In summary, it's probably the closest thing to a road map for implementing Enterprise 2.0 in companies (although to their credit, they don't call it that).

It's chock full of data (some of which will surprise you) and case studies. It also makes concrete recommendations how to evaluate what's the best strategy for a company (should we do a blog, an open forum or a video on You Tube). And best of all, the language the use (for the most part) is clear (focussed on business value not technology) and practical (always refreshing).

But maybe I'm getting too old and cynical. Definitely worth a read, especially all those trying to figure out this 'Enterprise 2.0' thing. 

Another experience, though not exactly discussed at the conference, is closer home. A friend, who works at a leading IT services company, with restrictive internet access policies, identified several alternatives to bypass the proxy servers to access social media websites. Now while this is much more dangerous than it sounds, the fact remains that restrictions always pave the way for innovations.

Quick response to Shaurabh’s comment on the previous post. While the companies listed in Shaurabh’s comments are leaders in their respective fields, the other commonality is that they also have a major stake in the development / usage of the new web. In fact some of these are at the forefront of technologies leading to the new WWW experience. So it is not surprising to see these companies taking the lead.

The companies I was referring to in the earlier post are large, brick and mortar giants, who have been in business for several decades and are yet to catch up with the changes in their consumer’s preferences. Infact some of the companies might be dealing exclusively with customers who may not have been affected by the changes in the WWW experience. These customers always had experiences created for them due their exclusivity.

But the point about not waiting for the small startups to provide the answers to problems about security and business models is valid. Companies like Progressive (Insurance), Wells Fargo (Financial Services) and BBC (media) have already taken the lead in adopting the next generation of Web and how?

The earlier post is a good example of what is not a blog.. It obviously didn't come out as one had expected it to be. It reads more like a news article, or for that matter even an "advertorial". While the intention was to share one's experience in sharing the Infosys research with senior folks from Fortune 1000 organizations, it does seem to have converted into a news article and lost that personal sharing tone. I was actually talking about this kind of a faux pas in the same workshop. Some attendees of the workshop talked about how some of their employees can not make out the difference between a news insert and a blog and I had said that if we approach blogosphere with the same mindset as that of a PR and Corporate Communications these kind of blunders are bound to happen. And just to prove me right, they happened with me.

So the fact that smaller players will adopt some of these technologies first is a given, because that is how they will create a niche for themselves and then battle it out with the goliaths. However, as Louis Gerstner of IBM puts it “Who says Elephants can’t Dance”. When the large organizations do see the impact of emerging technologies they adopt it, either by developing things in-house or simply by acquiring the nimble players. And we have seen this happen time and again (for example Google’s acquisition of YouTube).

The motive behind creating the Web 2.0 Metrix was to objectively assess industry best practices and arrive at recommendations for Web 2.0 initiatives in client organizations. Currently, the Web 2.0 Metrix covers over 1,250 companies across the categories of Retail, Financial Services, Insurance, Online Media, High Tech Manufacturing and Courier / Express industries.

The presentation generated a lot of excitement and the audience members were keen to know how to access this research. Some key audience questions related to:

The presentation was very well-received and the speakers for the session that followed Ajay’s session thanked him for setting a sound basis for subsequent discussion on social media and the likes.

Appreciating the research, Dick Badler, Program Director – The Conference Board, observed, “Dr. Kolhatkar did an excellent job of walking through this vital Web research, and illuminating where the strengths and gaps in on-line social networking are today.  His research has led us to explore many other areas of Web 2.0 that we are already planning for other sessions.”

On a heavier note, all this new shift looks somewhatfamiliar to me, that is, the nature of applications built and the way they are consumed. Initially internet stole some of distributed but lightweight apps from desktops, like emails. Today, some sites offer even windows like desktop pages on web! Mainstream desktop apps like office is in common use now. On a similar note, mobiles are doing the same but to both internet apps and desktops. As mobiles are easier to carry and simpler to operate, lightweight apps wrt both complexity of application and usage of resources can become popular here. The lightness of web application refers to the nature of services offered and simplicity of interactions, where the attack is on the web platform. The lightness of resources required, like space, computation, database etc attacks on the usage of heavy browser, hence the need of a desktop. Not to wonder, as the wireless data width and mobile computation power rises with time, the replacement can be sizeable in future.

Probably web2.0 apps can gear up to become light enough to push their usage on mobiles. Be it assistive or a fuller application, it can only boast their revenues, given the huge mobile subscription factor in any part of the world.

With regard to the enterprise, the rapid implementation of SOA at the back end should have been a strong driver for the adoption of RIAs since technologies such as Ajax and Flex are natural complements for services. But this has not been the case. Enterprise uptake of rich interfaces has not been as quick as evident on the consumer web.

However, online retail has generally been an exception to this state of affairs. Success and failure in this competitive domain have not been exclusively defined by the back end architectures (though they are very important.) Rather, online retail sites need to supplement them with user interfaces which not only enable a customer to search and buy from a catalog of goods, but also allows him to make wish lists, track prices and look at alternatives. Online retailers also depend a lot on product discovery and recommendation systems, along with user generated reviews, to drive a significant portion of their sales. Hence, an interface which brings these systems to the fore of the user experience is a vital cog of their business models.                   

It is no surprise that online retailers like Amazon and Dell have been experimenting with rich interface mechanisms which allow them to differentiate themselves  from the competition and provide enhanced usability to their customers while retaining and expanding their existing user bases. Product customization, experiential demos (such as a 360 degree Flash-based view of a product) and virtual 'trial rooms' are some of the concepts becoming increasingly common on retail sites.

In the next post, we will take a look at the RIA paradigms seen in the online retail sector today, the potential influence of newer technologies such as Adobe AIR and Microsoft Silverlight, and examples of some significant players in this space.

The market is flooded with different kinds of technologies – Learning Management Systems (LMS), Collaboration technologies, Office productivity tools, multimedia technologies as well as social computing tools. These technologies form the basic enablers of Learning. However, there is a lack of understanding in deploying these technologies for employee learning as a comprehensive learning strategy, as well as tracking the benefits of learning due to their deployment. The need is to provide a holistic learning model for employees, in all dimensions of learning, use the right technologies in each dimension, as well as measuring the success of the model in each of the dimensions. More on this in the next posting.