What is Enterprise 2.0?

Boston—"Enterprise 2.0" has a simple definition: The application of Web 2.0 technologies to the enterprise. But there are almost as many different meanings for "Web 2.0" as there are mashups, making "Enterprise 2.0" an equally nebulous concept. At this week's Enterprise 2.0 show, the emphasis was on RIAs (rich Internet applications) that enable collaboration. Here are six of the most notable product categories:

RSS ENABLEMENT
Most intranets are fairly Spartan affairs, at least compared with the sum total of an organization's knowledge. There's an untapped wealth of data contained within spreadsheets and text files, and it's that information that service-enablement vendors aim to expose. The concept is similar to service enablement for SOA, but hugely simplified so that no development skills are necessary. Instead of converting APIs to SOAP or other Web services, these apps convert files or Web pages to RSS feeds.Kapow Technologies, Serendipity Technologies WorkLight and Denodo Technologies all showed off capabilities in this area, while IBM demonstrated its Info 2.0 product, which will combine with an enterprise mashup platform. Denodo also offers a mashup platform and a macro recorder that can retrieve information from Web sites, while Kapow displayed an automated screen-scraping function, which converts any Web site (on the Internet or an intranet) into an RSS feed.

Once RSS feeds have been enabled, enterprises need to find something to do with them. On the Internet, an RSS feed may be consumed by a Web browser, a standalone reader or a portal. The same options can work in an intranet, but the large number of feeds created from files or Web pages will quickly make this unwieldy. One option is to mash feeds up into new applications, using development platforms aimed at end users from JackBe, Denodo, IBM or BEA Systems. Another route is RSS management apps from Attensa, n Software RSSBus or NewsGator Technologies.

OFFICE SUITES
In Web 1.0, every startup wanted to be the next Microsoft. In Web 2.0, they all want to be the next Google. At Enterprise 2.0, it seems that many aim to compete with both Google and Microsoft, offering online office suites that they hope can combine the best of both worlds: The collaboration capabilities of a Web-based suite combined with the control over your own data of locally installed software.

The first online office suite (not counting Corel's proof-of-concept a decade ago) was from ThinkFree Corp., and the company used the show to demonstrate its new offline edition. Running under Java and so cross-platform, ThinkFree automatically synchronizes files with the online edition. It's also about to unveil support for Microsoft's new Office 2007 file formats, which have been published as a standard but are notoriously difficult to implement. Competitor AdventNet Zoho showcased its applications, which go beyond the usual word processor, spreadsheet and presentation to include CRM and wiki functionality.Octopz demonstrated a slightly different spin on document collaboration. Rather than edit files directly, its offering enables users to mark them up using separate metadata that can travel along with voice, video and IM sessions. Because it has only to read files, not write to them, Octopz can support more than 100 different types, including CAD and video formats in addition to standard Office documents.

BLOGS AND WIKIS
Blogs have quickly overtaken Usenet and public e-mail lists as the preferred venue for Internet discussion, while their participatory features help them rival the Web sites of offline media. However, blogs haven't taken off within the enterprise—most employees have neither the time nor the inclination to write blog entries.For internal use, most enterprises will find the collaborative authoring, organization and versioning capabilities of wikis more useful than the personal publishing of blogs, so the space has attracted a large number of vendors. Atlassian Software Systems, Socialtext, CustomerVision, Near-Time and Mindquarry all showed off enterprise wiki systems, with most also offering blogs or similar capabilities. Mindquarry in particular aims to make blogs more accessible by fusing them with e-mail and IM, which can be used to read and write comments.

TAGGING AND SOCIAL BOOKMARKING
Enterprise search is a hard nut to crack, in part because few hyperlinks show relationships among documents. Several vendors see social bookmarking as the solution: As employees tag documents or share bookmarks, a map of documents' relevance to particular subjects can be built up. If the people who authored documents or applied tags are also tracked, the system can keep tabs on employee expertise, sorting into groups those who know a lot about a particular topic. The problem, of course, is motivating employees to tag documents.

Connectbeam is a pioneer in this space, with a system that works with several popular enterprise search engines, including those from Google, IBM and Yahoo. BEA also sees potential, using the show to demonstrate its Pathways product, due to launch next month.

WEB 2.0 APPLIANCES
In the true mashup spirit, some vendors are offering all-in-one suites that combine several features. Blogtronix has gone further, packaging a combination of blog, wiki and social bookmarking software that can be purchased as a hardware appliance, in addition to software and hosted service options. Encouraged by a Gartner report that said 61 percent of enterprises would rather buy Enterprise 2.0 technologies as a single suite from a well-known vendor, Intel Corp. has launched Suite Two. Essentially a bundle of software from six other vendors (Six Apart, Socialtext, NewsGator, SimpleFeed, SpikeSource and Visible Path Corp.), Suite Two is available with or without an Intel server to run it on.Andy Dornan is a senior technology editor for Network Computing. Write to him at [email protected].