Q&A with Rob Dallenbach: One of NewsGator’s Microsoft Gurus

Q: Tell us a bit about your background and what brought you to NewsGator.

Rob: I’ve been in the software industry for roughly 15 years. Years ago, I went to work for a Microsoft Gold Partner startup, which was developing a product on .NET 1.1 Beta. It was the advent of the web services era and I lead their B2B integration/security team.

For a number of years after, I operated my own Microsoft-based practice, contracting with a top consulting company focused on the Media & Entertainment vertical. That combination of experience was a perfect fit for the position I took at Microsoft as a SharePoint Technical Specialist, within the Communications Sector. In that role I worked with many Partner ISVs, NewsGator being one of them. I saw that Social Sites was filling an important need within SharePoint and realized there would be many mutual benefits for us to work together.

Q: Your experience at Microsoft is obviously beneficial to NewsGator customers and partners – how have you been able to leverage this experience since joining us?

Rob: It has been beneficial in a number of ways. From a structural and operational standpoint, Microsoft can be a black box to many on the outside.  Having someone with key relationships to the field and Redmond, who can navigate the various roles, is a win for both NewsGator and its customers. Having delivered many different types of customer engagements while with Microsoft, I’m also very familiar with the programs, licensing, EA benefits, funding sources, and MTC offerings that might be available to customers. Specific to product technology, my depth in the SharePoint workloads and breadth across how that fits into the larger Microsoft stack story is seen as an enormous help to our customers. Plus, it helps to have someone who can decrypt the myriad of Microsoft’s acronyms.

Q: When customers/prospects are thinking about making the investment in NewsGator how do you recommend they analyze our value vis-à-vis other E2.0 offerings?

Rob: Most current E2.0 offerings deliver on some common core capabilities, targeted at predominate use cases. Differentiation in how value is extended from that expected feature base can take many forms such as more specialized uses cases, UI/UX, administration, integration, reporting, cost, etc.

I usually encourage customers to step back and look at a more macro viewpoint of the E2.0 offerings on the market. First, we need to embrace that information workers process their work streams differently. Thus, providing an engaging experience across those modalities is essential. One of the many differentiating strengths of Social Sites is the number of ways I can participate even as my mode of operation changes throughout the day/week (e.g., browsers, direct from email clients, desktop applications, mobile apps). Secondly, the fact that Social Sites exists as a first class citizen within SharePoint, it elegantly handles many otherwise precluding enterprise issues. This is very clear to customers who have chosen SharePoint as a strategic platform, and increasingly so as they move higher within that maturity model. Governance, identity management, authorization and security trimming, content management, and search strategy are just a few of the big ticket integrated value-adds.

Q: Clearly we have a very close relationship with Microsoft (another plug for our recent Partner of the Year honor!) – what advantages does this relationship offer customers in your opinion?

Rob: Having worked closely with the Partner ISV/SI ecosystem while at Microsoft, I can say winning Partner of the Year is truly an accolade worthy of congratulations - a job well done by the whole NewsGator team.

It surprises me, on average, how little seems to be known about the Microsoft Partner landscape. NewsGator is at the Depth Managed level, which doesn’t mean a lot to many because it only applies to about 2-3% of the partners worldwide. Benefits at this level are numerous, and include things like earlier disclosures, inclusions to roadmap meetings with product management and a conduit to executive leadership. This has direct value for NewsGator customers, as they can be confident NewsGator is active in Redmond through the full development cycle. With those benefits of the relationship, there is no overlap of features and NewsGator is ahead of the curve at RTM (release to manufacturing).

Q: When customers are trying to assess the total cost of ownership (TCO) of both NewsGator and SharePoint what recommendations do you offer to help them do this?

Rob: While of course the hard figures are essential to a value computation, I too recommend that customers include the potential for soft and sometimes unquantifiable costs when calculating TCO. This goes back to the overarching SharePoint tenets and stack value proposition. Reduce application silos, reduce administration/management and associated resources/training, and rapidly respond to the needs of the business at all skill levels through common UIs and tools, etc. 

When these types of themes are recognized in reducing TCO, and SharePoint is seen as the vehicle, it will be clear that NewsGator is in alignment with those ideas. As I began to mention before, issues like identity management, duplicate profiles, security trimming, compliance, custom search connectors and ACLs, governance, and integration/development all (should) become cost considerations as you ponder supporting an enterprise need outside of your enterprise investments.

Q: You work closely with customers during implementation – what are you seeing as the more popular use cases for our software?

Rob: Most all customers have a basic social requirement around more transparent, cross-organizational collaboration. Breaking down the walls of emails and distribution lists for better knowledge capture/transfer is of peak interest.  Closely related too, are the explicit and implicit ways to target and mine that expertise.

Onboarding is another one that comes up quite often, and is certainly related to the first. How does a day-one employee jump in and start adding value faster? Equally important, how fast can they feel they are making valuable, visible contributions?

I hear an increased amount of customers who have identified that replicating a functional area of their business is a common process.

Q: If you were talking with a Global 50 company about going social for the first time what would be your first three questions to the prospect?

Rob: I always want to know where a company has been and where they are today, in terms of enterprise applications and how people get their work done. How do people collaborate today? What is the search experience/strategy?  What does content management look like? Answers to questions like these are very informative conversation starters, which lead to more focused questions, and help tremendously in understanding the company profile. What are the key use cases you’ve identified that have pushed a social initiative/imperative? How wi ll you be measuring success?

Q: Any final thoughts for readers on maximizing their SharePoint/NewsGator investment?

Rob: My advice for maximizing the combined investment starts with standalone SharePoint; adhere to deployment best practices. Have the difficult up-front conversations. Understand architectural considerations. Conceptualize the Information Architecture. Write a governance plan; include IT and business stakeholders where possible. Plan for compliance. Have a communication and training plan. Etc. The Social implications always lead back to these core principals, and will directly affect overall uptake and adoption.