Enterprise 2.0 and the Collaboration Nirvana

 

Enterprise 2.0 is an evolving phenomenon, and has been termed as use of freeform social software within companies (as defined by Andrew McAfee, Associate Professor, Harvard Business School, one of the thought leaders in this space). The challenges with Enterprise 2.0 are twofold. First is the acceptance and use by non-technology business people. Here the problem is in the adoption and use of the Web 2.0 tools by technological neophytes, which would allow for the creation of any corporate value from a business collaboration standpoint. The second challenge is overcoming the managerial fear of unrestricted corporate communication both inside and outside the company firewall. Old school management philosophies and new era security methodologies can extinguish any free form collaboration value that Enterprise Web 2.0 can bring into an organization. Both these points can stall and stop any adoption of enterprise collaboration thus negating any value derived by a company.

 

Enterprise 2.0 simply means the use of emerging social software platforms such as wikis, blogs, tagging and networking or collaboration tools within companies or between companies and their partners or clients.

"Whereas e-mail and traditional web pages are considered static, these new applications are participatory and dynamic in nature.

Social networking technologies can aid businesses in areas of knowledge sharing and management, problem solving, innovation and collaboration.

Enterprise 2.0: Fad or Future?, a recent KPMG report, identified companies such as General Motors, Hitachi and Sun Microsystems as having successfully used blogs to communicate within the corporation and with their clients.

Frankfurt-based bank Dresdner Kleinwort Ltd., Microsoft Inc. and Nokia use wikis to foster collaboration among employees on numerous business projects. The Wall Street Journal, Cisco and Amazon.com employs really simple syndication (RSS) feeds to clients and staff to push product and news updates.

Reaching enterprise collaboration nirvana…

Nirvana is a state where all of the corporate resources are fully leveraged, creatively, functionally and financially. With this in mind, we can understand why it is critically important for a company to have harmony and peace within their SOA, Enterprise 2.0 and alignment worlds. SOA creates a technological platform and methodology to support an agile business, alignment is the ability to cross cultural and communication barriers so that the enterprise is willing and able to listen to itself while Enterprise 2.0 is the platform that brings it all together inside and outside of the firewall.

A state of corporate nirvana is reached when a company can take data, create information and then turn that into knowledge to be used as a competitive advantage adding value for all stakeholders. A healthy and harmonious interdependency between SOA, IT and business alignment and Enterprise 2.0 will deliver the ultimate goal of every enterprise and every stakeholder with a vested interest in that enterprise.

Michael Kuhbock
Collabalanche

 

Back to Home Page

 

Revised on Friday, August 03, 2007 at 08:40AM by Michael Kuhbock

Linked from: Home Page