I am sure that Web 2.0 is a jargon that is living its own place and fame for now. It is no more mere marketing gimmick that web entrepreneurs were selling to its investors and venture capitalists.

In the first place some small players came with their own creative applications for Web 2.0. I will call this Web 2.0A age or rather Web 2.0.1 beta. Such applications then got popularity among users and created a news in web world. That was public version of Web 2.0.1. Some big players of web ignored what was happening around then and some took serious note and started building Web 2.0 applications. Very few intelligently bought the potential competition and started working on integration activities. This was version Web 2.0.2.

With some biggies participating in this with user base increasing day by day everybody jumped on creating and integrating web applications. Seamless movement from one application to other with single login was the mantra with 'unified user experience' tag. This was version Web 2.0.3.

So far every activity happening was limited to coding or development part of the web game. Recently IBM lauched new blade servers that are specially designed for Web 2.0 kind of web applications where traffic is heavy and computing power requirement is high. This I call a version Web 2.0.4. And I suppose the world is now ready for upgraded version of web i.e. Web 3.0.

Interesting  post from Gordon Ritter founder of Emergence Capital Partners on future of Software as a Service(SaaS) on Venturebeat.   

Forrester research recently released vendor strategy prediction stating enterprise spending on Web 2.0 ie. Enterprise 2.0  technologies will grow strongly over the next five years, reaching $4.6 billion globally by 2013, with social networking, mashups, and RSS capturing the greatest share.

Many blogger rushed to post their opinion on this research & these numbers. Most of them think these numbers are absurd, I strongly feel these number are irrelevant here. What is more important is trend that indicates steady & strong growth in adoption of Enterprise 2.0 technologies. Also important observation is over the period Enterprise 2.0 will become integral part of enterprise collaboration software/ initiatives &  it will disappear into the fabric of the enterprise.

This research is definitely a great value for software vendors' who wish to focus enterprise 2.0 technologies & allied offerings. It focuses on "Can Software Firms Make Money Selling Enterprise Web 2.0 Tools?" & scope of vendor offerings while segmenting down its market(s). Most of important comment is 'Vendors' web 2.0 skills & delivery models will outlive their Products'. Its real big clue for e-Zest to further enhance its enterprise 2.0 competencies & to its enterprise 2.0 clients as well.

Beyond the hype and buzz created by SOA, here are my few thoughts about SOA.

 1. SOA is business strategy:

 SOA is often looked as the yet another project taken by IT dept or always treated as IT thing. Off course, its implementation is very much IT thing but it should be looked more as a strategy for synchronization and alignment of all business processes of an organization.

2. SOA is not rewriting your ALL applications:

SOA implementations in proper manner always support organization's legacy systems, on which the organization is relying on from past several years. As for implementation of legacy application organization has put many $$ and your team members had put Hercules efforts for maintenance, it has worth continuing what you are using.

3. SOA gains multifold value when it’s implemented as Enterprise architecture:

SOA should not be looked in "isolated application islands" for any organization. When application island happens in organization the worth of every application decreases as the synchronization becomes problem with various systems.In this scenario SOA should be looked as a vehicle and opportunity to waive a "common Enterprise fabric" to get your business processes [and their systems] aligned or realigned.

4. Web services are tip of SOA iceberg:Yes, Web services are essential component for implementing SOA but while building these web services, SOA derives more value from service reuse and scalability. We should look beyond the web services to get the view of SOA horizon.

Hope, this post will carry out more brainstorming sessions...

'Enterprise 2.0; : One more buzz word in IT space. Buzz words are very popular in IT industry. Initially Buzz words normally sound simple, stupid still they are successful to generate interest & initiate brainstorming/discussions in IT community on various forums primarily web. Most of the cases these discussions resulted in many sound business ideas & innovations in today's world. I believe Enterprise 2.0 is one of them.

Generally speaking Enterprise 2.0 is  the use of Web 2.0 technologies & tools like wikis, blogs, mashups, rss, tagging, communities/social networking, RIA, intranet, etc to help make the enterprise more efficient by being collaborative.

CMP is organizing Enterprise 2.0 conference from June 9 - 12 at Boston USA. As per conference official site http://www.enterprise2conf.com/,  'Enterprise 2.0 is the term for the technologies and business practices that liberate the workforce from the constraints of legacy communication and productivity tools like email. It provides business managers with access to the right information at the right time through a web of inter-connected applications, services and devices. Enterprise 2.0 makes accessible the collective intelligence of many, translating to a huge competitive advantage in the form of increased innovation, productivity and agility.'

Most important aspect for implementing Enterprise 2.0 is not just web 2.0 technology platforms  or tools but ensuring lateral organizational culture of sharing information/knowledge , working together in teams & people-driven processes.

Intuitive interfaces, ease of use, lack of bureaucracy, soft incentives should make Enterprise 2.0 initiatives persuasive to the users. The organization thus can successfully fulfill its objective of making people collaborate and contribute towards the organizational knowledge pool.

Some of the practical instances of Enterprise 2.0 in day to day business life:

* Using wiki  to jot down meeting minutes

* Finalising corporate website or other marketing content using wiki. 

***At e-Zest, we did implemented open source wiki to achieve magnanimous task of writing 300 pages of thought leadership content for website. Workflow of finalizing content was implemented using simple non-technical protocol amongst team members.

* Blogs can acts a very effective channel for senior executives to share important messages informally.

* Implementing social community similar to linkedin, internal to organization which can help team members to understand each other personally & professionally better. Eg. Projects worked on, sharing of product ideas, hobbies, etc.


Key companies/products operating in Enterprise 2.0 space are Microsoft Sharepoint, SocialText, nQuira , Google Sites (previously JotSpot), ConnectBeam etc.

So, it’s high time to take note of this buzzword which is reality now & orient our future actions accordingly.

Note: Some of the ideas in this blog entry are derived from answers posted to my question on LinkedIn.