Archive forWeb 2.0

Blogs, Wikis etc.

November 18, 2008 @ 2:00 pm· Filed under Trends, Web 2.0

Seth had recently posted about the use of Blogs and Wikis in the enterprise. He writes:

I too am suspicious (and a little surprised) when I hear these terms together because, other than the fact that they are relatively new to the “enterprise,” blogs and wikis have little to do with each other…

I have had similar experiences. We often get RFPs and RFIs that have  statements like:

  • “…. should support typical web 2.0 features”
  • “… built on the principles of web 2.0 …”
  • ” … release 1 should have basic web 2.0 features and release 2 should be a complete web 2.0 platform”
  • Many more similar statements

Everyone has a different view of what web 2.0 means for them and so it is important to crystallize the requirements like one would do for any other set of requirements. Because of the fuzziness associated with the term 2.0 and the fact that there are too many options out there, coming out with well defined requirements is very important to arrive at a solution, cost, estimates, product selection and a successful implementation. This article describes the popular scenarios quite well.

I am optimistic though that the situation will soon improve. We are seeing trends which show that concepts of web 2.0 are increasingly getting popular with the enterprises. Many companies that require product support for their customers are turning to these tools instead of relying on more formal traditional customer support tools. Similarly, many companies are using these tools for Knowledge Management activities. Instead of regular process oriented KM which “forces” people to contribute, they want to use mechanisms that encourage people who in turn “want” to contribute. This is a huge shift – people don’t like contributing if they are forced to do it but are likely to contribute if they enjoy doing it.

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CMIS - Yet another acronym or more than that?

September 14, 2008 @ 9:42 pm· Filed under Document Management, Enterprise Content Management, Open Source, Trends, Web 2.0, Web Content Management

Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) is a new standard that (from the spec)

… will define a domain model and set of bindings, such as Web Service and REST/Atom that can be used by applications to work with one or more Content Management repositories/systems.

This spec  will soon be submitted to OASIS. It has participation from IBM, EMC, Microsoft, Open Text, Oracle, SAP and Open Source Alfresco.

Around the time when JSR 170 was released, I had written that many products have proprietary repositories and it might not be trivial for them to re-architect those to be JCR compliant. This seems to be an important consideration of this spec and thus CMIS is designed to be an abstraction over existing systems. So it does not require the products to make any major changes to their  architecture. It does not even try to make it mandatory to expose ALL features via CMIS.

There is also a recognition of the fact that many organizations indeed have multiple ECM systems and it is going to remain like that. So it might not be possible for everyone to consider migration and/or consolidation to a common repository.

Above all, it has support from Microsoft. And with a focus on REST, HTTP, ATOM it has that distinct feel of web 2.0, content mashups and so on.

So what does it mean for JCR? I’d like to believe what Kas Thomas has written on CMS Watch based on his interaction with David Nuescheler. In fact, the first ever draft implementation of CMIS is based on a JCR (Alfresco)! However, buyers of new ECM systems will now be less enthusiastic about the “support for JSR 170 tick mark” in their RFPs and that will mean reduced pressure on product vendors to support the JCR standard.

Also there is something that i’m trying to figure out and i’m hoping the experts can point me to something. All the diagrams, including the one here show how this spec aims to improve interoperability among different ECM systems by having an application that can access any CMS. However, doesn’t interoperability also mean interaction between the participating CMSs as well - for example, if CMIS enabled EMC Documentum and FileNet are involved and i check out a document in Documentum, the FileNet users will also see that document checked out. Or does this use case not make any sense? We have seen a lot of scenarios where a customer has multiple ECM systems and they want this ability via a common interface.

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McKinsey on Web 2.0

August 3, 2008 @ 12:31 am· Filed under Trends, Web 2.0

McKinsey released the results of a global survey on the use of Web 2.0 by enterprises. This is an interesting report with some good analysis and data. Some points that I found interesting are:

  1. McKinsey included Web services as one of the Web 2.0 tools along with Blogs, RSS, Wikis and others. Sure, Web services could form an important component of a Web 2.0 initiative but I don’t think it is a Web 2.0 tool itself like Blogs and RSS. 
  2. Blogs, RSS and Wikis have seen considerable increase in usage from last year. Podcasts’ usage has also increased moderately whereas Peer-to-peer and Mash-ups’ usage has actually declined from previous year. Social Networking usage has more or less remained at the same level.
  3. Web services usage has also reduced considerably. I think this is rather surprising. Shouldn’t companies be using more of web services now?
  4. There’s some good analysis based on regional differences. For example, the usage of tools differ across regions. The regions across which analysis has been done are Europe, India, North America, China and Asia-Pac. India and China are considered as separate regions and for those people who are skeptical about the potential of this region, this is a good data point.
  5. Tools usage varies across regions. Social Networking is more popular in North America as compared to APAC, China and India. Similarly Blogs are more popular in India and APAC as compared to other Geos. Video sharing and Podcasts are most popular in India! I am actually stumped by this- I would have thought that Video sharing etc would be more popular in North America and Europe which have better bandwidth and connectivity.

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