievement we’re very proud of and everyone involved feels their hard work has paid off. It’s helped raise awareness of our Intranet around the company and within our industry, and we’ll be gunning for another award next year!

Rangi Robinson, Framestore

In November, Arup collected two prestigious Intranet Innovation Awards at an event held in Washington as part of the 2010 KM World conference which included scooping Gold for the comprehensive overhaul of the Arup Discussion Forums – allowing staff to easily navigate, contribute to and participate in global discussion – and a commendation for Arup Projects. This is the first time in the four year history of the event that Arup had won an award. We announced the wins in our weekly global newsletter and were promptly met with much support from throughout the firm. For instance:

“The timing of your success at the KM awards is fantastic. We are submitting a bid to [a large government body] this Tuesday and we need to provide evidence of our knowledge management. Could you please send me a good photograph of someone receiving the award or a photograph of the award?”

So not only were they a valuable tool for winning more work, but the two awards underlined the quality of the intranet available to our staff worldwide and helped us celebrate its on-going development and improvement.

Adam Pope, Arup

Winning the award has had two main benefits for us: 1) Our team has gained credibility as a developer on functional and cost saving work flow systems – leading to more work for us; 2) It has made it easier to create a local network of other intranet teams to share ideas and best practice.

Richard Burdes, Airways NZ

Don’t forget: early-bird registrations close in just one week, on March 15!

The speaker list:

• Jane McConnell, Net/JMC: What are the global trends for intranets? (Keynote)
• James Robertson, Step Two Designs: What makes an essential intranet? (Keynote)
• Michael Sampson: You’ve got collaboration tools: now what? (Keynote)
• Briget Lander, Telecom NZ: Our place – bringing it all under one roof
• Natalie Ryan, QUT: Creating a SharePoint community at QUT
• Emily Staresina, Stockland: Pouring the foundation: redesigning an intranet in SharePoint
• Iain Barker, Meld Studios: Service design: An outside-in approach to intranet design
• James Dellow, Headshift Dachis Group: Strategies for creating a social workplace with your intranet
• Andrew Wright, CIBA Solutions: Intranet features that staff love
• Peter Richards, Tabcorp: Tips to gain executive support
• Matthew C Clarke: Change management is paramount
• Leonie Starawski, Pearson Australia: Merging intranets with SharePoint
• Melissa Hendry, REA: Implementing a social intranet
• Michael & Krystal Gee, CRS Australia: Delivering an integrated staff intranet
• Rebecca Rodgers, Step Two Designs: How to find out what staff need
• Hugh Coughlan, Commonwealth Bank: Bringing order to the intranet solar system
• Chrissy Burns, Blake Dawson: Gaining support: ask a senior manager
• Andy McBride, QUT: Creating a mobile intranet
• Catherina O’Leary, CSIRO: Finding what you need with search, facets and tagging
• Damien Battisson, DEEWR: Designing a governance framework in the real world

(Plus three more mystery speakers, to be announced closer to the conference, covering breaking news and of-the-moment topics.)

We’ve just opened Intranets2011 for registrations, and as a bonus, the first 20 registrations will receive a free copy of Designing intranets: creating sites that work.

Early-bird registrations are now available at just $1,350.00 (with an extra 25% off for current Intranet Leadership Forum members).

You’ll want to be quick!

Read more about Intranets2011

Intranets2011 is a true conference for intranet practitioners. Produced by Step Two Designs, this conference is designed by intranet folk for intranet folk. Providing useful, actionable and inspiring information, it will build the knowledge of every participant.

With local and international speakers, and participants from across the region, this is your chance to connect with the rest of the intranet community.

Where: Amora Hotel, Sydney NSW 2000
When: 11-13 May, 2011
What: two conference days plus post-conference workshops

Add these dates into your diary!

Visit the conference page to add your name to the conference list, or watch this space for further updates.

Again, entries close today.

All details about the awards, including entry form, information on past winners, judging criteria, judges and more can be found right here on the Step Two Designs site:

• About the Awards

• Enter the Awards

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us and we’ll be happy to assist.

Stephen will be working on knowledge management, intranet strategy and user-centred design (like the rest of us), but will also be helping us flesh our coaching and mentoring support for intranet teams. He also brings a depth of knowledge about motivating staff and changing corporate culture. Stephen is based in our Sydney head office.

Welcome to Stephen!

You can find our full collection online, freely available. To make sure you don’t miss out on new articles, subscribe to our papers-announce list. We send one email a month, listing new articles, plus the occasional item showcasing our new reports or events. Alternatively, you can use our RSS feed that just lists new articles.

As always, do drop us a line if you have any requests or suggestions on new articles.

The organisation is a well-known global business (hint: open up your fridge and you’ll find one of their products!). They had a huge 500,000+ page intranet, filled with lots of good content, and just as much rubbish. A decision was made to clean up the content.

They went through a two-month process with publishers, discussing what they were planning to do. They didn’t ask publishers to delete content, instead they asked them to update the content if they wanted it kept.

On the big day, they went through and automatically deleted (archived) every page that was older than a specific date, that hadn’t been reviewed. This eliminated 50,000 pages in a single act.

On the day, they set up a “war room” within communications, and a second “war room” within IT, to respond to the complaints and questions. That day, they received 3 emails and two calls. That was it. After the first day, no complaints. Six months later, people are still thanking them for cleaning up so much rubbish out of the intranet.

While this isn’t a complete solution, it does show that a big change can sometimes be made with surprisingly little resistance.

What have your experiences been with doing a big intranet cleanup?

My next round of travelling is now coming together:

• Multiple IntraTeam conferences (details to be announced)
  28-29 September 2009
  Copenhagen, Denmark
• Masterclass: Delivering innovative intranets
  30 September – 1 October 2009
  Copenhagen, Denmark

Drop me a line if you’d like me to spend a day at your offices, or if you’d like me to run a workshop in your area.

I would also normally be reposting links to interesting articles across a range of fields. What has been striking, however, is how little is getting published at the moment. Blogging has fallen off, online magazine articles are getting thin on the ground. That hasn’t left me much to repost!

Perhaps it’s due to the worsening economy, everyone is focusing on their next paycheque, leaving little time for writing. That would be a little odd, based on past experience. In the dot-com crash, plenty of experienced people found themselves on the street, with a need to do some serious marketing and profile raising.

During that bust, most of the current crop of usability, IA and KM books were written, and many online magazines launched. This greatly added to the knowledge freely available in the world, and defined the current crop of “gurus”.

So why isn’t the same thing happening now? Why is everyone so quiet? (We’re still publishing as normal, even picking up pace.)

Your thoughts?

Just before Christmas I recorded an interview with Andrew Mitchell from Urbis. This discusses their Project Finder solution, a gold winner in the 2008 Intranet Innovation Awards. This directly addresses the age-old challenge for all professional services firms: what have we done before?

When I’ve talked about this work to consulting firms, big and small, there has been considerable jealousy. Watch the video to find out why.

Topics covered:

• What was the business problem?
• What is People Finder?
• What does it provide?
• What were the technology tricks used?
• What were the business benefits?
• Advice for other organisations?

With the 2009 awards opening for entries extremely soon, this should help to build enthusiasm!

So: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all! See you in 2009.

PS. you might see a few posts appear over the break, as I clear out my backlog of blogging. Nothing like starting a new year with a clean desk, physical or electronic…