2008 Forecast: Enterprise 2.0 ‘Has Arrived’ (And Not a Moment too Soon)
by Joe McKendrick
Dion Hinchcliffe, the analyst who helped put Enterprise 2.0 on the map, has posted his latest predictions for Enterprise 2.0 in the year ahead.
Perhaps the most compelling prediction is the convergence between service oriented architecture (SOA) with Web 2.0 and SaaS — an Enterprise 2.0 stew ready for serving. Hence, Dion’s #1 prediction for 2008 is that “SOA finally goes pragmatic, Web-oriented, and lightweight.” Essentially, Dion is declaring that the Era of Big SOA is over. “Many of the ponderous, heavyweight SOA initiatives still in existence will finally refactor their design principles and then their architectures to be much more lightweight and RESTful. ”
The year 2008 will be a turning point for SOA, as it takes the Enterprise 2.0 route, Dion predicts. “One key driver is that organizations are increasingly tired of waiting for ROI on their SOA investments and the demand for change is pushing IT leaders to search for new, more effective approaches. Web orientation has enabled SOA on the greater Web on a vast scale and gained credence for a critical mass of the SOA community.”
Dion also observes that Enterprise 2.0 “will become a standard feature in most organizations.” E2.0 has arrived, he says. However, he adds, opinions will be divided on the impact of E2.0:
“The opinion on the results of Enterprise Web 2.0 will be colored by the preconceptions of those that observe them. The flattening of organizations, the non-hierarchical communication, the free and open exchange of information encouraged by Enterprise 2.0 platforms will be looked on as potentially disruptive by some and as a breath of freedom by others.”
Security will also be a top concern as the walls of enterprise IT become more “porous.” Dion predicts mixed results over the coming year in uptake of enterprise mashups and enterprise search, noting that organizations will continue to be plagued by vast, and most inaccessible silos of information. The wild, unchecked growth of unstructured data (especially blogs and wikis) within enterprises will only add to the challenge.
