Web2.0 is a Big Myth in Enterprise World – Accenture’s Chief Scientist
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Web2.0 for enterprises?
That’s a big myth, says Accenture’s chief scientist – Kishore Swaminathan
Couple of interesting comments he shared in an interview with livemint:
- There’s nothing called Web 2.0. It is a big myth created by O’Reilly..for marketing purposes.
- I think we are in a fairly early age of collaboration. We are still looking for electronic versions of physical collaboration channels. Email is essentially the electronic form of fax, or regular mail, we use cellphones for conversations when two people are not in the same place and video conferencing, (attempts) to mimic a physical meeting. I think the second generation of collaboration tools like wikis, and Twitter are not fundamentally about electronification of a well known channel. They are fundamentally about how you can increase the reach of a person as well as his/her awareness.
- I don’t think non-gaming virtual worlds have much to offer. There are specific components or ideas within virtual worlds that are interesting. But for enterprises, investing or setting up shop in a virtual world is a huge business risk, especially in worlds with proprietary currency – source
Enterprise and Social networks?
My speculation would be that sites such as Facebook and Myspace will begin to create enterprise editions, so that enterprises, whether its GM or Accenture, would have rather than building their own internal social network, they would rent out a corporate version, software as a service. I think thats the direction corporations are likely to go.
To a certain extent, I agree with what Kishore is talking about – enterprises need more collaborative products that imitate the offline processes (and hence, helps them cut costs/increase productivity) – without any major change in usage behavior.
Beyond that, web2.0 might be just a misfit in the enterprise world – infact, if you look at online office space – the keyword there is collaboration without bringing any behavioral change in the usage (same applies to SaaS services) – for instance, online meeting tools cut your travel costs.
Point to keep in mind is that most of the enterprises look at IT as a cost center – and given the current recession, cost cutting tools will be in-vogue.
What’s your opinion?
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Related posts:
- Platform46 Brings Twitter to Enterprise World, with Connectors
- Pebble Talk – Twitter like Microblogging, Collaboration comes to Enterprise
- Google’s Foray Into Enterprise World – Big Hairy Audacious Goal
- Numo – SMS Service for Enterprise
- BrainNook from NuNook – World’s First Educational Virtual World for Children.
About the author - Ashish Sinha is a Startup Mentor/Product Strategy Coach, and the founder/chief editor of pluGGd.in.
He has launched/managed couple of products (consumer as well as enterprise) in US and India, and now consults with startups/small businesses on their product/media strategy. He can be reached at: ashish (at) pluGGd.in [+91 98452 06443]
Well, you can either use one paragraph to describe it using terms like collaboration, 2nd generation, conversation, etc.
Or you can just call it Web 2.0.
There is no myth here. It is real. How you refer to it is up to you.
Calling a phenomenon like this a myth is pretty short-sighted, or even down right arrogant, IMO.
To add to what I was talking about:
http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1301-in-the-world-of-ideas-to-name-something
The problem with most enterprises is that they want to be closed to the world as far as information sharing is concerned. They are just too worried about their intellectual property to realize that there is a lot more innovation happening outside of the company.
What Web 2.0 enabled collaboration to a very strong level among individuals and made information sharing and consumption really easy. If any enterprise has to benefit from Web 2.0, they have to first open up to the world.
Otherwise, you can call it a myth and keep doing things the way you are used to.
Main use of web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 is to make collaboration and knowledge sharing happen (as per McKinsey E2.0 survey 2008).
1.0 or 2.0 no big difference, but user behavior certainly needs to change for larger adoption. Usage will increase on its own with google generation, but will take longer, so educate employees and increase adoption.
Challenges are still the same; not technology but adoption and security. Using E2.0 as SaaS for bigger organizations is still distant because of security concerns.
Just do a survey in any organization and you will find a lot of people who may be writing blogs and networking on linkedin but the same guy wont be using the enterprise 2.0 platform of his/her organization. As per a recent survey 50% of net usage in Bangalore is for networking sites.
Reasons:
- people need visibility and networking beyond the enterprise
- usability problems further decrease adoption
Web 2.0 as Swaminathan defines it doesn’t exist. Only because its a meme that adapts with our understanding of it. He focusses on the Social Media aspect of Web 2.0, and I agree, these are not yet positioned to benefit non consumer-oriented firms.
As for the bigger Web 2.0 picture – not sure why a Chief Scientist would be commenting on it, but the McKinsey survey indicates positive Enterprise 2.0 trends: http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/article_page.aspx?L2=16&L3=16&ar=1913&pagenum=1
thats what the world need . Accenture guys talking about Web2.0
its like Queen of England saying ” If they don’t have bread , why don’t they eat Cake” . Clueless “Suits” !!
Look at the “insights ”
“My speculation would be that sites such as Facebook and Myspace will begin to create enterprise editions, so that enterprises, whether its GM or Accenture, would have rather than building their own internal social network, they would rent out a corporate version, software as a service. I think thats the direction corporations are likely to go.”
ya ! Facebook will fork out an enterprise “white Label” “closed” Soc Nw. [ and probably Accenture will help them doing that @ $18/Hr?? ].
what about duplication of social graph and moving data outside of organizatioal boundry to main grpah of FB .
Haven’t he heard of Ning and BraodBAnd Mechanics , Ning BTW is Powering a few enterprise Soc Nw. too .
And about Second Life and Virtual World
“I don’t think non-gaming virtual worlds have much to offer. There are specific components or ideas within virtual worlds that are interesting. But for enterprises, investing or setting up shop in a virtual world is a huge business risk, especially in worlds with proprietary currency, such as Second Life’s Linden Dollars. They add very little value except maybe in building design, or architecture, where it might potentially be useful to have a 3-D avatar walking through a 3-D world.”
SL’s USP is that its a Non Gaming VR world . Try telling all this to Wipro, Amazon, SUN,Arcelor Mittal and 100s of other companies who work there . Dow Jones do stock board in SL and Solar eclipse was transmitted live to SL . all these guys were idiot ?
[...] Web2.0 is a Big Myth in Enterprise World [...]
Hello All, I think there is some confusion here among web2.0, collaboration and social networking. Checkout cyn.in (http://cyn.in) to have a better idea of what is web2.0 for enterprise.
Web 2.0 has not really happened yet, marketing types have hijacked the original concept of Web 2.0 and turn it into a style discription for webdesigners. It can mean anything form the basic larger text colourful css design fashion to RIA based upon JAvaScript and the DOM to (dare I say it AJAX) anything of a new and fancy nature. The original Web 2.0 concept referred to the next major of Internet development (not happened yet) such as the introduction and adoption of IPV6 or another and yet undeveloped protocol that would sit on HTTP or replace it.
Jere Ryan
http://www.bookmeetingroom.com
(A web 2.0 SaaS web application….???)