Balancing Candy and Aspirin
The Goal for Enterprise 2.0

Making candy safe.
Not unlike the introduction of email, Web 2.0 is challenging to the organization and IT. The organization has to deal with a whole new way of communicating, and IT has to make sure that information distributed 2.0-style is in compliance with defined rules and regulations. We have developed a set of best practices to help our customers attain the highest level of success out of a 2.0 initiative, while being sensitive to organizational security, disclosure and privacy issues.

• Take an integrated approach.

Web 2.0 is not a separate initiative; it is the extension of a Web 1.0 strategy and as such it should be tightly integrated in your overall Web and communication strategy. But it is also not an isolated solution and needs to be aligned with an enterprise content management strategy.

• Own and control user networks.

Consumer-centric Web 2.0 knows its users. If you want to participate, you share information, such as your age, gender or status. But this is not acceptable in an Enterprise 2.0 environment. In the business context, 2.0 practices are about knowledge, ideas, expertise and location.

• Network with the ecosystem.

The interconnected network not only incorporates who interacts with whom but also connects what they did. An audit trail of a user connection offers the visibility of transaction entries to protect the organization. For the enterprise, this may not be enough. Organizations require various levels of auditing, some open to all users in the system and some only visible to the users who were involved in the action.

Managing data integrity is another core component of this ecosystem. Content availability is key: a broken connection is synonymous with lost data.

The Social Marketplace
While most Enterprise 2.0 discussions center around the internal aspect, Web 2.0 will (once made safe) blur the lines between internal and external. Customer interaction in sales, marketing, services and support via social networking will build a "social marketplace" that challenges the traditional definitions of inside and outside. Best practices wikis will include content from internal resources and partners; support "hotlines" will move from phone and asynchronous communications into chat and threaded discussions in forums and lead generation and opportunity management will require much more open access to CRM information in project spaces and ad hoc meetings. So how do we move from Web 2.0 to Enterprise 2.0? The following is a preliminary list of requirements for a reliable and secure Enterprise 2.0 scenario:

• Modifying and versioning of any kind of content is essential;
• Include processes and workflow;
• Content to content and user relationships should be the center of any strategy;
• The infrastructure will be mission critical (e.g., 24/7 support);
• It needs to be based on a solid ECM infrastructure; and
• 2.0 applications need to comply with consistent company-wide rules.

By addressing these key areas, many of the Web 2.0 initiatives become safe and viable options for engaging users inside and outside the enterprise. Web 2.0 and social computing have moved beyond their original definition as an online consumer trend. Today, blogs, forums and other Web 2.0 tools have become business communication standards and essential components for successful Web strategies. The opportunities available to companies that benefit from Web-based internal and external collaboration are both numerous and obvious, and choosing to forego these advancements may result in competitive disadvantage, reduced customer loyalty and lackluster brand equity. But addressing "candy and aspirin" within your organization requires planning and enthusiasm for new ways of working. Open Text brings its 17 years of experience in delivering secure Web-based solutions to Web 2.0 innovation and its evolution inside the enterprise.

Open Text and Social Computing: The Content Experts’ Approach
At Open Text, we take an integrated approach on Web 2.0 and social computing. With more than 17 years of expertise in search, collaboration, document management, archiving, records management and Web content management based on some of the most solid platforms in the market, we provide one-stop shopping for an exciting yet safe social computing experience. For any organization to enjoy repeated success with social computing, it must address four things when managing the wide array of content and attempting to deliver it to users in the context of what they are trying to achieve:

1. Offer a user experience with the best Web 2.0 tools that encourages faster, more effective and deeper connections between users, the organization and each other;

2. Provide 2.0 technologies that consumers have come to expect, and deliver them in a managed way so that users see all appropriate content when needed and in turn empower them to make faster and more educated decisions;

3. Have the new social capabilities inject faster, more flexible ways of communicating and capturing an organizations’ knowledge to drive innovation and add agility; and

4. Archive, manage and control all Web 2.0 content to achieve compliance.

Open Text responds to these critical requirements through solutions that offer integration, management and optimization of content delivered to the end user in a compelling user experience—all on top of a secure enterprise content management infrastructure.