Web 2.0 is a good proposition for changing the way knowledge workers collaborate. But in order for this to happen Web 2.0 tools must be seamlessly integrated to existing productivity toolsets and furthermore to Enterprise Systems.

The challenges Web 2.0 bring are related the lack of integration to existing tools and systems used in a daily basis in the enterprise. I recently started a collaboration topic with my coworkers at BSG. We started a discussion on what our Wiki platform really needs to be a more robust solution and our collaboration needs. We touched on very specific features, technologies, approaches and even support requirements. What was obvious during this discussion is that a Wiki is a good collaboration platform but is not complete. A Wiki is part of a much bigger integrated collaboration solution. If we want it to change the way we work in the Enterprise we must find ways to better integrate it to existing systems.

In the Enterprise we find ERP systems, custom developed systems, messaging systems and hundreds of little silos of information in the form of documents, spreadsheets, and departmental applications. My opinion is that a collaboration platform will provide advantages to the enterprise if we can use it seamlessly to bring the business processes, decision making information and collective knowledge together in an easy to use well integrated platform.

In our internal discussion I started a wish list for a collaboration platform and curiously enough I mentioned that I would like to post to my blog using whatever productivity tool (read as Word Processor). In my case I am using MS Word 2007 and recently discovered that I can create a new Blog Post in addition to editing, reviewing, check spelling and doing everything else that I am familiar with on the Word platform. Most important at the end I can just push the button and publish the entry. As a matter of fact I am creating this blog entry using MS Word 2007. I did not have to spend time learning to use the awkward blog entry editors or get frustrated with the “back” button on the browser and losing all my content. This is a good example on how an integrated collaboration platform can really make a difference. We should be able to leverage what we know how to use in order to make it easier to participate in this new paradigm of collaboration.

In the near future I will explore other Web 2.0 paradigms, technologies and how I envision a well integrated collaborative platform that invovles Web 2.0 and Enterprise Systems.

I am sure you are familiar with the Hype Cycle graphs . This graph has been used by Gartner since 1995 to characterize the over-enthusiasm or “hype” and subsequent disappointment that typically happen with the introduction of new technologies. I have followed multiple technologies thru the cycle and lived through several of these cycles myself. I lived thru the hype cycles of Client/Server, Data warehouses, and even the internet among other technologies.

Web 2.0 is no different. I believe we are currently living in the “Web2.0mania” which is the Peak of Inflated Expectations. Some of us have probably experienced some disillusionment with some of these Web 2.0 participants such as Wikis. Honestly, wikis are a good way to collaborate, but in order for these to catch on fire in the enterprise these need to provide sufficient governance without stifling collaboration. I have heard from multiple IT Managers and Directors that would like to make sense out of all the information contributed by the users by the use of blogs, wikis and other collaboration sites. They all wish they had provided enough guidance on how to use these platforms in order to harvest the collective intelligence and make it easily accessible to anyone in the organization. They are now tyring to provide a structure for enterprise collaboration.

I see us coming out of this disillusionment phase with an enhanced Web 2.0 offering portfolio. We will go thru the “slope of enlightenment” and finally reap all the benefits of this new wave of technologies and paradigms. I see wikis being enhanced and better integrated to existing systems, directories and other enterprise resources. Even twitter could be used in a real business scenario and not just to let your coworkers know that you are eating a burrito and the effects that it had on your stomach.

As we experience these phases in the cycle, we have to look for potential business / enterprise uses for Web 2.0 technologies, services and paradigms. We will see about twitter, but for the most part I agree with the TIC in that many of the Web 2.0 players are worth exploring for potential business use.

I am looking forward to the last and most important phase of the hype cycle when these technologies will become stable and evolve into a truly integrated enterprise collaboration platform.

Today I was thinking about game changing aspects of the Web 2.0 wave. I think that there are two aspects to Web 2.0 that are game changing: the way people interact and the underlying technology. The collaboration culture resulting out of this social computing age is definitely an improvement to what we had last decade. Lotus Notes and document management tools allowed us to collaborate in a clunky and not too effective way. We are starting to experience more freedeom in collaboration that allows us to collect structured and unustructured information.

On the technology aspects I think the Rich Internet Application (RIA) is the most significant and game changing technology aspect of this wave. it has been attempted in the past but today there are promising technologies that allows for very rich applications to be deployed via the browser. I have observed the jump from Desktop to the Web and back to the Desktop. Is this a jump back to the Web? Well, I think that with RIAs we have real options to deploy on the platform that most makes sense based on the requirements. It’s about the freedom to collaborate and the freedom to deploy.

There is a trend that is part of this Web 2.0 wave. There are quite a few number of companies that are providing ways for users to create their own applications by aggregation. Many of these new offering are enabled by AJAX and RIA style apps.

New players are starting to appear in the aggregator and manipulator space. Two players in this space are Pipes and Popfly. These both share the same concept of allowing anyone to mashup online data. Online communities along with the service make it easy to collaborate, rate and test components created by other community members. I will not be long until we see more players in the widget creation space. This will provide an ecosystem that will provide more options to integrate into online applications.

On the Enterprise side we can not ignore what is happening with the AppExchange which provides for a platform to find, test and install On-Demand applications pre-integrated into Salesforce.

Is this the new way to build applications? You bet! The trend can not be ignored. Software as a Service is and will continue to be seriously considered by the enterprise and composite applications have been build in the enterprise for a few years now.

Many of the new ways to bulid and share applications guide the users and developers to build discrete services that can be plugged into a larger service or can be used to create a composite application.

I see a lot of information referencing Web and Enterprise 2.0. For the most part these reference do not discriminate between technology and human factors. I wanted to share my ideas on something that I have noticed in this space. Web 2.0 comprises to facets: the user-driven collaborative component and the technology enabling component. Web 2.0 is actually both a paradigm and technology.

As I was getting ready to write about this I joined a group in Facebook, and in this group I saw a few interesting diagrams. These diagrams led me to JackBe’s blog. There I found that they propose the same thing that I am discussing in this blog entry. On another note I also saw that JackBe and Nexaweb present themselves as Enterprise Web 2.0 Solutions. Is Enterprise Web 2.0 different from Enterprise 2.0? The answer is actually related to the facets that I am describing in this blog entry. Part 2 of this series will cover that, but today I will focus on Web 2.0.

Web 2.0

Mainly focused on social computing, this is a user driven collaboration paradigm. Users assemble and organize themselves and work in partnership with a common goal in mind. Wikis, social networking, blogs are the common tools that enable users to participate in the Web 2.0 user-driven paradigm.

Web 2.0 technology

Technology that makes possible this user-driven paradigm. Many of these technologies are not new but are now being accepted by a wider development audience. Many of these are based on standards such as XML. In these technologies we can mention Mashups, SOA, Web Services, REST based Services, AJAX among others.

In part 2 of this series of I will discuss the Web 2.0 facets in the Enterprise and how I see these enhancing the collaboration and integration possiblities between line of business applications and knowledge workers to create what I call an Enterprise collaboration platform.

I have been back from vacation for over a week and still trying to catch up with the many things that I placed on-hold during that time. Finally the time slice goes to finishing the second part of the "web and Enterprise 2.0 technology or paradigm" posting.

To refresh your memory, in part 1 I discussed the two forces in the Web 2.0 space, the paradigm and the technology. As I continue to explore more on the potential use of web 2.0 in the enterprise it becomes obvious that these two should be identified as two different forces because these must be managed separately if you map these to an organization's Enterprise Architecture.

So, when it comes to the Enterprise 2.0, the term has been defined as the adoption of Web 2.0 in the enterprise. The adoption of what? The paradigm and styles I would say. Enterprise 2.0 is the result of the collaborative paradigm shift. It is the creation and adoption of the architecture of participation.

On the technology front, Enterprise Web 2.0 is the convergence of technology with legacy systems in the Enterprise. The goal is to create an architecture of partition.

The Enterprise Web 2.0 solutions provide a level of robustness that is not available in the plain Web 2.0 technology enables. Many of these EW2.0 tools actually build on top of web 2.0 technology approaches such as AJAX and mashups. But they add real business value to the enterprise. For example the mashup that the public is familiar with is the typical HTML mashup. Hundreds of mashups are created every day that bring information from multiple sources and "mash it up" on top of google maps or MS Virtual Earth. Although I see some of these adding some value to the enterprise, the real value is realized when we can provide a platform for users and developers to create, deploy and manage mashup services as reusable components and compose new applications by aggregating new data sources and existing mashup components. In the context of the enterprise we have Line of Business applications, Business Intelligence sources, real time feeds, ERP systems, departmental applications, document management solutions, and many other potential sources of information. Some of these Enterprise Web 2.0 solutions companies are providing the platform to manage innovation via mashup servers.

Some of the players in the EW2.0 area are Active Grid, Nexaweb, Laszlo and JackBe to mention a few.

Another example of Enterprise 2.0 enabled via Enterprise Web 2.0 technologies are convergence portals. With hundreds of options out there for enterprise messaging, voice, data, collaboration, etc… we end up with a very disparate set of tools that provide a fractured collaboration strategy. There is not a single place where you can manage and customize your communications and collaboration. Many vendors are catching on to this. ISPs are starting to provide a rich user interface to their users to allow them to organize the information they care to read. Many of these are built on webtop like products that provide a great framework for rich internet applications and even nicer user experience.

As I continue to explore many of the elements in Web 2.0 I will continue posting about how I can see these being used in the enterprise. I just signed up with my own account for technorati, del.icio.us and twitter. I will be looking at how social tagging and micro-blogging can be used in a work environment. So far what I can tell you in twitter is that it all depends on the content and integration. I am also kicking the tires on some of these APIs and their REST style services. Look for future postings on these.

According to recent reports malicious websites are being created and existing sites are being compromised at an alarming rate. It appears that with e-mail counter measures becoming more wide spread hackers are turning to web pages as a quick and easy method to spread viruses and malicious code. For updated news on malicious web sites see the Tech-Army.org discussion thread.

My wife and I have been big Guild Wars fans for over a year now. We spend at least a few hours every week improving our characters, helping friends, farming for drops or skills, and in general have always enjoyed the game. However last night once we hooked up a new Dell 24″ LCD to my wife’s computer I can see the game could be a lot more entertaining. The 24″ wide screen display running at 1920 x 1200 is absolutely stunning in the game. No more worries about using valuable screen space for hero skill bars, or other dialog boxes. With this monitor sitting next to me i could hardly keep my eyes on my own 19″ screen. If any of you have been thinking about an upgrade I can highly recommend the Dell 2407FPW. For an in-depth review of 24″ LCD displays see this PcWorld page which currently has the Dell in first place.

It is hard to imagine that you would actually help your Security Cameras by lowering the light but an article on www.camerasecuritynow.com says exactly that. Apparently with today’s technology that allows a camera to see in low light it’s better to have an evenly spread light level than it is to use a few high powered spot lights that just blast a particular area with light and leave the fringes in the dark. Though with the use of wide dynamic cameras this problem could be overcome it would be much better to put some time and thought into your lighting situation up front. Then of course just use the best Day/Night camera you can afford or is the most cost appropriate for the project. Vist the source of this article to read more about CCTV Security Camera Lighting.

Not sure who would name their kid “Vista” but one thing I know is this kid is still an infant. An infant I would like to pop on the bottom for sure but an infant with a lot of hope and promise. An interesting forum I came across the other day was a Vista 6 month report card. If you want to see more of my opinion on this unruly infant stop over and join in.