Broadening the Enterprise 2.0 remit with mashups
June 24th, 2007
InfoQ has a great presentation Mash-ups Meet the Enterprise by Rodney Smith at IBM discussing the application of web2.0 technologies within the corporate firewall. This is nothing new and has been an explosive topic since my post in February 2006 Enterprise 2.0
What is interesting are the areas beyond the typical talk of Enterprise blogs and Wikis and taking about the “personal mash-up” which relates to my first and second points of Enterprise 2.0
- Delivering all off the company information as addressable discoverable sources.
- Allow custom mash-ups of this information on a user-by-user basis
It’s the second point which Rodney Smtih is talking about. The ability for all users in the Enterprise to create their own mash-ups of corporate and web data and deliver the information they need independent of a companies IT departments. A so called “do-it-yourself” IT or Enterprise Mash-up.
Rodney Smith also talks about making your corporate information “mashable” which relates to my first point of addressable discoverable sources.
I think software like this is appearing on the larger web and will move swiftly into the Enterprise. Sites such as Yahoo pipes and Ning.
The problem with these kinds of user created applications is the likely backlash from corporate IT departments who are used to gate-keeping this kind of development. Instead IT needs to focus on the problems which need to be solved to create this kind of environment. This would include middleware and identity services.
So does this fall-in Andrew McAfee’s definition of Enterprise 2.0?
“Enterprise 2.0 is the use of emergent social software platforms within companies, or between companies and their partners or customers.”
The answer. Absolutely. Social software platforms is not limited to blogs, wiki’s and friends networks but a few more ranging remit. I like McAfee’s definition, it doesn’t try to be all inclusive but does focus the term more clearly than the scatter-gun that is web 2.0. The personal mashup will be the use of a social software platform.
Enterprise2.0
February 20th, 2006
So we know about Web2.0 and how it is/going to revolutionise the internet. But what about the company Enterprise, what does this mean to users in your organisation? to your IT team? to your extended enterprise, suppliers and consumers?
Currently the next-generation web has all been on customer focus and exploiting the “long tail” of small business. This is where it starts but it won’t be long before the next-generation web moves internally and we start talking Intranet2.0 and Enterprise2.0
After all what is IT except exposing company information to employees, customers and suppliers to deliver competitive advantage.
So what is Enterprise2.0 going to be about?
Well i’d hazard this. Enterprise2.0 will be about:
- Delivering all off the company information as addressable discoverable sources.
- Allow custom mash-ups of this information on a user-by-user basis
- Identity services will stretch across this information seamlessly
- Rich dynamic user interfaces for employees powered by Flash and AJAX
- Customised RSS feeds delivered to desktops
- Low integration price points delivered by extremely losely coupled services
- Custom business processes applications continuely developed in low-cost technology such as RoR accessing consolidated data services
- Unstructured information dissected by collaboration and social services such as tagging
- Data exposure of all employees thinking and analytic environment through eventing and blog integrations.
and probably everything i havn’t thought of.
I think the first step is the use of RSS in the Enterprise. Imagine all the contacts and leads in a CRM delivered to Outlook 12 and managed through SSE, it won’t matter if your CRM is internal or a hosted solution. The SSE/SLX exensions is going to be big for creating an integrated Enterprise2Desktop and someone will make a lot of money for someone creating a SSE-bus to existing Enterprise applications.