Enterprise 2.0 in 2007
by
Charlie Bess
Dion Hinchcliffe wrote an interesting blog entry on Enterprise 2.0 in 2007. I’ve always had a bit of a problem with the definition of Enterprise 2.0. I wrote a whitepaper from that perspective for an upcoming Cutter Journal on Enterprise 2.0 - I think Enterprise 2.0 is much more than social computing. Hopefully, it will be out soon.
In Dion’s entry he took a much wider view than most that I’d divide into two major categories.
Adoption - Enterprise 2.0 became a reality in 2007
He states that we’re seeing real applications that can be integrated into business applications. I think the SLAs for those apps seem to still be lagging behind though.
Social networks came of age for business with more organizations using them – the backlash of poor usage is coming back to haunt people as well.
Mobile Web applications for business became nearly ubiquitous. Google announced Android, Microsoft has a number of irons in the fire; we’ll see much more integration into business in 2008.
Tooling
The major software firms began to offer Web 2.0 solutions for businesses – he mentions Oracle, IBM and even Microsoft. Almost all the major software (and minor demonstrations) coming out of MS seems to have a Web 2.0 spin on them. As they mature, we should see some real capabilities across the board.
The Web-based user experience is prepared to take a major leap forward – we’ve seen the demonstration capabilities like JavaFX and Silverlight. Those should be just the tip of the iceberg when compared to what happens when people actually using these capabilities in anger.
End-user mashups platforms (e.g., PopFly, Mashup Composer), and widgets are all beginning to show what they can do to disintermediate systems and weave together new capabilities.
User/business-controlled Web identity began to take hold – this is an area of IT where I expect significant progress in 2008, especially when merged with unified communications techniques to provide real context around the state of the individual.
