Social Glass

We’ve seen a great amount of interest in Enterprise Search in recent months (especially the Google Search Appliance). In my experience this is the starting point for deploying a full blown SLATES system into an enterprise. Interestingly enough, however, the “C” level guys seem to be pretty interested in Enterprise Search, and also what the next generation of intranet applications is, but it’s the people below them who feel threatened by this and often talk the “C” level guy out of it.

Why? Because lateral communication threatens managers who define their roles by controlling the flow of information in and out of their group. As Rod Boothby points out, there is a lot of “dead wood” within organisations, and Enterprise Search is the first tool that will call them out.

I personally think it’s going to take a few high-profiled, highly-publicised Enterprise 2.0 deployments before it catches on as main-stream.