Reprinted from Cloud Ave By Jacob Morgan on May 4, 201

1. Individual benefit is just as important as the overall corporate benefit (if not more important)

Don’t focus on the overall corporate value and benefit when communicating collaboration to employees. Employees care about how this will impact them on an individual basis. How will this make their jobs and lives easier?

2. Strategy before technology

Before rushing to pick that shiny new collaboration platform focus on developing a strategy which will help you understand the “why” before the “how.” This is crucial for the success of any collaboration initiative. You don’t want to be in a position where you have deployed a technology without understanding why.

3. Listen to the voice of the employee

We are always so adamant about listening to the voice of the customer, what about the voice of the employee? When going down the collaboration road within your enterprise it’s important to make employees a part of the decision making process from step one. Listen to their ideas, their needs, and their suggestions and integrate their feedback in your technology and strategy.

4. Learn to get out of the way

This is something Andrew McAfee talks about quite frequently. Learn to empower and support your employees and then get out of their way. By trying to enforce and police everything you stifle collaboration within your organization. Some best practices and guidelines are fine to have but let your employees do what they need to do.

5. Lead by example

If leaders at your organization don’t use and support collaborative tools and strategies then why should the employees? Leaders are very powerful instruments to facilitate change and encourage desired behaviors. They must be visibly on board.

6. Integrate into the flow of work

Collaboration should never be seen as an additional task or requirement for employees. Instead collaboration should fit naturally into their flow of work. For example instead of having employees use multiple usernames, passwords, and log-in sites; create a “front-door” to the enterprise accessed through your collaboration platform.

7. Create a supportive environment

If your organization focuses on rewarding employees for individual performance as the main driver of success then it will become quite hard to encourage employees to share and communicate with each other. Why would they want to? There is nothing wrong with rewarding employees for great performance but it’s also crucial to reward teamwork. For example organizations can make a percentage of an employee’s bonus tied to how well they collaborate with their co-workers. A supportive environment also means having training and education resources available for employees as well as evangelists within the organization.

8. Measure what matters

There are a lot of things that an organization can measure but that doesn’t mean that all of these things should be measured. Focus on the metrics that matter to your organization and the ones that are tied back to a business case. Some organizations focus on “busy” metrics such as comments submitted or groups created. Others focus on metrics such as engagement (defined as how connected and passionate an employee feels about the company and the work they do).

9. Persistence

I believe that collaborative initiatives shouldn’t be pilots they should be corporate initiatives. These efforts can certainly take time but if the organization makes the decision that collaboration is the direction they want to go down then that’s it. No giving up and no turning back. Moving forward, organizations cannot succeed without connecting their employees and their information. Making collaboration work isn’t an option it’s THE option.

10. Adapt and evolve

It’s important to remember that collaboration is perpetual. It’s a never ending evolution as new tools and strategies for the workplace continue to emerge. This means that it’s important for your organization to be able to adapt and evolve as things change. Keep a pulse on what’s going on in the industry and inside of your organization. This will allow you to innovate and anticipate.

11. Employee collaboration also benefits the customer

While customer collaboration and employee collaboration do solve very different and unique problems, employee collaboration has tremendous value to your customers. Employees are able to provide a better experience and superior support by being able to tap into internal experts, information, and resources which can be used to help customers. Consider a customer that is working with a support representative who unfortunately does not know how to solve the customer’s problem. The employee however has access to the entire organization to find the right information and share it with the customer.

12. Collaboration can make the world a better place

Perhaps the most important principle of collaboration is that it can make the world a better place. Sure, collaboration can make our employee more productive and benefit our customers. But collaboration also allows employees to feel more connected to their jobs and co-workers, reduces stress at the workplace, makes their jobs easier, allows for more work freedom, and in general makes them happier people. This means less stress at home, less arguments with spouses, and more time to spend with loved ones. Collaboration not only positively impacts the lives of employees at work but also at home.

Why embracing the Cloud becomes imperative in 2012.

By Keyon Thomas

“ The only things we can be certain of are death and taxes” is as true today as it was when Ben Franklin first coined the phrase.

But what the channel can be comfortable adding is that the Cloud will be a major factor in SMB purchasing in 2012.

With Oracle spending millions purchasing cloud providers, IBM transforming into a cloud-based service provider, and tablets and laptop purchases exploding, the cloud is fast becoming the perfect storm: the convergence of all forms of hardware and applications into a singular experience at a time when SMBs are looking for solutions that will increase productivity and mobility while reducing costs.

Worldwide revenues from public IT cloud services exceeded $16 billion in 2009 and are expected to hit the $55.5B mark by 2014, according to market researcher IDC. This represents a 27.4% compound annual growth rate, which is roughly five times that of regular IT products, notes IDC.

And thanks to the millions of advertising from Cisco and Microsoft, the SMBs who hadn’t thought much about it are starting to ask questions.

According to Channel Insider the biggest factors driving buying decisions:

• Storage and backup solutions are the most heavily used cloud applications with 71% of SMBs using the cloud in this way
• Better network efficiencies and robustness
• Improved connections with customers online and in a mobile environment
• Enhanced resources, management and tracking
• More business analytics

Yet the Cloud is not the panacea for many SMBs. Companies are stretched to the max with employees working harder to make up for a smaller workforce and smaller margins. Moving to the Cloud would mean integrating data and analyzing which providers to go with for what product: as intuitive as the concept of the Cloud is, SMBs will need qualified resellers that can help them select the optimal providers and provide 24/7 support.

MSPs and VARs have developed a unique trusted adviser relationship with their customers both in telecom, networking, and server deployment. Given the move to the Cloud, the question that resellers have to answer is:  

Will you be positioned to take charge of their cloud migration?

An actual cloud is a visible mass of liquid droplets, but the gifts that the Cloud provides the reseller are solid and filled with potential:

1. The gift of time: Unlike current channels, the Cloud provides faster deployments, freeing your team to expand and support their client base.
2. The gift of money: You control the cost structure without having to support an ongoing infrastructure, which again gives you more time to focus on selling more clients (see gift #1).
3. The gift of savings: Reselling cloud platforms have low upfront startup costs, allowing your company to invest in expanding your operations.

To go vertical or horizontal: a straight line might be the best approach . Be the Market Maker: 

In a discussion at the Cloud Channel Summit , it was noted that that if cloud vendors don’t create a marketplace for partners and just give them the technology; resellers are missing a really critical step. Horizontal market makers, such as InfoStreet’s SkyDesktop, provide the platform- you install the vertical cloud apps accordingly. This horizontal approach provides more channels for the reseller expanding the potential.

The attraction is a two-way street; the channel is embracing the Cloud, while the Cloud is welcoming the MSP and IT community giving them more time, more control, and increased revenues along with enterprise level functionality.

The last few years have been a challenge for businesses globally, resellers are no exception. Adopting a cloud based strategy might well turn 2012 into Cloud 9.