Presentation held at the annual Plone conference, Oct 2009, Budapast about the introduction of Plone as an attractive & secure alternative document retrieval system. For those of you using Apple App Keynote a Zip file is attached as well.

1. Getting Plone introduced into
large scale business operations
A “New to Plone” Talk
Peter Breithaupt
N.V. Nederlandse Gasunie
CEO WedgeMatch, BioBench & Vertogas

2. Who’s talking?
Peter Breithaupt
Ph.D. combustion engineering
business development for
renewable energy and energy
efficiency service companies
executing merger & acquistions
in the gas industry
entrepeneur: developing new
web-based services for
renewable energy ventures
“very” new to Plone!

3. length of pipeline network:
14,600 km
yearly transport volumes:
126 billion m³
number of employees:
1,730
yearly revenues:
ca. € 1.7 billlion
asset growth 2007-08:
ca. 40%
including assets under construction
Who is Gasunie?
Continental Europe’s largest independent natural
gas transport company

4. Provide a
storyline for
using Plone
Outline an implementation
strategy which creates
endorsement by creating
an “epidemic” using smart
business experiments

5. A typical IT landscape of a
gas infrastructure company
Hardware Applications
Entire infrastructure SCADA proprietary
outsourced to “blue
Billing proprietary
chip service provider”
SAP Oil & Gas
Server park largely
Microsoft-based Microsoft Exchange
Closed network Microsoft Desktop

6. Current state of IT-systems?
The “Not Invented Here” and “Cover Your Ass”
syndromes have created lots of risks and costs!

7. Can Open-Source help?
Gartner (February 2008)
“By 2012, 80 per cent of all commercial software will
include elements of open-source technology”
“Many open-source technologies are mature, stable
and well supported”
“Ignoring this (rem: open source) will put companies
at a serious competitive disadvantage.”

8. So why are we not using it?
The open-source conundrum is kept alive by
both, the “hardcore” OSS community and
commercial software vendors.

9. A lesson learnt:
Avoid direct confrontation with the
“corporate IT establishment”.

10. Instead,
outsmart the
“bulls”.
Our approach:
Introduce the concept
of executing smart
business experiments
to penetrate innovation
into business operations.

11. The idea of the tipping point
The Tipping Point is that dramatic moment when
little causes drive the unexpected to become
expected and propel the idea of radical change to
certain acceptance.
The Tipping point (an epidemic) is a function of:
The Law of the Few: A tiny percentage of
people do the majority of the work to build
momentum.
The Stickiness Factor: Stickiness means that
a message makes an impact – it’s memorable.
The Power of Context: Human beings are a lot
source: Malcolm Gladwell, more sensitive to their environment than they
The tipping point, Little Brown, 2000 seem.

12. What are smart business
experiments? source: Harvard Business Review,
February, 2009
Too many commercial software solution initiatives are
launched on “a wing and a prayer” - despite that it’s now
reasonable to expect truly valid tests.
With small investment in training, readily available software,
and the right encouragement, an organization can build a “test
and learn” capability.
Companies that equip managers to perform small-scale, yet
rigorous experiments don’t only save themselves from
expensive mistakes - they also make it more likely that great
ideas will see the day of light.

13. What was our
problem?
Rapid growth has generated
lots of documentation and
focus on external business
networks.
Urgent need to provide a
safe platform to
store, search & share
information with the
outside world.

14. The corporate IT solution
Microsoft SharePoint Corporate project
management
Imbedded in corporate
IT system 10 “ICT managers” involved
complex & customised
Not accessible for
external parties Turn-around time more than
6 weeks
Lousy search High costs
functionality
(remedy: higher costs) Customer lock-in

15. The corporate IT solution

16. What we really wanted ...
Search, Search, Search
Finding documents back is more
important than a “smart” folder
structure!
Secure & Safe access every time &
everywhere
Services which allow rapid upload of
data from other mass storages,
such like CD’s.
But above all, we wanted to create an epidemic!

17. What we really wanted ...
Search, Search, Search
Finding documents back is more
important than a “smart” folder
structure!
Secure & Safe access every time &
everywhere
Services which allow rapid upload of
data from other mass storages,
such like CD’s.
But above all, we wanted to create an epidemic!

18. A lopsided comparison
Goldmund,
ICT project
Sharepoint Plone Wyldebeast &
management
Wunderliebe
poor,
Search high costs
best in class
proven
Secure & Safe bad track record security
distributed, single-point,
Services non-core activity core offering
Speed months days
at least
Costs 5 to 10 times higher than Plone

19. Setting up the scene for the
smart business experiment
Product

20. Setting up the scene for the
smart business experiment
Contracts
Product

21. Setting up the scene for the
smart business experiment
Contracts
Documentation
Product
Training
Platform
Services
Create single point Outsource entire
responsibility. service.

22. Then secure the project
against corporate hi-jackers
Set-up very strict
governance guidelines
Mirror single point responsibility
in your organisation!
No customisation!
Standard Plone interface!!!!!!!
Training mandatory!
All additional services to be
agreed in
Service Level Agreements!

23. What have we achieved...
Sep.’08 Oct.’08
GTKY governance CMS system
guidelines operational
3 days Google “look”
1 3 10
3 days to service level
proof-of concept agreements
with real documents create
tipping point
1st Plone add OCR search function
user day functionality drives further interest
70 12 40 5 20 2
2nd
rapid growth of
application
portals
Nov.’09 Aug.’09 Mar.’09 Feb.’09
No. of Plone portals
No. of Users

24. So why did it work?
The tipping point
Law of the Few: Some “Mavens” started the project
Stickiness Factor: Google “look” & superior search functionality
Power of Context: Sense of urgency to store documentation
Smart business experiment
Low-cost (simple & standard)
All-in-one service provision by partner company
Rigourous safeguarding of portal application

25. And finally:
Always
celebrate!
Success has many
fathers and mothers.