Web 2.0 and the Enterprise
posted Friday, 10 February 2006
2006 is turning into quite the year for the convergence of software architecture. And not in a way that's boring or obscure in the least. If fact, what's so compelling is that these changes turn out to be relevant to all of us in our daily lives. As Web 2.0 tenets emphasize, a big part of what we're talking about is a seismic shift of focus in software, in both the large and small, toward putting people and their relationships at the center of our software experiences. This means architectures of participation, social software, making use of collective intelligence, and (unfortunately) many other buzzphrases.There was some necessary teetering of consensus late last year and along with some healthy debate about whether Web 2.0 is a genuine event and is happening around us. Now, along with the blizzard of mashups being released each week, the wave of new innovative software we see all the time on TechCrunch, we now have another new phenomeon. We're now seeing some of the big software firms, the ones with the bandwidth, resources, and a growing motivation, focusing on figuring out the details of how Web 2.0 ideas should feed into the way we should design and build our software. From the tiniest mashups to the the largest commercial Web 2.0 service, there are real principles and powerful viral techniques that can be identified, codified, learned by the community, and put to considerable use.
I wrote recently about getting invited to Microsoft's SPARK conference, a serious attempt at creating a mapping between the great organizing principles in software today: Service-oriented architecture (SOA), Software as a Service (SaaS) and, you guessed, it Web 2.0. Microsoft is suddenly getting a lot of press for these efforts, not the least for publically deciding that Web 2.0 was a important concept to embrace and leverage. Still worried it's a bunch of fluff? Like Microsoft's Alex Barnett says, not hardly.
So let's get down to some interesting details. Enterprises are often struggling just to maintain the massive IT infrastructures they have now, never mind that user needs and expectations are evolving at a faster pace than ever. Something has to give. Fortunately, the greater Web has had to deal with these exact same forces and the huge public stage has forced the invention of a new generation of techniques and ideas to not only take advantage of all this interconnectedness but provide nimble, lightweight ways to build and evolve systems that can actually keep up with the pace of social, business, and technological change. Call this Web 2.0 or something else, but it should be very worrisome for anyone with a traditional IT infrastructure. You cannot throw away what you have and you need to somehow embrace this new world and deliver value to your users. There badly needs to be a bridge built between these two realities.
Part of what Microsoft and many others are doing is realizing that simplicity is back in vogue, and so is the user experience. Managing attention, or lack thereof, has become critical. Finding ways to navigate our way through the onslaught of content we're now subjected to has become a growth industry on the Web. And inside the firewall for that matter. And forget trying to keep your old-world software updated, patched, and your data and media precariously synchronized between your home, work, and family IT systems. We actually have solutions for these now, but they're coming from the new models of software on the Web: Robust, online software and social systems that use mass intelligence and trust to filter informatio. And there are frictionless tools to glue together and bind the together information we need, just when we need it. Solutions abound but adoption and transition will be hard for some.
I do look forward to working with all the folks at SPARK in mid-March to sort out these concepts and identify approaches to bridge, reconcile, and integrate them. A clear roadmap with a nice You Are Here Dot will help the industry enormously as we try to untangle our existing IT systems and processes and embrace the next generation of IT. I hope we can oblige.
Do you think enterprises will really flounder if they don't embrace Web 2.0 ideas?
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Hi Dion,
