Shimon,

Good to hear from you. Hope things are well in IL.

The question you are asking if probably one of the toughest ones to answer. It is difficult to estimate ROI on collaboration and innovation, but this is one of those areas where I think the typical ROI calculation might not apply. But we all know that the enterprise has to expand and innovate to stay ahead of the competition.

I think the collaboration technology in its current today is not tightly integrated to the innovation process level and not even among itself, and as a result it is completely disconnected to the systems that implement the critical and business

so, think about a “convergence collaboration portal” where VoIP, video, contacts (enterprise social network), communications (IM, e-mail), information discovery and management (tags & RSS), Data Analysis and publishing (mashups and ECM). This platform should be able to follow you where ever you are. A platform that allows you to communicate and share structure and unstructured information by using typical application paradigm like drag-and-drop or right-mouse-click.

A platform like this would potentially increase the innovation. Now is up to a nimble, flexible and responsive IT platform to support the changes to the business processes coming out of the expected innovation wave. The degree to which the underlying systems adapt is a metric to be considered in a ROI calculation. Other potential variables might be the degree of reusability and manageability.

I know there has been a push from ISPs to provide the early stage of this type of platforms for their customer base. Verizon is an adopter of this type of technology (Laszlo’s Webtop). For the enterprise there are other tools like ActiveGrid that would provide good departmental solutions that are in compliance with typical IT governance policies.

Tony Gonzalez
BSG Alliance