Comments on: Google Groups will also help your Zayo Career

By: Dan Caruso

Dan Caruso — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 00:42:47 +0000

Joe, thanks for commenting. More times than not, my use of Google Groups involve people both inside and outside Zayo. Each specific group has its own unique set of members. Quite often, a particular document might be linked to multiple groups. None of these groups have company wide visibility, as they each serve a purpose for a defined group of members. Whenever I have something I want to share with the entire company, I post on the blog. This creates a challenge at times–how do you share info with employees while exposing it to whoever wants to see it? I try to walk the fine line because much of what I want to say is pertinent to audiences both within and outside of Zayo.

It is hard to put into words why I find Google Groups incredibly powerful. Basically, it brings the power of Google itself–quite literally–to your information, allowing it to be searching, shared, and and organized in ways that otherwise would be problematic. And this is done without training manuals or IT professionals. Perhaps other sharing tools do this. I guess I think of it like this–there are multiple search engines but only one Google.

By: Joe

Joe — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 23:08:42 +0000

I am a Zayo employee, and most certainly I do want to get ahead, I am a daily user of Google Sites/Groups – But only for collaboration and information exchange with our external customers and vendors. I’m also a avid user of Zayo’s internal collaboration and storage tools, Microsoft SharePoint (which BTW, also allows for Blogs and Wiki’s).

So, I wonder why most of the prodding, with the selling point of getting ahead, wouldn’t first be towards a very robust internal tool. The benefits to companywide visibility and participation seem far greater than trying to utilize external sites that Zayo folks may or may not know exist – not to mention the potential future headaches of bringing all this good information back onto the Zayo protected network environment.

By: Google Groups and Blog in Telecom | Build Your 2009 Telecom Marketing Strategy

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 17:55:20 +0000

[...] Google Groups will also help your Zayo Career [...]

By: Dan Caruso

Dan Caruso — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 14:31:19 +0000

Thanks Eileen. I will take a look. I’m glad you you attended the saleforce.com conference (btw, that was me asking you how your vacation was in the conf call last night). We are going to do a ton to exploit salesforce and its accessories.

By: Dan Caruso

Dan Caruso — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 14:31:12 +0000

Color Me: this is an issue we have been aware of. To date, I have chosen to use Google Groups despite this potential issue. The ability to share information across organizational lines has proven immensely valuable. I love the free-ness and freedom of using Google Groups. My guess is that they will respect the privacy of the information and, if not, the sky will not fall. B

By: Color me surprised

Color me surprised — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 08:22:53 +0000

Hi Thomas,
You make a good point about expediency. However, do enterprise folks usually realize that they are giving Google ownership *IN PERPETUITY* ? When you give the reins to GG they want to own the data FOREVER.

I am not here to be an anti-GG fascist; Indeed, I in fact embrace the collaborative nature of Web 2.0, GG included. There is no doubt that GG can be a powerful tool, as can be Salesforce.com or any other collaborative environment that allows all participants and stakeholders to thrive.

I am just asking you to consider the long-term implications of giving a precious asset to someone else. Namely, your employees and their thoughts are ultimately one of your best assets; If you can keep those ideas “in-house” so to speak you could recoup your own investment in asking them to participate in what is ultimately a dialog worth having.

Respectfully,
Color Me Surprised

By: Eileen

Eileen — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 22:16:40 +0000

Hi Dan,

As am employee, recent attendee to salesforce.com, and reader of your recent posts regarding salesforce.com’s extendability into all aspects of business operations, the Winter ‘09 release contains a new feature called Force.com Sites.

http://www.salesforce.com/platform/sites/

It is an interesting solution for internal documents (and external websites for that matter), can replace Sharepoint to eliminate the support (hardware, software and people) requirements and should handle all the issues “Color me surprised” brought up regarding intellectual property and security.

Just a thought…

By: Thomas

Thomas — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 20:24:27 +0000

Color,
It’s a balance between supporting the costs of internal hosting and management as well as speed of implementation versus potential loss of intellectual property and actual impact on company performance. Some are arguing that IP is actually a declining asset model as execution matters more. Plus, there is a real risk that IP legislation is coming down the pike to deal with the current inadequacies which could also lower the return on corporate expenditures on defending IP.

By: Color me surprised

Color me surprised — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:49:21 +0000

Hi Dan,

Long time reader, first time poster. I am not a Zayo employee, so I don’t have a “dog in this fight” so to speak. However, I am curious if you have completely considered the Google Group’s terms of services, ownership of data, data retention policies, etc. I understand GG can a powerful collaborative tool, but why wouldn’t you want to host (and own) the intellectual property your employees post? There are many enterprise-class collaborative tools that allow you to own and retain the data.