Fifteen years since the invention of the worldwide web,
the growth of web logs, wikis, chatrooms, peer-to-peer websites,
and multiple-player gaming environments is paving the way for new
web applications for business.
Their common, collaborative or community-based characteristics
have spawned social networking and Web 2.0, the next version of the
web.
The concept is not a new one, given the fact that the internet
was first conceived as a knowledge-sharing and communications
platform. Likewise, e-mail was the first and most influential
communication tool to harness its power. But the proliferation and
uptake of new communication and collaboration tools has spawned
this latest wave of virtual interaction.
IT directors should be looking at how these developments could
be deployed within their organisations to improve the way people
work.
One example of this is the use of Ajax (Asynchronous Javascript
and XML), which has existed in Microsoft's Internet Explorer
browser since 2001, to build interactive web applications that
process user requests immediately.
Today, most browsers support Ajax, allowing web page content to
update immediately without making users wait for a whole new page
to load. Google Maps is an example of this, where Ajax allows users
to change views and manipulate maps in real time.
What is clear is that through Web 2.0 the web is becoming a more
mature environment for application development.
"This development is in part due to rich-client applications
that use technologies such as Dynamic HTML and Ajax to improve the
user experience," said Neil Ward-Dutton, research director at
analyst firm MWD.
Such technologies use the power of the web as a universal
network, collecting people and content together to harness their
collaborative power. "Web 2.0 is about the creation of open, global
application and information platforms that have more to do with
collaborative working than with the more traditional publishing
concept of the web," said Ward-Dutton.
"Changing web pages or applications used to be a specialist
task, now blogs, wikis and other social networking tools are
providing a platform for social interaction that is a no-brainer in
terms of usability."
This level of accessibility is something that has never been
available before, with almost anyone capable of using these
tools.
Social networking tools have, until recently, been limited in
the main to interpersonal or socially driven community-based
interaction - more than 48 million sites populate the
"blogosphere", according to Technorati, a website dedicated to
tracking and searching for blogs.
Most organisations are aware of the viral nature and marketing
power of blogs. Some are all too familiar with horror stories about
companies crippled by product inadequacies highlighted by blogging
consumers and disseminated around the world faster than any
newswire or product recall.
The infamous example of US company Kryptonite is often used as a
cautionary tale that organisations ignore social networking tools
at their peril. In 2004, the bike lock manufacturer was forced to
spend £5.4m on a product recall and exchange programme as a result
of a blog posting that claimed its premium locks could be picked
with a plastic pen top. This also resulted in an out-of-court
settlement for a customer's £108m class-action lawsuit.
Cautionary tales such as Kryptonite's have compelled companies
to look at how much the social networking phenomenon is influencing
customers and affecting share price, brand perception and,
ultimately, the bottom line. Many firms now understand the value of
monitoring, engaging and interacting with external, public
blogs.
Using such technology within the boundaries of a business pales
into insignificance in comparison with its pervasive use throughout
the blogosphere and the emergence of Wikipedia, the free
encyclopaedia built collaboratively using wiki software. But more
and more organisations are looking at how social networking tools
can benefit their own, internal processes.
"The web is the natural home of social networking tools," said
social software consultant Suw Charman. "The biggest challenge is
to make these things useful for business users."
Social networking takes advantage of the all the technologies
collectively referred to as Web 2.0, which allow for the capture,
management and sharing of information more intuitively. "It is not
just wikis or blogs, but also RSS [Really Simple Syndication]
feeds. Businesses lose a lot of power to communicate without this
type of tool," said Charman.
"Every business has a growing amount of digitally based content,
and many are starting to ask themselves, 'how are we going to
enable access to that content?'"
Charman said some companies had been experimenting with wikis
and blogs for years. "But the problem is that using these tools on
an enterprise scale is tricky - scaling is always an issue. Certain
tools are not suitable for business use because they are not
designed to be used behind a firewall, or to have 100 users running
off one instance of the software, for example.
"There are a whole different set of issues you have to deal with
compared to running this stuff as an individual user from a web
server. Latency issues [delays in application response times], for
example, can put potential corporate users off," she said.
"You should use a number of factors to decide which of the
enterprise blogging or wiki packages is best for your needs. These
include the number and type of users, the size of the deployment,
and the intended use for the tools."
Global investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort has been using wikis
since 1997. It called in Charman a couple of years ago when it
decided to expand their use after realising how useful and popular
they were for staff. The bank found that staff relied less on their
e-mail, instead using wikis for managing meetings, compiling
agendas, distributing minutes, brainstorming, publishing ideas and
creating presentations.
The then Dresdner Kleinwort global chief information officer JP
Rangaswami said, "Because we are regulated, we need to make sure
that everything we do is recordable, archivable and retrievable. We
need to ensure that we prevent market abuse, avoid any risk of
breaking down Chinese walls, correctly manage confidential
information, and yet still have better workflow."
There are three main types of social networking software, but
not all are suitable for large enterprises, said Charman. Among
these, the blogosphere has spawned free blog publishing software
suppliers that are looking to break into the enterprise market.
Charman said WordPress, for example, is a popular tool that is
good from a single-user point of view. She recommended evaluating a
recently launched multi-user version that could be suitable for
some simple, small-scale deployments.
Moveable Type is another option. It has attempted to move from
being one of the favourite platforms for individual bloggers to
developing more business-focused functionality. "It has a licensed,
enterprise version that is highly customisable and easy to use for
those who text knowledge," said Charman.
However, she warned the special markup punctuation needed with
this type of tool to indicate formatting such as bold or italic
type within a wiki (rather like coding text for the HTML format)
could put off new users.
Dresdner Kleinwort had been using a combination of content
management and publishing software that included Documentum, Media
Surface and Frontpage to maintain a static intranet. Its first
foray into using wikis was provided by enterprise social networking
tools supplier Socialtext.
But it was not until the supplier released a Wysiwyg editing
interface in January 2006 to translate typing in much the same way
as word processing software automates the formatting of content,
that the bank saw uptake and usage rise to include nearly a third
of all its 6,000 employees around the world. In fact, wiki usage in
the bank rose by 30% within two months of introducing the Wysiwyg
editor.
The market for enterprise social networking software tools is
growing, with suppliers such as Traction joining the likes of
Socialtext in providing purpose-built tools for organisations that
want to replace unstructured communication tools, such as e-mail,
with something more sophisticated. They offer the granularity of
control and the permissioning and workflow structure of other
enterprise-scale software products.
It can be difficult to force new tools on a user community, but
they could be invaluable for managing knowledge and content if
end-users are given proper incentives.
UK delivery company eCourier is using Traction's Teampage
project management blog software. The web-based despatch firm has
been using the system to speed the development process of its
bespoke, mission-critical IT systems between teams around the
world.
Jay Bregman, chief technology officer at eCourier, said, "We are
a small, cash-strapped new company, so every penny we spent on
supporting the development process was important. We started with a
five-user trial of Teampage, but now people are really used to this
kind of interaction. And I have found it more collaborative and
easier to use than Microsoft Sharepoint or Project software.
"Our developers in the UK, Italy and Germany now have a
consistent view of development projects regardless of language
barriers that is searchable, and provides invaluable background for
new starters. And we have found we can customise it as much as we
want."
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