What does Enterprise 2.0 mean to you?

Question

When Web 2.0 meets the enterprise, is it a convergence? A confluence? A collision? A leap forward in collaboration or an invitation to chaos? I have yet to talk to anyone in IT who doesn't have an opinion on this issue. Here's the soapbox. Step right up.

Answer 1

I want to be contentious here, so I won't hold back, don't mean to offend, so apologise if offense is taken, but this is an important question to me, which I'm very passionate about.
First, although the question is okay, it shouldn't be: what does E2.0 mean to you? It should simply be what does E2.0 mean? It's our job to get this right, and I'm not going to have my personal E2.0 world, we (Oracle) is going to create an E2.0 product, WebCenter that is going to try to hit the nail on the head. The question is what should this look like exactly for the next while...
E2.0 should be about...
Removal of personal hard drives...in E2.0 no one should have any data stored on their laptop for personal use only. All intelligence/data/information should be organized in the corporate portal. This will help with employee turn over, bringing people up to speed quickly, etc... Based on their 'role' in the organization, they would have a predefined portal experience that is the same as other people in their role. That portal should be created by the people in that role to have the short cuts, groups, etc, that are relevant to that role. Not relevant to that person...this is crucial. Individuals don't matter anymore in the sense that they have info that others don't. All of their info should be dumped into the company portal.
People should be ranked by what they do. (this is the BEA Pathways product). When you write a white paper that others find useful, your rank should go up. Your annual appraisal will be based solely on your portal ranking.
All communication will be tracked and stored so it can be reused. When you talk on your IP phone the conversation will be recorded, automatically converted to searchable text with voice recognition and stored for full text searching, same with IM chats, email, etc... We need to surface all the information that happens in an organization, period, no more hiding of information.
Sensitive information will be encrypted, but by being encrypted we'll feel more comfortable with sharing it, because we'll use the IRM tool from Stellent, so we can revoke privileges from off-boarded employees.
The corporate firewall will come down to the degree that we need to have better communication with our customers, partners, etc... They will be happy when they can find us, instead of us hiding...isn't it annoying when a customer rep won't email you because of fear of legal discovery, because they are too afraid of being sued! People need to be held accountable and empowered to share information...the customers will love it and be loyal, otherwise they'll find a company that can do that. Plus the info you provide to the customer will all be stored inside the corporate repository anyway and be signed off for approval.
We will be able to contact anyone, anytime they are available. Click to call, that is when we see someone is online, all we have to do is click their name and we are talking/video chating with them instantly. We'll know when people are available with presence. That is like in instant messaging when you say you are available, busy, away etc...
These things are straightforward concept and available today. We don't need crazy visualization techniques like second life etc...that is video game crap. We don't need avatars...we need to be able to access information, period, that is it, that is all that is important, and we need to capture it for reuse...so when I tell you the answer on the phone, that question is answered for all time for everyone...it's just that simple.
All the appropriate technolgies deal with these two factors. Save the info, and give the creator of the info credit for it. Wiki's, blogs, im, are all aspects of this same thing. Simple search results are adequate for finding these items. Present them in a simple way. We just need to read some text to get the info. People tag good text, whoever wrote that good text gets elevated in his/her rankings, in the future stuff written by that person automatically is easier to find because they are a conscientious contributor.
This is massive...the technology is simple, but this means that individual smart people will get incented and everyone will benefit.
It really isn't that complicated, but the ramifications are completely profound. Don't wander off and imagine crazy visualization techniques...it's not that. Look at Google, it's the least gussied up search results engine out there...and that's the point...it's not all the dazzle and colors that matter, in fact they get in the way, it's the appropriate information. In web land Google simply used the number of references to a web page to see how appropriate or high on the search results it should get. This is the same simple principles...but how profound.