Enterprise 2.0 - An Overview

In lay man's language it is about open communication in an enterprise. The assumption here is, more the information is shared among the colleagues , teams , customers , vendors etc. in an enterprise ; the less information will be shrouded. Verbosity is the need of E 2.0 , and when information is free and shared among the colleagues people can react more quickly on it.

This will create a treasure of Intellectual property for an Organization and people will also be more productive. It main characteristics are :
a) Flat organization , b)Ease of Organisation Flow , c) Agility and Flexibility , d)user driven technology , e)Bottom up , f) Distributed , g) Transparency

Drivers :

To implement E 2.0 in your organization you need to fuel it with - Web 2.0 technologies , demand for socialization of enterprise applications and business culture willing to adopt and make full use of E 2.0.

Web 2.0 is the term used for set of tools/applications which allow for user participation. The most common and popular example of such tools can be - Wiki , socialtext , microblogs (Twitter) , Jive , sharepoint , Lotus connection , facebook etc. Wikis , blogs and social text are now main tools used to develop applications for communication and marketing in the enterprise.

This leads us to the second driver of E 2.0 - the socialization of business applications , moving from data centric models to people driven applications. Applications in which user participation is required to run them and its regular use builds into a full grown product. Its not code and data fed by programmers which builds the application but the information which is shared by people in it.

The third Key to enterprise 2.0 is - Business culture , it is mostly overlooked but is the most important driver for E 2.0. For centuries corporates have been following the Feudal system of Hierarchies - workers (cattle class) ; lower management , higher management , top management , directors and what not management. Its very difficult for them to appreciate the open dialogue among workers. Transparency is the word more often used than practiced , E 2.0 will create transparency among workers. It is very difficult to dictate and monitor each and every word which employee says/writes on blogs. Until the management understands that it is not promoting Anarchy but transparency it will be very difficult to use and implement it.

IBM launches Linked in Widget

A fantastic utility by IBM , Linked is the most used bussiness networking social blog by professionals. By creating such utilities/widgets IBM has proved once again that Lotus Notes is a True Collaboration tool. I am sure that the success of this widget will make IBM think about one for TWITTER as well which is another hot property in social networking business.

Follow the link below to follow the steps to install Linked in widget in lotus 8 .
 
http://www.linkedin.com/lotus

The City of Mess!!

No prizes for guessing, it’s GURGAON. It’s the biggest failure among all the efforts which our governments made to create happy living for the citizens in the so called NCR region. So called because for our builders even 100 Kms from National capital is NCR. It’s a mockery of urbanization policies and a slap on the face of those who called it with names like - Global City , Singapore city , city of rich and educated and what not.

This satellite town of NCR never lived up to its expectations. Without any urban planning they have created a city of Superstructures with Zero infrastructure. When I visited this place for the first time I was appalled by its horrifying condition. With no facility of public transport I had to walk for 5 Kms in the scorching heat of June to get an auto rickshaw. For miles there was nothing but buildings and speeding cabs of call centers. God forbade, if by any chance you get hit by any of those, there is not a single soul to help you for miles.

No, I do not hold any animosity against the innocent dwellers of this city. Their only mistake is that they have fallen into the false trap of builders and believed on fake claims made by the city creators in government. Without any urban planning, no public transport , zero infrastructure in terms of roads , drainage system , power supply this is a “City of Mess”. There are sad stories of people getting trapped in their house during rains. Water gets filled in the basements, blow off the power grids and back up generators immobilizing lifts. If you are living in your free hold then you will have to swim in the puddles all around it in order to reach destination. Even there were reports in TOI sayinf that people are sleeping in cars with their kids because of the power cuts all night in our “Global City “.

New toll road has failed to live on its promise to solve the traffic woes for commuters. People get stuck in traffic even in 16 lane road for hours. During the peak office time it takes at least 2 hours from any adjoining border areas of Delhi to reach Gurgaon. Think about the pain of those who travel from far east or northern part of Delhi.

By writing all this my plea to the government is “No more Gurgaons”. Not for God’s sake , but for the poor peoples sake. There has to be some kind of policy or planning to stop mushrooming of such disasters. Such places only create havoc for environment and climate. Such places increase pollution , climatic temperature, reduce water table etc. Create measures to stop the builders who fool innocent farmers to buy their fertile lands for construction. Once acquired then go on to make false claims about their projects and fool inncocent people to fall into the trap of investing in their projects.

To first citizens of Gurgaon who thinks “I am rich and I can buy any thing “and have closed their eyes on such issues. Please leave your bloated egos, this city never was a Global city, and will never be until you take a stand. Take a stand against lack of civic amenities in city; educate people who are buying in Gurgaon about its pathetic state. Builders will not stop selling this mess to us until we start questioning before buying.

IBM banks a deal with US Bank

A US bank picks IBM's products QuickR and Lotus Connections over MS Sharepoint to implement in their bank for its file sharing requirments and social collaboration respectively.
This Minneapolis based U.S. Bank is also standardizing on the latest Lotus Notes 8.5 client for all 58,000 employees, as well as the Lotus Sametime messaging app .

For detailed reports visit the Link below :
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9138020/U.S._Bank_picks_IBM_s_Lotus_platform_over_Microsoft_s_SharePoint