Enterprise Web 2.0

I don't usually use this medium to comment directly on others' posts, but today I read Dion Hinchcliffe's most recent post and I have to bring it to your attention. If you have been following the pre- and post- Web 2.0 conference chatter, you know that two ideas have been circulating. One idea is Web 2.0 is a set of technologies that enable "social computing" or "participative computing" in a number of forms. The other point of view is that Web 2.0 is nothing more than an incremental refinement and that reading more into it is wishful thinking. (The investment corollaries are Big Trend or Big Bubble).

Myself, I have been of two minds about the concept of Web 2.0. I see substantive changes in technology and methodologies for developing Web applications. But I have always been troubled by the populist "empowerment" sub-theme that is used to define Web 2.0. I don't buy into the wisdom of crowds as axiomatic. I buy into the power of incentives, both tangible and intangible. Sometimes a crowd has the right incentives; sometimes it doesn't.

Computing architectures and social impact are separable concepts. While computing informs social interaction, and vice versa, to define a Web 2.0 app by its reliance upon or enablement of the users seems to politicize technology. The PC gave computing independence to the worker, but "personal empowerment" wasn't an attribute to define what was a PC app and what wasn't. PC apps ran on PCs - by definition.

Dion's post does an excellent job of really placing Web 2.0 technologies into a larger technological context, without the user consequences being part of the definition. He does a much more articulate job of saying what I have been thinking for a while. Web 2.0 is a lighter weight version of SOA. RSS/REST is the new EAI.

Today's Enterprise IT budgets continue to be largely defined by the consolidation happening in the legacy software businesses. Over the next 24 months I think we will see are a lot of IT folks doing heavy lifting with legacy apps by day and playing with lightweight Web 2.0 technologies by night. The innovation at the edge is going to wash into the Enterprise. And when it does, we're going to see IT Departments finally see a platform shift worth making. The potential losers are the legacy vendors with their 'software mainframes.' The winners will be the companies that package componentized functionality with light, maybe even non-procedural, methods of stitching together flexible Web applications quickly.

To paraphrase Marx and Engels, there is a spectre haunting the Enterprise. It is the spectre of Web 2.0. (Maybe I shouldn't have been so quick to throw out the politicization effect of Web 2.0 after all....)

Comments

[Daniel Nerezov]

Great post!

I appreciate your idea for not reading too much into Web 2.0

From my perspective, it's just yo get to the first Web based operating system (Web OS). I really don't see more to it.

Web OS is going to work with apps like Writely, the data is going to be stored remotely (i.e you can access your hard drives from anywhere), all of the services will be accessible through something like Meebo, and people's computers will more productive and better resemble their identities for all the social networking, collaboration and tagging that's gonna happen around this Web OS.

Of course there are problems! There are heaps of issues to still get worked out...but at the end of the day, this is one race I wanna bet on, because there are going to emerge new winners, new leaders, the quality and quantity of online services is going to improve exponentially because of greater competition- and all this adds up to business and consumer customers getting a better deal.

Just my $.02

[Daniel Nerezov]

oops,

"yo get to" = "a race to get to"

[Simon Brocklehurst]

I have a problem here! The use of terms like Web 2.0, SOA, "software mainframes" "legacy apps", "lightweight web technologies" obfuscates your message (at least for me it does). I'm genuninely not sure what you *mean* by some of these terms, and what you're trying to say.

Rather than talking in generalities about SOA, Web 2.0 technologies and "software mainframes", why not be specific? It's not like there are that many software technologies out there.

Are you suggesting that there is some wave of innovation going on in software technology at the moment? And that these innovations will somehow enable Enterprise IT departments to make massive productivity gains in development of business systems?

If so, I think it would be helpful to explain specifically how the newer technologies are more powerful than the old. And for these explanations to be framed in the context of solving real-world business problems (not in the context of building trivial toy applications).

[Rafael Bracho]

I too read Dion's blog and found it just as interesting. I understand the skepticism expressed by Simon: We're talking about real-world applications, not mash-ups that don't affect anybody when they don't run. Hey, what's wrong with having to click again in housingmaps.com?

But your interpretation of Dion's posting is absolutely correct. And, Simon, here's a concrete example example of what will happen: To effectively use web services, the sequencing of using them will have to be done outside of those services.

This, by analogy to the file server and even the application server, will lead to a new class of server: the sequence server.

Nobody will want to re-do the sequencing of using the web services in the right order, with the right redundancy, etc., in each one of their applications. (This is akin to how in the old days people didn't want to code-in retrieving files over the network or all the ancillary tasks required to use a web server as a holder of "application logic.")

The sequence server will encapsulate all the ugliness that for simple two-site mash-ups is now being done in JavaScript. It will also hide the complexity of using the miriad of interfaces that SAP exposes via Netweaver, or interfacing salesforce.com to the enterprise's back office.

The sequence server is the bridge that will finally allow the web 2.0 and the enterprise IT communities to co-exist. It will bring back the fun part to IT programming, it will enable fast development of web 2.0 mash-ups that are scalable and maintainable (has anyone seen the hoops housingmaps.com jumps to, in order to pretend to be a "simple mash-up"?).

Finally, nobody will want to program the sequence server, it would just move the complexity from the application to somewhere else. The sequence server must be configured not programmed. This is in line with your comment about a declarative way to make use of services, it's the only logical way to move forward.

Of course, this is just my opinion… ;-)

[Vaibhav Domkundwar - WebVapors]

Peter:

This is a great post. I guess (reading the comments) there are multiple interpretations and thoughts around the evolution.

Coming from enterprise software (apps) background, I do feel that a significant change is necessary at the application interface and componentization level. For example: Do sales guys really like to open a enterprise SFA application to update every lead activity? Forget client-server apps, sales reps find it tough to maintain data even on Salesforce.com, which is growing into a huge pile of confusing features which just drives away the users.

What IF - the sales folks had a nifty lead management application component that (1) is focused on their "process" and doesn't have 100 extra tabs for things they don't care (2) has AJAX-powered interface which reduces lead-activity-update from a 10screen-20clicks process into a 3click one. (3) allows them to push data to whatever enterprise system on an on-demand basis.

Such simple process-centric application components, powered by the so-called Web2.0 technologies, can bring a great amount of change in enterprise applications. Every user sees and works with a focussed process application, that is quick to build and easy to use. This essentially can be a transition for enterprise applications from the legacy world to the enterprise web2.0 world - where we will see small components woven together as required, rather than bulky enterprise applications.

Just my 2 cents.

[James]

It is already happening in many enterprises but not in the form you think...

http://duckdown.blogspot.com