Enterprise 2.0-Part1/2:Intro and architecture October 27, 2009

Posted by Terry.Cho in Enterprise 2.0.
Tags: 4C model, e2.0, Enterprise2.0
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4’Th wave

After current enterprise model has been built, requirement of employee from company has been changing. There were two dramatic changes – Industry revolution, Information revolution.

In 18 century the industry revolution was begun from England. It is represented by mass production. Well-defined process makes employee to be parts of the big process. Individual capability, creativity and personality are not important. Company wants employee to work with same capability as a part. It enables the company to predict their output.

After the industry revolution, 3r’d wave came. It is information revolution. IT technology brings efficiency to a company and also breaks a wall from regional restriction. Employee has to work in global and smart enough to adopt complex IT system.

So what is next wave? We are fronted in 4’Th wave. It is WEB2.0.

In 2006 Times announced “A person of year”. It was “YOU!!”. In former times user just consumed information with traditional media (News paper, Television etc) . With growth of internet, the user gets a powerful bidirectional tool that is internet. The user can produce information and share it with other users by using internet.  The consumer has been prosumer (produce and consume information). They collaborate in Wikipedia or open source project. They also suggest idea or give a feed back to company. They begin to make new value by using internet. It is WEB 2.0.

Key point of this 4’Th wave is “Open” and “Participation”. This is now being applied enterprise. Employees share their knowledge with their blog and wiki. They are discussing in internet forum. They are searching information that is required their business from internet. Employee starts to generate new value by themselves for their business. It breaks traditional vertical communication structure. Employee communicates across their business unit and across vertical organization structure.  Finally enterprise wants employee to be creative and collaborative to make a new value.

Here is summary of expectation to employee from enterprise.

	Changes	Requirement for employee
2nd wave Industrial revolution	Mass production. Processed enabled business	Parts of mess process.
3rd wave Informational revolution	High efficiency. Information is product. Global business	Efficient and globalized Smart enough to use complex IT system.
4’Th wave WEB 2.0	Open and participation. Occurrence of pro-sumer	Creative and collaborative Networked

WEB2.0

So what is WEB2.0? WEB2.0 is based on Web with internet. It is hard to define with some word. It is just paradigm not a technology. We can summarize characteristics like this.

User creates contents and share or sell : User creates contents and uploads it to YouTube, Flicker etc. And share the contents with other users. The content is not only produced by mess media.

Establish connection between people :Users manage their human network with SNS (Social Networking Service) like Face book and expand the network.

Generate a new value by collaboration :By using virtual collaboration space (WEB), users create new value. One of most famous collaboration example is Wikipedia. A lot of users post their knowledge. It is biggest dictionary in the world. Some developer contributes open source project like apache project. They makes software product.

Sharing information : User generated contents are existing in internet. It is shared to other users and is reused by the users.

Enhanced information approach and categorization : Traditionally approach to information is exact based search like google. But the approach is hard to find right information that I want. Rank based social book mark, micro blog like twitter, Tag cloud enables us to find right information more easily. Lots of recommended contents means it has high value.

Extension with open platform (Mash-up) :One of interesting characteristics of WEB2.0 is OPEN-API. WEB2.0 exposes their functionalities thru OPEN-API. So user can compose the OPEN-API and generate new value. For example user can mash-up Google Map & Restaurant information web site.

Communication with various way with various new tools :Communication is very important factor for collaboration and human network management. WEB2.0 provides new & innovative tool. Instance messaging based 1:1 synchronous communication. Video conferencing over different regions. Twitter based 1:anonymous users communication. In addition mobile removes time and location restriction.

ŸCan use anywhere and anytime with mobile device :In year 2009 there are many smart phone & mobile platform. Apple IPhone, Rim blackberry, Google Android etc. This mobile platform has very rich & speedy user interface. And network speed is highly increased. As a result mobile environment has been changed. Many WEB2.0 applications are supporting the mobile platform. It makes us to free from place and time restriction.

ŸEnhanced rich user interface :Traditional www user interface is image and text based static web. But from WEB2.0 the user interface is enriched with AJAX,FLEX etc. The interface looks like desktop application. It is pretty and comfortable. Indeed it leverage usability of WEB2.0 applications.

WEB2.0 has many other characteristics. But in this article, focus is how to apply WEB2.0 to enterprise. So I just close the WEB2.0 introduction here.

Enterprise 2.0

As I explained WEB2.0 has a lot of advantages. Beginning of Enterprise 2.0 is started from here. “How to apply the profit of WEB2.0 to enterprise?” Enterprise version of WEB2.0 is Enterprise 2.0

4C Model

To apply the profit we have to research WEB2.0 spheres. Here is example scenario

①     William wants to know a person who can help William to design Enterprise2.0 concept.
②     William find Johns by searching twitter with “#E20” tag.
③     William sent twitter message to Johns to ask some help.
④     Johns reply the message and they have a communications. But the communication gets more complex and need more conversation. They change their communication tools to Google Talk (Messenger)
⑤     William gets enough information. And William and Johns wants to discuss more about enterprise 2.0. So they open a thread in internet forum with “enterprise2.0” title.
⑥     William posts the news that the forum is opened in twitter and blog.
⑦     Many people know that there is a forum by twitter and blog search.
⑧     Many discussions are occurred in the forum.
⑨     William thinks that they can draw enterprise 2.0 architecture. So he opened Wiki page to collaboration.
⑩     Members of the forum post enterprise 2.0 architecture on the Wiki and the contents is matured.
⑪     The document is matured enough. William released the document in his blog. The posting is notified by twitter and blog trackback. Indeed many users internet share the information.

This is formal scenario of WEB2.0 usage. Let’s analysis this scenario.

In activity 1,2 William found Johns by using WEB2.0 tool. It is “Connection”. The Connection means that finding right people or right contents in internet.

In activity 3~6 William communicated with many people about enterprise 2.0. It is “Communication” Twitter ,Forum ,Instance messenger are good example of the communication.

And William opened Wiki to make enterprise 2.0 architecture. It is “Collaboration” As a result William made enterprise 2.0 contents. It is “Contents”. The content is value that is generated by collaboration.

These Connection, Communication, Collaboration and Contents are 4 main factor of WEB2.0. I call these 4 components as “4C” and interaction of the 4C is “4C model[1]”. Each component of the 4C model has own value. It communicates with each other and generates value.

Let’s summarize this 4C model.

Connection	Finding right person and right information
Communication	Communicate with people
Collaboration	To generate value, co-work with other people
Contents	Store value in www

Enterprise 2.0 Architecture

Based on 4C model, we can define Enterprise 2.0 system reference architecture. Here is the reference architecture

Each 4C model have realized component.

Connection component in the model has tools for connection. For example Microblog like twitter can be good tools for reaching a people. Search engine and Tag cloud helps people to reach the right information.

Communication component also has a lot of software tools. Instance Messengers for synchronous & 1:1 communication. Forum can be used to communicate with 1:N for specific issues. Micro blog also can be used in Communication for 1:Anonymous & Asynchronous communication.

In Collaboration area there are many new software. Wiki and Team blog is most traditional things. Nowday many vendors provides new collaboration tools like workspace (similar as group ware. It contains team wiki, team forum, dashboard and email integration, group management etc.)

Contents components commonly stores contents and share the contents with others.

These are example of 4C component software. In addition we need infrastructure to provide better service.

First, Enterprise portal. Each software that I mentioned above is silo system. It means each software has own user interface & ACL system. So to provide integrated view to end user. We need User Interface integration Layer. It is portal. It integrates user interface with Portlet, Clipping etc. In addition it provides single sign on features & ACL, Entitlement etc.

Even if the portal supports ACL and entitlement it is just for integrated layer. Something has to handle all of user identification information and more integrated authentication & authorization. It is covered by Identity Management System. It is IDM.

To provide freedom from location and time constraint, enterprise 2.0 need to support mobile device. There is many ways like WAP based portal. On device client etc. From 2008 Smartphone is rapidly developed and used (RIM/Blackberry, Apple/IPhone,Google/Android etc). Before that the mobile based interface was just WAP. But after we get a mobile platform & 3G network (Fast & support IP address) Mobile interface has been enhanced a lot. As a result it provides very rich and great mobile application infrastructures to us.

A reason why WEB2.0 is spread is it has a Rich user interface. The interface looks similar like desktop application. It is enabled by RIA technologies like AJAX and Flex etc. In the same way of WEB2.0, enterprise 2.0 also has to have Rich user interface.

In next article, i will introduce about strategy for enterprise 2.0.

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[1] In year 2008 Niall cook announced another 4C Model(Collaboration ,Connection ,Communication ,Cooperation) in his book “Enterprise 2.0” but the concept and approach are different