Where is interoperability for social media?
A seemingly esoteric question actually turns out to be vital for dealing effectively with the trend toward silos of communication everywhere, from social networks to online communities.
A seemingly esoteric question actually turns out to be vital for dealing effectively with the trend toward silos of communication everywhere, from social networks to online communities.
As part of my recent exploration of developing strategies for using Web 2.0 in the enterprise, I find that time and again the lowly wiki presents itself as the most likely target for the initial adoption in the enterprise. For one thing, almost everyone has heard of a wiki, that Web page that anyone authorized to can edit at the push of a button, all without knowing even a smidgen of HTML.
Noted business and IT forward-thinker John Hagel wrote a detailed piece yesterday about what he calls the "highly dysfunctional gap" between SOA and Web 2.0. And it's true, there are few worlds in the IT industry that seem more opposite from each other, yet are more strangely intertwined, than SOA and Web 2.0. What will happen?
The last few days here at SPARK and MIX 06 have been a miniature version of the whirlwind of forces that are remaking and reshaping the Web today. Setting the stage for the week was SPARK, Microsoft's workshop on the future of software architecture. With an emphasis on the convergence of Web 2.0, Software as a Service (SaaS), and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), the event brought together 28 of the top people in IT architecture to brainstorm about the near-term future direction of software architecture.
An increasing amount of attention is being given to the new Software 2006 Industry Report from the respected Mckinsey and Company (along with the Sandhill group). The report is a high level look at the overall state of the software industry and is chock full of interesting and informative tidbits. You can read it for yourself as they have kindly made it available online in PDF form. Some of information isn't too surprising, namely that we're just now fully recovering from Bubble 1.0 and that software is increasingly moving online. Others are more bold and include...
A pair of excellently written and well-reasoned new posts over the last couple of days have focused on a key issue when weaving pre-existing services together into useful new business applications. The result of doing this is often called a composite application in the "enterprisey" world of service-oriented architecture (SOA). And it's called a mashup in the primarily consumer world of Web 2.0. Regardless of name however, both composite apps and mashups are intended to reduce the overall effort of development, improve functionality, promote data consistency, and increase the net output of useful software.
Peter Rip of Leapfrog Ventures did a really good take recently on what Web 2.0 will look like in the enterprise. I bring your attention to it because it brings out a few essential points and almost makes a few others I think are still missing in the larger industry conversation about Web 2.0 and its increasing push into the enterprise.
My previous post discussed how IBM is planning to use Web 2.0 software like wikis as a foundation upon which to build so-called situational software. These are instant applications which can be assembled just-in-time (and not created from scratch) from the rich pallette of services and feeds available on the Web and in the enterprise. They are situational because they can be created right as the situation they are needed for appears, and even thrown away when the reason for their existence goes away.
I read with interest this morning Gartner's new 2006 Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle which they released earlier today. Of course, I wasn't too terribly surprised to find that Web 2.0 figured prominently at the top of the list. Released yearly, the list identifies and analyzes the most hyped new technology trends. I find the Hype Cycle to be both good reading as well as a useful reality check. The report does make one thing clear; Web 2.0 will have significant business impact in the next half-decade and companies everywhere are having to consider directly how it affects them and their business strategies.
As I read Mitch Ratcliffe's recent rant on change, I really felt myself agreeing with him wholeheartedly, until I got about halfway through. More on that in a moment.