Defining Insights - Featured Story

WEB 2.0 FOR THE REST OF US

When the dotcom era hit, wide eyed start-ups looking for gold popped up faster then paparazzi at a J-Lo / Jennifer Aniston bar fight. Investors scrambled to invest in anything that smelled like HTTP. And almost every ISV in existence invested heavily in figuring out how to re-invent them selves for the web paradigm. There were billions of dollars to be made and lost just as quickly. But beyond startups, ISV's and investors, the other 99% of the business world had to figure out what this all meant to them, how to properly invest their company resources, and how to take advantage of these technologies as part of their road maps to driving shareholder value.

CIO's and their executive colleagues today face a similar quandry. After a hiatus of cautiousness, reasonable sanity and regular growth in the technology realm, there is a softly growing boom taking hold. The buzzwords are gathering steam. Investors longing for the glory days of the early to mid 90's are desperate to release their funds into the markets in search of the next Netscape or Google. And a phrase like "Web 2.0", which is being tossed around all over the media, sounds just about perfect to make it all happen. If it's 2.0 it must be the next version of the boom, right? No? So what is it? A technology? A business model? Who has it? How do I make money from it? If I'm not podcasting am I behind the times? Shouldn't we be blogging?!

With all the hype around this new term and its cadre of related concepts and technologies, it begs the real questions:

What is Web 2.0?

Why should most businesses care?

What Web 2.0 technologies and ISV's can I take advantage of now as part of my infrastructure?

In defining what Web 2.0 is, let's start with what it is not. It is not anything remotely as revolutionary HTTP, TCP/IP, and the Web. It is not a new business model. It is, however, a fairly significant evolution in the web brought about more by the community and nature of the web itself then it was any particular group of researchers or companies. The term was first coined by Tim O'Reilly to refer to a growing shift in the nature of the web, the principles behind that shift and the supporting technologies that enable it. See the article here.

Beyond the buzz terms and various enabling technologies, the fundamentals behind what constitutes a technology or service that is part of this next generation include:

More dynamic user experience that grays the line between traditional web applications and rich-client applications

Services that recognize, harness and channel the power of community and collective intelligence so that use of the application itself increases its value and the users themselves have a role in the continued development of the service. O'Reilly described this as an "Architecture of Participation". Realize that users are collectively smarter then you, your algorithms, requirements, analysis, etc.

Taking the concepts of usability to their much-needed levels- start investing appropriately in and living by the science of user experience and engagement

Applications and services that break with traditional and normally lengthy release cycles and move to a state of continuous improvement and incremental releases

There aren't any significant, new, core technologies that make Web 2.0 a reality. We're still dealing with the basics of web browsers, web servers, databases, HTML, scripting, XML, etc. That's not to say that there is nothing new in our toolboxes these days, but the big differences are in how we are using underlying technologies and how we are combining them to create applications and services that utilize the aforementioned principles. And so far, adherence to these principles has meant more eyeballs, greater usage, user loyalty, and generally higher profits.

There are some great examples of Web 2.0 out there today. The virtual community that is forming empowers individuals and creates a digital reality that increasingly mirrors real life. Most of the enabling technologies are simply amalgamations of already existing technologies such as AJAX, which is a technique involving JavaScript and XML that enables richer and more dynamic experiences via web browsers. The twin poster children for Web 2.0, Blogs and Wikis, aren't really using any new underlying technology at all (for example, RSS was first introduced in 1999). It's how people are using these technologies that make the difference. Other interesting examples of the Web 2.0 concept include:

Google - Its PageRank algorithms are a great example of collective intelligence. And their constant release of new features is quintessential of a new era of development. Google AdSense has dominated the new wave of advertising, and various use of Google "MashUps" are becoming more common such as www.housingmaps.com.

World Of Warcraft and SecondLife - Both of these are great examples of truly virtual communities- on-line realities real enough to include real estate markets, currencies, and thriving businesses that were not the product of the systems creators. SecondLife even refers to its customers as "residents."

Digg.Com - Spearheading the concept of social news, users help decide what the top stories are.

Del.icio.us - A social bookmarks manager that lets users not only maintain their bookmarks on-line but also allows users to benefit from the bookmarks of others in relation to their own.

Flickr - Online photo sharing site with innovative online community tools that allow photos to be tagged and browsed by folksonomic means.

What does this mean for the majority of businesses? Wherever you are on the spectrum from archaic to advanced use of IT, as you look at your road map and consider how to take advantage of Web 2.0 there are some key concepts to follow:

In all but the smallest of businesses, Web 2.0 technologies made available or sold as Software as a Service (SaaS) are far from ready to be prime time for use as core infrastructure. They are still immature and will not replace your core office applications and the highly related security, storage, and directory services infrastructure any time soon. You can however begin making great "point" uses of available SaaS Web 2.0 technologies. Some great examples include CRM/SFA applications like SalesForce.Com and Microsoft CRM Live. Blogs make great communication tools internally and wikis are great ways to collectively own and edit company procedures and knowledge bases.
These technologies are available in platforms such as Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and individually in many open source components out there today. Freely available services exist to meet the needs of many enterprises, but packaged versions from vendors help to meet the security and management needs of larger businesses. Within the next few years many SaaS technologies will evolve and begin to displace traditional desktop infrastructure, but it will likely be several years until larger businesses will begin to take advantage of them in this capacity. One small warning on blogs Use them carefully! They are great for internal communication. And they can be a huge boon to customer communication and marketing but go in with your eyes open. They, like podcasting, are often not easy to monetize or simply quantify in terms of ROI.

Embrace user experience as a design mentality. Consider how the application should react to user interaction, how data can be displayed in increasingly dynamic and user friendly ways. Blur the line between rich-client and web-client. There are technologies that will allow you to deliver richer experiences via "web-based" technologies and metaphors. They exist already in the open source community and Microsoft Windows Vista along with .NET 3.0 will change the game even further.

Cooperate, don't control. Learn from the fundamentals of the Open Source community, the successes of social news sites, the collective accuracy of wikipedia, the power of viral marketing, and the journalism revolution that is the blog. You will need to have a severe degree of trust in your users that is not natural for many businesses and it can also mean finding new ways to collaborate with your competition.

Regular releases and constant improvement. Get out of the mentality of big releases that occur months or years apart. Assign teams that focus on constant improvement. Still adhere to proper analysis, design and testing. But release new features regularly.

But of course, beware the perils. Web 2.0 is not something to over-embrace. With the exception of small businesses, there are still many concerns to deal with around security, governance, management, compliance, performance, and availability. But now is definitely the time to begin exploring the concepts of Web 2.0 and rolling out pilot projects.

So get past the hype of Web 2.0 and understand the principles behind it. Proper incorporation of those principles into your design and development philosophy as well as your internal communication and collaboration infrastructure will help to make you a more agile enterprise. Remember that the users themselves are collectively your best asset for design and continuous improvement. Now go get yourself a blog.