Why Isn't Enterprise 2.0 in the Wikipedia?
The result? Stale knowledge management and intranet projects that suffer from the rigidity of central planning are replaced by the vibrancy of a marketplace of collaboration. At least that’s the early prognosis, though there aren’t many case studies yet to prove it out.
From Middleware to Mashups
The Enterprise 1.0 IT landscape is characterized by silos and middleware. Applications like ERP and CRM systems automate some business processes, and as a compromise, the business trades away some flexibility, allowing a silo to form. When you want to bridge silos, like connecting CRM and ERP, a common approach is for IT consultants to create custom middleware to bind them. These projects require a significant investment, and so pragmatically, IT manages toward maintaining a few applications with many users each.
Jhingran sees the enterprise mashup as the next step in this evolution. Supplementing the status quo, he sees a long tail of “situational applications”: many applications with a few users each. He gives the example of an insurance analyst after a storm that might have the quick need to mashup data he holds in Excel with an elevation map he finds on a website. As with McAfee’s vision, the key to this mass customization is in ending the need for central planning.
How do we get there? To Jhingran, the key is “Information 2.0,” which comes when we separate application logic from data. Once data is no longer captive to a silo or a workflow, it loans itself easily
to a mashup, given SOA and accessible interface tools.
This slips the trap of the IT bottlenecks that currently block the long tail of enterprise applications. Is it feasible? The vision of analysts building their own applications is ambitious, given the current low rates at which anyone changes a default. But it’s a victory even if only IT were the ones making enterprise mashups, attempting projects they never would if middleware were required.
McAfee says his definition of Enterprise 2.0 “is explicitly NOT about development models or delivery methods, and it’s only about a small set of technologies that are visible to end users” like tags, but not SOA. In other words, most of Jhingran’s vision is excluded. Why? McAfee feels this is an orthogonal discussion for CTOs and CIOs. He thinks that business owners will be the agents of change, and sees a risk that talk of delivery methods will spook them.
The Role of an Information Access Platform in 2.0
Endeca’s internal operations are an early case on Enterprise 2.0 in action. We use our own Endeca Information Access Platform to create new kinds of social collaboration, per McAfee, and new kinds of “situational applications,” per Jhingran. How? Let’s unpack the elements of the Information Access Platform.
“Information access” takes chaotic real-world content and helps ordinary people discover its value. It fulfills the double uncertainty that users can’t know in advance how to find something they don’t already know exists, while enterprises must help them find it without being able to know how users will go about looking.
In McAfee’s SLATES parlance, information access provides search and discovery, links, tags, extensions, signals and other tools that connect people to information. It readily complements other elements of collaboration, like blogs and wikis. And its sheer effectiveness is one of the keys to sparking emergent collaboration.
Jhingran is right that you can’t divorce features and platform; the architecture matters. It supports extensive use of SOA, AJAX, RSS and data-driven elements. Jhingran is also right that the information model used is key. Endeca’s data model, a faceted data model that is effectively self descriptive, makes it possible to find relationships across chaotic, real-world content. In essence, the platform preserves a separation of application logic and information, which is the fuel for mashups.
There is also the predicted emergence of new “situational applications.” We continue to rely on internal silos like CRM and ERP. But our IT department also rapidly turns out new kinds of applications they would never attempt if they needed to rely on middleware. For example, mashup Salesforce.com and account notes in Documentum eRoom while integrating with existing security parameters and we quickly have a new forecasting application.
So is Enterprise 2.0 about platform, features, information or behavior? It’s about emergence—a large change in social behavior that arises from changes to the effectiveness of new tools. It’s about workers changing how they collaborate and find information. And it’s also about a fascinating change in IT productivity on new platforms, and the new classes of “long tail” applications that were never before possible. Ultimately, it’s about better informed decision-making for ever smaller decisions.
Endeca, (
www.endeca.com) headquartered in Cambridge, MA, is a next-generation information access company uniting the ease of search with the analytical power of business intelligence. The Endeca Information Access Platform combines patented intellectual property, breakthrough science and a deep focus on user experience to help people find, analyze and understand information in ways never before possible. Leading global organizations like ABN AMRO, Boeing and Cox Newspapers rely on Endeca to increase revenue, reduce costs and streamline operations through better information access.
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