Thx to Geek and Poke for the image above.
The term “Enterprise 2.0” was coined back in April 2006 when Andrew MacAfee wrote this Sloan Management Review Article. Since, then MacAfee has become almost synonymous with the term Enterprise 2.0 and is even coming out with a new book on the topic to be published in late November 2009. His blog is one of the most respected on the topic of Enterprise 2.0 and he tweets regularly. I took Andrew’s very first graduate school class he taught in a class called Technology, Operations and Research back at HBS Spring of 2000 and I always thought he had a knack for sensing early technology trends.
One of my favorite posts of his includes his response to a ZDNet post that states Enterprise 2.0 is a crock. I like it as it paints six specific use cases around real world examples of well known companies using various facets of enterprise 2.0 to solve customer pain points.
Another favorite of mine is this post where he describes ten criteria for a successful enterprise 2.0 initiative. This strikes me as a practical and useful framework for how and why some companies are succeeding with enterprise 2.0 solutions.
I mention all of this as I intend to cover some trends on this category in my blog here because I’m a real believer in the disruptive potential enterprise 2.0 has. It really can change the way each of us communicates and works every day, much like how email, broadband internet and IM did. The above set of links provides a starting point on what enterprise 2.0 is all about and you can check out many other links on MacAfee’s blog for other resources. For a more hands on interaction, you may want to also check out one of the innovators in the enterprise 2.0 cateogory, CubeTree. My colleague, Gus Tai, and I led a Series A investment in CubeTree on the behalf of Trinity Ventures back in March of 2008. CubeTree is focused on disrupting the static (and typically useless) corporate intranet with a next generation social business software suite that is people centric (vs. document centric like SharePoint) and is comprised of an activity feed (similar to what you’d see on your Facebook activity feed), wikis, profiles and other features. You can get a sample of what real enterprise 2.0 innovation looks like by signing up for a free CubeTree account here. You can also hear more about it via SAP, one of CubeTree’s reference customers.
I’m interested to hear what readers think 2010 will hold for enterprise 2.0. I personally think we will see some interesting events occur that help the enterprise 2.0 category accelerate faster than what Gartner may believe in their July 2009 hype cycle report. This is based not only on what I’m seeing at CubeTree from a board member vantage point, but also extrapolating from the following macro tailwind trends to peer into my crystal ball for some Enterprise 2.0 in 2010 predictions:
- Twitter continues to grow like a weed. This perpetuates the value of microblogging, status updating and real time ambient awareness. Their recent $100m financing at a valuation of a billion dollars should help a bit. My 2010 prediction is that Twitter figures out their revenue model which further perpetuates their success and, as a derivative effect, enterprise 2.0 adoption.
- Tens of millions of marketing dollars (if not more) will be spent around promotion of SharePoint 2010 and Google Wave. Both of these products talk a lot about the various value proposition tenants of enterprise 2.0 including aspects of collaboration and real time. These marketing dollars will continue to imprint broader enterprise 2.0 awareness upon customers. My 2010 prediction is that these products will be substantive and innovative but yet still fall short as they remain either too professional services intensive (SharePoint) or too techno centric (Wave) for companies looking for practical, scaleable collaboration solutions delivered in a flexible and cost effective manner.
- Facebook continues to skyrocket and perpetuate the value of social networking. My 2010 prediction is that we see Facebook file their S1 and get public. I also predict we’ll soon see this social networking giant reach half a billion users globally next year after hitting a quarter billion this summer (note, there were one billion web users in the world as of Dec 2008). Nothing like a hot Facebook IPO and ~40% global penetration (assuming continued growth of the overall global web user base to 1.25 billion in 2010) to continue real gale force like tailwinds for enterprise 2.0.
What do you think? Other predictions for enterprise 2.0 in 2010?
I did a predictions deck for 2009, and will probably do one for 2010. Got a few things wrong, but on balance, I think I am tracking positive. http://bit.ly/15Buyo
One of the major items I got wrong is how Enterprise 2.0 is not being driven exclusively by IT, but rather by lines of business. In fact, in early survey data we’ve collected, the best case studies are actually driven by LOBs. Oddly enough, it has not thwarted SharePoint’s penetration in the enterprise. With the introduction of SharePoint 2010, this may become a point of contention, as IT will want to argue in favor of an IT-driven alternative.
See some early adoption data in this preso: http://bit.ly/3kaw1l
Thx for the comment Susan. I resonate to your data in slide 19 of the second link which shows 58% for LOB vs 42% for IT when it comes to who is driving enterprise 2.0 in a company. I think another 2010 prediction we’ll see is that this share will continues to shift to the LOB user and away from IT.
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With the recent hack of Twitter’s Google Apps account (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/19/the-anatomy-of-the-twitter-attack/) I think some companies may be reticent to store their data “in the cloud.” Though a part of this hack was an employee’s lack of security, it exposed a gaping hole in the security model of growing companies. They store their data on publicly accessible networks that only require guessing passwords (you know the username from their email) to gain access. When companies reach a certain size they should look to bring this data in house. When it becomes valuable, monetarily or socially (a hacker wants cred) companies should look at the security model of their providers. Twitter was a great example because of a company that waited too long. Nobody was going to get rich but the hacker got notoriety and Twitter got egg on their face.
On the other hand, startups and smaller enterprises may find exactly what they need in an enterprise 2.0 provider. It saves time and money to have a ready-built infrastructure for hosting colaborative and interactive tools that probably increase innovation and productivity.
The 21st century knowledge worker knows how to use facebook, twitter and wikipedia. They know the value of the tools and can adapt them to the enterprise. I just think that there is a certain time at which you bring those tools in house. You point out that Sharepoint and Wave have their negative points but at a certain point you should go with something internal. Do you agree? If so, is there any easy way to know when?
Thx very much for the comment Chris, as well as the pointer to that story. I had read about the Twitter docs getting stolen but never read this post about how it was actually executed. I just skimmed through it and found it fascinating and frightening at the same time but also not surprising. The post’s concluding statement, “So for a start, reset those passwords and don’t use the same passwords for different services. Don’t use password recovery questions that can easily be answered with a simple web search (an easy solution is to answer those questions falsely). And just in general be paranoid about data security.”, seems to be sound, common sense advice. With that said, as the article points out, most internet users are probably lazier than we should be when it comes to web security so this conclusion, while common sense, forms sage advice and should be adhered to.
To answer your specific question, I’m a firm believer in the superior value of SaaS / cloud services and don’t believe there should be a cutoff based on company size when considering SaaS vs. internal tools. The main exceptions typically come up around compliance and regulatory restrictions often seen with banks or hospitals. As an example of a large Google Apps SaaS deployment, my wife, for instance, works at Genentech and I witnessed vicariously their deployment of Google Apps to their 15,000+ employees last year quite successfully (see and hear more here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_hiMzIhU0o).
At the end of the day, I think there will always be security challenges and hackers looking to exploit them, whether for on prem apps or cloud based SaaS apps and companies will need to factor this risk in when weighing the cost / benefits of moving to the cloud based on their specific needs and situation. In the meantime, Trinity Ventures has a couple of portfolio companies that are designed to help thwart hackers and protect end users that may be worth checking out especially when it comes to identify theft (IDAnalytics – http://www.idanalytics.com/) and password hacking (IDVault – http://www.idvault.com/index.php).