Many of the smart guys around Enterprise Software have looked at the Enterprise 2.0 movement as an opportunity to reform the bad behavior of the participants. Nay sayers counter that it isn't economically feasible (or desirable) for vendors to change. Others say it is irrelvent, because the Enterprise 2.0 focus is niche functionality. The heart of the controversy is largely definitional. The camps are all picking up on the same underlying shifts in enterprise software. Depending on their perspective and historical context, they view enterprise 2.0 as everything from "what SAP should be doing" to "using wikis and blogs in the enterprise."
While the ultimate definition of Enterprise 2.0 may end up supporting the "Oracle as reformed citizen" definition of the current shift in enterprise software, it will be coincidental. Likewise, if it tilts towards the definition of "wikis and blogs in the enterprise". Now that the transactional systems that are required to run an enterprise effeciently are more or less in place, a new opportunity is emerging in an untapped area of enterprise software. It's about making the guys in the trenches lives easier. It's about recording the activities that are occuring outside of the transactions (and by extension the corresponding systems of record) in enterprise apps. It's about providing the grease to the activities that results in those transactions occuring in the first place. In other words, "enterprise 2.0" (or equivalent moniker), has more to do with the unaddressed market need than it does with the specific technologies that support it.
Viewed through that lens, the positions become reconcilable. As a new set of adjacent market segments, different vendors can fill the void. Without a legacy, these vendors can employ the range of new business, delivery, and customer interaction models that seem to be the focus of much of the Enterprise 2.0 discourse. Most of those opportunities will (by the definition above) revolve around collaboration, which will adopt the collaborative, social technologies currently gaining traction. By focusing on the underlying market need that folks in each camp have "tuned into" and with which vendors are starting to get traction, we can avoid the definitional drama and let that fall out of the next year of experimentation.
What is Enterprise 2.0?
Many of the smart guys around Enterprise Software have looked at the Enterprise 2.0 movement as an opportunity to reform the bad behavior of the participants. Nay sayers counter that it isn't economically feasible (or desirable) for vendors to change. Others say it is irrelvent, because the Enterprise 2.0 focus is niche functionality. The heart of the controversy is largely definitional. The camps are all picking up on the same underlying shifts in enterprise software. Depending on their perspective and historical context, they view enterprise 2.0 as everything from "what SAP should be doing" to "using wikis and blogs in the enterprise."
While the ultimate definition of Enterprise 2.0 may end up supporting the "Oracle as reformed citizen" definition of the current shift in enterprise software, it will be coincidental. Likewise, if it tilts towards the definition of "wikis and blogs in the enterprise". Now that the transactional systems that are required to run an enterprise effeciently are more or less in place, a new opportunity is emerging in an untapped area of enterprise software. It's about making the guys in the trenches lives easier. It's about recording the activities that are occuring outside of the transactions (and by extension the corresponding systems of record) in enterprise apps. It's about providing the grease to the activities that results in those transactions occuring in the first place. In other words, "enterprise 2.0" (or equivalent moniker), has more to do with the unaddressed market need than it does with the specific technologies that support it.
Viewed through that lens, the positions become reconcilable. As a new set of adjacent market segments, different vendors can fill the void. Without a legacy, these vendors can employ the range of new business, delivery, and customer interaction models that seem to be the focus of much of the Enterprise 2.0 discourse. Most of those opportunities will (by the definition above) revolve around collaboration, which will adopt the collaborative, social technologies currently gaining traction. By focusing on the underlying market need that folks in each camp have "tuned into" and with which vendors are starting to get traction, we can avoid the definitional drama and let that fall out of the next year of experimentation.
Posted by Erik Huddleston on September 24, 2006 in Commentary | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)