'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.
