Mashups in the Air!

Finally, an application that will allow employees to populate a webpage with services that they feel are useful to the context to their jobs has arrived! The latest article on InformationWeek highlights the release of IBM’s Lotus Mashup Builder, which allows users to build their own mashups on a webpage and share it with the rest of the organization.

IBM has always been an innovator in introducing Web 2.0 tools in the Enterprise, but I think this application takes home the trophy. Employees can embed useful applications like a Google search bar, a Wikipedia page, or any other useful tool. The next step in this process is getting IT folks to understand the business value of mashups in order to include these webpages within a corporate profile. But that is another conversation in itself…

What else is great about this Mashup Builder is that it can track vital information such as who is building/sharing the mashups, the services that are being used, and a lot more. This will definitely show tech laggards that Web 2.0 is here to stay.

IBM seems to be the leader in the mashup biz for now, but I’m sure other giants will soon follow. I have a good feeling about this one…

We’re getting ready to launch a new blog that looks at the broader issues of Enterprise 2.0, add it to your RSS feed now as we get it ready for our official launch:

http://enterprise-3.blogspot.com/

IBM in 2008

The outdated face-to-face meetings with employees will soon be a thing of the past. IBM is rarely seen as an innovator, unlike Google, but the spotlight has definitely put turned around with its plan to roll out Web 2.0 technologies in the upcoming year. The latest article in eWeek shines a light all of these technologies, including IBM Metaverse, which is there virtual reality software.

Mike Ackerbauer, innovation manager for collaboration development at IBM shares his enthusiasm with the future IBM’s future release:

"We'll go beyond showing the flat two-dimensional presentation. Right now the business value is that I can do a presentation in the Metaverse and see all of my team together."

IBM is going beyond Second Life in their attempts to give “business meetings” a new feel. Along with their virtual reality technology IBM also plans to release new mashup services that include employee profiles from their internal Blue Pages directory, graphs that show real time locations of employees, and a relationship chart that shows who works with who and for whom.

In terms of taking Enterprise 2.0 to the next level in 2008, IBM seems to be on the right path. What updates on Web 2.0 applications can we look forward to from your company in the new year?

Are Car Manufacturers Finally Getting it?

There’s no doubt that the German luxury car market is quite competitive; how do you improve efficiency in the enterprise with car giants like BMW, Mercedes Benz, and Audi? The latest article in PressMediaWire describes Audi’s most recent announcement that it would be using a new portal platform based on IBM Websphere Portal in an effort to improve upon collaboration between employees.

All Audi employees also have a single-sign on, and can easily access information they need. This new platform presents individualized information to each employee tailored to their roles within the organization. This makes assigning tasks in the enterprise workplace so much simpler! Sebastian Krause, Vice President of the Software Group in IBM Germany voices his opinion on the matter:

"The new employee portal puts a flexible information and communication platform at the disposal of Audi that allows all business processes to be integrated independently of their respective application platforms. This enables the company to optimize the working, information and knowledge processes that are indispensable to keeping up with the relentless pace of change in today's market."

How long will it take for competitors to follow suit in their collaboration efforts? For now, Audi seems to be standing alone in its efforts to innovate enterprise 2.0 applications, but I’m sure industry giants will begin to play copy cat once it realizes Audi’s success in evolving its portal strategy.

Combining Virtual Worlds and Social Networking

I came across an interesting article on eWeek today highlighting IBM’s newest plan to mash their Second Life virtual reality world with Lotus Connections, which is their social networking platform. Exactly what features from there social networking platform is IBM looking to fuse with virtual worlds? IBM’s programmers are currently working on creating avatars on Second Life that are able to display content from their respective Lotus Connections profile. In other words, you’ll be able to view their skills, projects they’ve worked on in the past, experience, and possibly their blogs exposed somewhere in the virtual city.

Even though Second Life provides a great visual and is far more immersive than Facebook, is it appropriate for the Enterprise workplace? After all, the main purpose of this fusion is to improve on collaboration therefore executing tasks at a much quicker pace. Gartner analyst Adam Sarner makes an interesting comparison:

"If I want to buy a car or somebody I know comes down with a medical condition, I'm not going to go into a virtual world and ask other people their experiences. Text is a perfect tool to go in and get other opinions."

There’s no doubt that within the next couple of years organizations will invest heavily on building virtual reality platforms. Does this merge fit in with your enterprise needs?

IBM Walking the Walk, Talking the Talk

Came across this video post at Redmonk, its a video clip discussion with Anant Jhingran of IBM about their own use of Web 2.0 in the enterprise. Hope you find it interesting.

Small Vendors Have an Advantage on Enterprise 2.0

Huge corporations such as IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle are being left in the dust in regards to Enterprise 2.0 applications. Smaller vendors are developing far more innovative technology with quicker release cycles. That is the main focus in Jon Brodkin’s blog on NetworkWorld. Rob Koplowitz, analyst at Forrester, has this clear-cut view on what’s happening with this race:

“Right now I’m seeing a clear preference toward smaller vendors. Generally speaking the big vendors are playing catch up and the big vendors have a deployment model that is not very attractive.”

Smaller companies offer quicker deployment, usually through SaaS. When will bigger companies begin to follow their rivals’ success strategies? Even though there is progress in the offerings these large vendors have for knowledge management, CMS, and collaboration, they often lack the ability to deploy and customize their solutions as quickly and easily as many of their clients require. These longer deployment cycles are preventing innovation in IBM, SAP, and Oracle, which may slow down their ability to deliver Enterprise 2.0 applications. Clearly, smaller vendors have the upper hand in this situation for now, but can we really count these larger vendors far behind, and who knows for how long?

Creating the Bridge, and Keeping it Safe

Seems there is a lot in technology news outlets looking at the convergence of Web 2.0 and its infiltration of the Enterprise. Some of it reads as a Sci-Fi thriller, where a traditional society is threatened from within by young collaborators who undermine the status quo. But when you think back about change and its impact on how a business is run, how it does things; well, sometimes it does have an interesting parallel to popular fiction.

There are so many points being discussed about the changing Enterprise and the impact from Web 2.0, incredibly what you read is the inevitability of it; younger employees clamor for effective tools similar to what they find externally. They crave collaboration, and having those tools that allows them to shape information as they need only helps the bottom line. That is the overall premise in an article from Network World with various experts citing examples of such use today. I particularly like David Boloker, CTO of emerging Internet technologies at IBM, example:

…the Bloomberg.com trading application, for example, is a mash-up already deployed for business purposes that makes the trader merely "a masher-up of information,” he says.

That may be the case but the trader might have a thought or two on this description. Nevertheless, the overall point one has to concede is that individual employees are constantly seeking information in forms that often their business is not able to provide, or often willing. The traditional perspective is that an application is done to do a particular job and an employee should use it that way. But in an Enterprise 2.0 strategy, the opportunity is presented that allows employees to take various information streams and create the combinations they need in order to generate a result – ideally.

Because such mashups can result in a myriad of information exchanges, businesses have to be worried about how to keep some controls in place. Boloker goes on to say

Specifications for securing mash-ups, as well as accessing and collecting widgets on a single Web page, could come as soon as the first quarter of 2008, Boloker says. Enterprises might welcome the speed because adoption of Web 2.0 could force them to reevaluate their security policies and practices…

A hint of things to come from IBM…possibly, but in the end, I think Boloker is hinting at that inevitability; that clients of companies such as IBM are now realizing the need of such a strategy, and are keen to get solutions in place. Therefore, it’s a mad dash to create the right solution that can meet that need as quickly as possibly. The next few months will certainly be an interesting time when we’ll see new solutions and offerings enter the market to meet this unrequited need.