I just finished reading Extreme Trust: Honesty as a Competitive Advantage by Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, and it got me thinking about the social collaboration efforts I have worked on the past couple of years. Though the book has an external focus in regards to how social networking is forcing companies to be more transparent with its customers, I think the same principles apply to the collaboration between colleagues within a company.
At DrupalCon in Denver, DPCI, Achieve Internet and Blink Reaction were three of the vendors offering Drupal solutions for the enterprise.
Blink Reaction
Blink Reaction is an enterprise Drupal development company and an Elite Acquia Enterprise Select Partner. Blink Reaction's services include integrating Drupal with third-party applications, such as CRM, Alfresco Enterprise Content Management and Salesforce. In this expo floor video, Ray Saltini, Drupal Evangelist at Blink Reaction, explains how his company fits into DrupalCon.
Achieve Internet
Achieve Internet has built enterprise Drupal websites for big-name clients, including NBC Universal, Disney and Fast Company. In this video, Ron Huber, CEO of Achieve Internet, explains why DrupalCon is a good fit for his company.
DPCI
Joseph Bachana, President and Founder of DPCI, a content and DAM solutions provider, says that his company has a lot of experience in business challenges that need to be solved with digital asset management tools. I spoke with him at DrupalCon to find out more about the role Drupal plays in his company.
Bachana says that currently his company is working on refining the EMBridge module, which extends the image management functionalities of Drupal by connecting it to EnterMedia, an open source digital asset management platform.
He also has plans to integrate Drupal with Adobe's InDesign program and text editors, such as Microsoft Word and NeoOffice, which could be huge news for publishers. Imagine writing an article in your favorite text editor, which is connected to your Drupal site and with a few clicks the article is formatted with images out of your library and ready for the web. Then, a few clicks later, that same article is dumped into your InDesign template with a hi-res version of an image pulled from your digital asset management solution and ready to go to print.
Bachana admits that this is an ambitious project that could transform the way we publish across platforms. The challenge, he says, is scaling and getting partners who want to help out with the project. Frankly, I can't wait to see his vision become a reality, so check back for updates as his project progresses.
CompuCom Systems, Inc., the leading IT outsourcing specialist, hosted a three-day forum with 25 executives from IT organizations across vertical markets. Jay Batson, Acquia VP and Co-Founder, explored how social collaboration brings together businesses, partners, and clients, assists with recruiting, and facilitates ideation during a panel discussion at the event.
TNS selected Acquia Commons to build "Stars Insight," a community website for Mercedes-Benz. Thomas Wachter, TNS senior consultant and automotive market research team leader, says, “Acquia Commons allowed us to quickly build this website while adhering to Mercedes’ strict brand guidelines and maintaining the flexibility needed to support TNS’ strategic requirements.”
Forum One discusses three key reasons they are using Acquia Commons to support problem solving communities in the public sector, plus some examples of Commons at work.
Social networking has changed the way we communicate, connect, and learn. It allows us to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that we would not have been able to, because time and space make it impossible.
Allowing individuals to gather and express themselves in a much more simple and immediate fashion, social media provides the capability to not only have the ability to share ideas and opinions, but also (if they wish) gain notoriety, and expand their influence.
Acquia introduced Commons 2.0, the next generation of its open social business software solution. The new version features enhanced flexibility to choose social interaction style for a community site, cloud installation and configuration within weeks, and enhanced control over designs, features and templates.
The "suits" behind Acquia, the company that provides "commercial services" for the open-source social publishing platform Drupal, has this week [announced] its Commons 2.0 social business software solution.
Every aspect of software application development appears to be getting "social media collaboration style" enhancements right now, so what's so special about this announcement?
