Although evaluating 10 leading IT communities based on 490 criteria was a bit of a slog (and pencils out to looking for and scoring 4,900 types of content, features and capabilities, plus another 320 usability metrics), we did have some fun during the process.  While Kenna did the deep diving wearing her “power user” hat, I took a tour through every community with my “lurker beanie” on. The point of the exercise was to see how these communities look to visitors who are looking around to see if they want to join the party versus what’s actually delivered once you’ve married into the family.

It was a bit of a lark, to be sure. And like many of our larks, it delivered some interesting results.

To see why, take a peek at this graph that illustrates how the communities operated by seven leading IT companies fare based on 32 usability metrics.

First, the good news. SAP and Citrix deliver pretty much what is expected. The bad news for Citrix is that, at a 54% usability score, its community doesn’t look very usable – and it isn’t. At the other end of the spectrum, SAP’s communities appear to be the most usable – and (dismal look and feel aside) they are.

Next, let’s look at the sites that exceeded expectations. That would be Dell. My tour of the community delivered Dell an average 69.1% usability score. At 70.8%, Kenna’s power drive says that Dell’s communities actually deliver slightly more than expected.

This leaves us with the communities that are like an unfortunate blind date. Among these, EMC and Oracle fared worst.

My tour of EMC’s communities delivered good, but not great, usability results (62.4%), but Kenna’s deep dive shows that once you get past the flash, this community is almost unusable.

Oracle also seemed to be a reasonably usable venue if you are just lurking around, and my usability scores averaged out to 60.8%. By the time Kenna finished rambling through the site’s inconsistent behaviors and technical problems, she thought 54% was a gift.