Does Enterprise 2.0 Need a Business Sponsor?
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
All the people that are talking about Enterprise 2.0 are technology firms and technology people. If this really is supposed to democratize corporate America, then where are the business sponsors and users calling for this change? Is there a defined business objective that calls for a better way for teams and partners to collaborate? In some firms there are, but selling the benefits of Web 2.0 tools for corporate use is not so cut and dry. Many of these benefits are qualitative, and create the potential for a greater number of innovative ideas and possibility of being closer to customers and suppliers, but it is difficult to define hard, quantifiable benefits.
For those of you that haven't heard the term Enterprise 2.0, it's the application of technologies that increase communication and collaboration in the corporate world, and involves using Web 2.0 tools such as social networks, blogs, wiki’s, and tagging to connect employees and constituents. In this situation, the technology is put in place and it is up to end users to define and manage communities, content, and drive value from it. Enterprise 2.0 can also be used to cover any approach that moves from centralized, IT-managed, extremely structured solutions, to ones that are distributed, user-managed, and do not require structure to be beneficial. The promise of this movement is that there will be greater communication amongst colleagues and customers to foster innovation, technologies will be less guarded by IT and more aligned with business goals, and a new repository of collective intelligence will be established, extending knowledge management capabilities.
The big question is, does Enterprise 2.0 need quantifiable benefits to succeed, or will it follow the path that Instant Messaging (IM) paved and just become a required tool(s)? Early attempts in IM (with products like Lotus Notes) did not have wide success; it was not until AOL, Yahoo, and MSN made there tools widely available did they start to become part of everyone's login ritual. People just used them for short conversation; it was an afterthought that spawned secure, enterprise IM because companies realized "hey our people are using these tools anyway, and it will probably save us money on telephony and email storage costs".
Enterprise 2.0 is currently caught in a catch-22. Proponents are taking the "if you build it they will come" approach, but IT leaders are looking for ROIs before approving any projects that build and deploy anything. The good thing is that the majority of these tools are cheap from a technology standpoint; some of the team collaboration suites may be more expensive to deploy, but the goal there is a flexible platform where communities build there own functionality and don't require any developers. Regardless, the business side of the house needs to take a look at their goals from a top-down view, and identify areas where they need greater collaboration amongst constituents, or a way to cultivate and share new ideas from the masses. Once these business needs are clearly defined, it will be much easier to successfully fund projects that take apply the right Enterprise 2.0 tools to the right situations.
posted by Colin Blaney @ 1:05 PM,
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Speaking at EAC in Orlando - April 7th
Thursday, March 13, 2008
I will be speaking with my Diamond colleague Michael Janizweski at this year‘s Enterprise Architecture Conference on Aligning Business & Information Technology. The conference will be held at the Portofino Bay Hotel in Orlando Florida from April 7-10, 2008. We are presenting on April 7 on the topic of ―Get Some Respect: How to Measure and Communicate your EA Success.
For details see http://www.iirusa.com/eac.
posted by Colin Blaney @ 4:44 PM,
The Worst of Both Worlds
Monday, February 04, 2008
Being a true sports fan means sticking with your team through thick and thin, and not changing your allegiances when the winning tide happens to shift. My situation is probably different than most; I constantly have to explain which are my teams and why I root for them. I could make it a lot easier by picking a different set of teams, but that is not what true sports fan does. I live in the Boston area - I am a Yankee fan and a Patriots fan. After last night's game it may seem that my choice of sport and city did not fall on the right side for me this year, but that is the bitter pill one must swallow and why we watch the games.
Here is the constant story that I have to explain; I should just print copies of this and hand it out when the next person asks me. Yes, I have lived in the Boston area for about 12 years now, but I grew up in the New York area. I won't get into an argument about which city is better, they each have great qualities. Growing up I was a basketball and a baseball fan. I cheered mostly for the Bulls because watching Jordan play was the most entertaining thing in sports, and have been a Yankee fan my whole life, even in the 80's and early 90's when they were horrible. I wasn't that big into football, so I didn't really have a team. When I went to college in Boston, I was still cheering for the Yankees, and still watching Jordan at the end of his career. I started watching the Pats and became a fan of their 1996 team, who's offense (Bledsoe-Coates) was fun to watch. I stopped watching basketball because it has become garbage, I still battle with Boston fans (including Melissa, my wife) year-round about the Yankees, and have become more of a fan of football - and the Patriots - over the past 10 years. Yes, having the Pats be mostly on the winning side over this streak makes it easier to be a fan - but I have rooted for the Yankees while the Red Sox have enjoyed success, and I will continue to root for the Patriots weather they win or lose.
So I will probably continue to confuse people with my sports teams, and answering questions "aren't you from New York?" or "don't you live in Boston?",but as long I as I know who I am rooting for that's all thats matters. Here's a quick scorecard for reference:
- Baseball: Yankees
- Football: Patriots
- Basketball: nobody really, Celtics are sometimes fun to watch no, but still not really back into basketball - and the Knicks are painful to watch.
- Hockey: too boring for me, eventhough it is the only sport my college (BU) is good at
- NASCAR: no thanks
And yes, being a fan of the two most hated teams in fun. It's also been funny to watch the Red Sox, and now the Patriots, turn into how the Yankees have been viewed for the past 10 years.
posted by Colin Blaney @ 5:26 AM,
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The Author
Colin Blaney
Colin is a consultant with a background that extends across multiple industries including healthcare, retail, and the federal government. He combines his expertise in business & IT strategy, enterprise architecture (EA), and program management to help clients develop strategies that produce measurable results.
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