| " The striking thing is, the rapid spread of wikis at both companies -- Finnish handset-maker Nokia and London- and Frankfurt-based investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort -- was a grassroots phenomenon. And while the experience of both companies suggests wikis may not be for everyone, their versatility and ease of use has rapidly made them an essential corporate tool. " " In late 2004, when wikis were more buzz than proven tech tool, two small groups within Nokia's Research Center in Helsinki created their own wikis -- one to collaborate on solving specific product-design problems, the other to explore alternatives to e-mail and collaborative software. " " Today, Nokia estimates at least 20% of its 68,000 employees use wiki pages to update schedules and project status, trade ideas, edit files, and so on. "It's a reversal of the normal way things are done," says Stephen Johnston, senior manager for corporate strategy at Nokia, who helped pioneer the technology. Where Nokia once bought outside software to help foster collaboration, now "some of the most interesting stuff is emerging from within the company itself," says Johnston. " " It's a similar tale at Dresdner Kleinwort. A few pioneers in the IT department at its London office sent a program called Socialtext to several groups to see how it might be used to facilitate different IT tasks. The wiki program spread so quickly that Dresdner Kleinwort decided to launch its own corporate wiki. By October, 2006, the bank's 5,000 employees had created more than 6,000 individual pages and logged about 100,000 hits on the company's official wiki. " " The experience of Nokia and Dresdner Kleinwort offer insight into how to nurture the use of a radically new technology to change the way organizations work. Clearly, not everyone recognizes the value of wikis right way. The initial efforts at Dresdner, for example, confused employees and had to be refined to make the technology easier to use. More important than tweaking the technology was a simple edict from one of the proponents: Don't send e-mails, use the wiki. Gradually, employees embraced the use of the wiki, seeing how it increased collaboration and reduced time-consuming e-mail traffic. " "IBM announced an optical chipset that could allow you to download a complete high-definition movie in one second, rather than the 30 minutes or more that today's fastest chips allow." "IDC's new report on virtualization and multicore servers backpedals from previous server forecasts, indicating that x86-based server deployment patterns are changing dramatically." "The world of mobile storage continues to evolve, ... read the whole article |