Michael Specht

Following the recent posts on RSS, Web 2.0 and the impact on HR vendors I was listening to the Gillmor Gang talk with Ray Ozzie CTO of Microsoft on the Live Clipboard and it got me thinking.

Live Clipboard allows you to copy and paste structured data to and from a web site or your PC. If you are like me your immediate reaction is huh? But after thinking it through for a few minutes I started to understand what he was getting at. Take a look at the example site that has been created to show how you can copy & paste contact data with a single click. Take a look at the screencasts to get an even better understanding of what is going on. Live clipboard allows us to extend the whole concept of a mashup even further to mesh applications together.

The example that really got me excited was the publishing of contact information between sites. It also showed me that was I naive to suggest using HR-XML for ESS in a comment on Thomas’s site?  It also shows how fast things are moving. Imagine you HR/Payroll system being able to receive a feed of your contact information, no more ESS. Using a service like SKIP you could store a single version of your contact details and then publish them to all manner of services, including your company HR/Payroll system.  How does it (or should it) work with Mendocino?

Workflow was touched on briefly in the podcast. Maybe this Live Clipboard approach will provide a more open workflow framework for interoperability?  Not sure but anything is good if it allows business workflows to cross functional and organisational boundaries, workflow is the piping that holds business together.

Double Dubs has as always provided us a great perspective on the conversation:-

When we talk about self service and HR portals, what I really care about is not pushing out content, but increasing transaction volumes. Sure content is important.

I kind of see RSS, OMPL, LiveClipboard and HR-XML as providing a method of enabling these transactions.  Transactions are in some respects just content, admittedly content between systems.  Where things get a little complex is in the actual implementation.  Big companies tend to implement big systems, with big budgets and long delivery times.  How long will this process be accepted by businesses when they are seeing organisations like Flickr and Google releasing new features for consumer tools on a monthly basis?  Michael Cote asks a similar question based on a BEA analyst conference.  How easy will it be for us to implement all of these great new things?  Will there be a 2 year wait for the IT department to complete the project? Take a read of Michael Cote’s vision of LinkedIn as Platform.

So many different options and opportunities for vendors and organisations.

On a related note Ian Black, MD of SAP Australia wrote in December about composite applications, essentially the same thing.

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