If We Ever Get Tired of the Term ‘Enterprise 2.0,’ Here are Some Ideas
by Joe McKendrick
Monikers and buzzwords are rampant across our industries. There has been plenty of teeth-gnashing and guffawing over the ‘Web 2.0′ term, right down to lawsuits over its use with conference venues. The term itself has gotten plenty of eye-rolls, and eyes really start to roll if someone mentions ‘Web 3.0′
Enterprise 2.0 has had fewer eye-rolls, but is very much the close sibling of Web 2.0.
Krissy Danielsson over at ebizQ has an interesting post: She suggests that maybe it’s time to call Web 2.0 something else, like ‘Live Web.’ It describes the real-time, real access, immediate nature of the technology and methodology. By extension, we could call Enterprise 2.0 ‘Live Enterprise’ and Software as a Service (which creates the ugly acronym SaaS) ‘Live Software.’ (This would also segway nicely into the Microsoft ‘Live’ sets of offerings.)
Krissy reminds us one of caveat: someone may have already copyrighted these terms. But it is a catchy idea.
Another term that describes what Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 is all about and getting a lot of play is ‘Web Oriented Architecture,’ or WOA, which links things, at least semantically, with the more internal enterprise track of SOA.
Let’s face it, as these technologies and methodologies advance, it doesn’t make sense to keep referring them as release ‘2.0.’ We’ve been calling Web 2.0 ‘Web 2.0′ for almost four years now. And calling everything ‘3.0′ will invite lots of ridicule. We need a new moniker to describe what we’re doing here — time is running short.
