Enterprise 2.0

This week Eugene Lee, CEO of Socialtext.com visited us yesterday. From the company website:

"Socialtext Incorporated is the first wiki company and leading provider of Enterprise 2.0 solutions. Socialtext captures the best features of web-native tools called "wikis" and "weblogs" and brings them inside your enterprise to create a collaboration and knowledge tool that works the way people do."

Wikis in the workplace? I think it's brilliant. After spending years in large corporations, I can think of the many instances where a wiki would come in handy: project team calendaring, project documentation repositories, open forums for Q&A, meeting notes/parking lots and the list goes on! Document version control would nearly be eliminated. And email servers would no longer suffer from overload (no more auto-deleted emails from your inbox).

As I have said in our classes in the past, the 'holy trinity' of 'people, process, and technology' still applies to implementing Socialtext. In order for a Socialtext implementation to be successful, the company will require people to use it (opportunity: change management) and the processes to support its use (opportunity: re-engineered, streamlined business processes). Without these 2 bases covered, the technology (this case Socialtext) is vulnerable.

A new workforce is beginning to penetrate the walls of corporate America. This new workforce thrives on web 2.0 technology. If companies are not careful, they stand to lose talent because they were unable to adopt these new technologies. And adopting the new technology is no easy feat. M.R. Rangaswami, from the Sand Hill Group writes,

"Enterprise 2.0 is more than just Web 2.0 for business. Enterprise computing is far more complex than personal computing. It includes legacy environments, innumerable vendors, mismatched data sources, stringent regulations and far flung users. While Web 2.0 can deliver genuine advantages for both business users and consumers, the real "Enterprise 2.0" will encompass a far broader and more complex vision."

With all this said, I am very hopeful that corporations will soon embrace these technologies. The future is bright...so I gotta wear shades!