Straw Man Argument About Enterprise 2.0 Doesn't Fly

Written by Alex Williams / November 6, 2009 2:05 PM / 10 Comments

Dennis Howlett got the attention of the Enterprise 2.0 community today, with his continued skepticism about "social" technologies and their place in the business world. Here's a quote from his post entitled Enterprise 2.0 - the non-debate:

"Why am I not surprised? I've argued for years that the notion of anything that has 'social' attached to its moniker is about as welcome as breaking wind in a spacesuit."

While Howlett makes a few good points in his post, we think that he's making a straw man argument - that the Enterprise 2.0 community is somehow involved in a big lie.

The reality is that Enterprise 2.0 applications augment our work and these technologies are having an effect on productivity and in some respects, business processes.

We spoke today with Mike Gotta, an industry analyst with the Burton Group. He puts it well. For data entry and claims processing, people use other tools. The Enterprise 2.0 offerings augment their work.

"Dennis has a point," Gotta said. "These systems are not workflow driven - we already have tools to do that. These tools augment work. They enhance it, they enrich it."

But even tools like ERP offerings are integrating lightweight layers to make them more usable, so that people can get their work done. We also recently wrote about Netvibes working with Sage Software to provide personal dashboards so business users can better use ERP applications.

A few other signs:

The Services sector is growing. We spoke to a large technology company this week that is questioning how they can grow under the weight of the email that stalls people in their work. They are working with a large services group which is helping them look at a number of ways for real-time data and notifications to take some of the load off of their engineering team. They've looked around and believe Enterprise 2.0 tools can perform a role that will help them grow and become a more profitable business.

More use cases are popping up. No matter how you feel about the Enterprise 2.0 conference, a lot of companies were there to say how they are using lightweight technologies to solve productivity and business problems.

Companies on the sell side are growing. Are they all charlatans? If so, are their clients really that stupid? We don't think so. To call people fakes is to say that these poor business people are just victims. That makes no sense. Moreover, we wonder how much more waste enterprises can take with heavyweight IT projects - those cost far more than a SaaS offering that you can test, try and pay on a per use basis.

We do see the gap between productivity and the business side of the organization with Enterprise 2.0 technologies. But the innovation is there. And lines of business are taking advantage of tools because they help get the work done.

We do agree that 'social' is a term too often overused. But to dismiss the Enterprise 2.0 community is going a bit too far - and does not reflect the reality of this new world.

Comments

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Hey Alex. The indisputable proof is the customers who are already engaged in this. The list grows every day. We have 118 in the Council and a few more dozen in the queue for on-ramping.

Like I've said on other blogs, this criticism only helps our members. To be frank, some business processes need to be stripped down and dismantled because they're perpetuating a world that has been rendered obsolete. These news tools introduce the opportunity to rewrite business processes for the digital (and perhaps, social) age. I know large enterprise vendors are working on building those capabilities. And large enterprises are experimenting now with their own deployments.

Posted by: Susan Scrupski | November 6, 2009 3:00 PM

Well written article. I’m surprised you didn’t mention the bizarre sentence: “[Snow Leopard] doesn’t have the features, nor the support, nor the appeal that Windows does.”. I don’t know much about Apple’s software support but Microsoft’s support costs an-arm-and-a-leg and I think a lot of people would disagree about features and appeal.

Posted by: pc zubehör | November 6, 2009 7:53 PM

I’m a relative newbie in this space, and I advocate for E2.0 at work.I struggle with some barriers to adoption that I don’t know how to qualify except as corporate culture. Thanks for this lovely article.

Posted by: r4i | November 6, 2009 9:59 PM

Dennis is just playing devil's advocate. He's pushing us to prove the business model. He's actually doing the industry a favor.

Please read on... http://www.seekomega.com/2009/11/enterprise-20-caffeine-lets-debunk-non.html

Posted by: Mark | November 6, 2009 10:04 PM

I’m a relative newbie in this space.

Posted by: Karahan money | November 7, 2009 12:42 AM

I agree with Dennis on how Enterprise 2.0 is being packaged and sold into large corporations. I was on a panel at the east-coast e2conf in Boston earlier this year and wrote about it: http://bit.ly/Uys5h "What I learned (and didn't) at Enterprise 2.0 this week"

From my post, you'll see 71% of the sessions covered the "social" part of E2.0 and not some of the other important topics(Security, mashups, ROI, etc)

I too declined a seat at the West-coast table b/c frankly I've seen too much emphasis on the "social upheval" of E2.0. That's partly why next week when I present at O'Reilly's Web 2.0 conference, I'm going to do a more "practial" session (Building Enterprise Mashups)

Posted by: Michael Ogrinz | November 8, 2009 3:47 PM

great article. I’m curious why you didn’t mention the this: “[Snow Leopard] doesn’t have the features, nor the support, nor the appeal that Windows does.”.

Posted by: aion kinah | November 12, 2009 4:10 AM

Even though enterprises 2.0 is clouded with some key issues like adoption, ROI and direct business outcomes, many companies have already applied consistent collaborative platforms (http://www.collabor.com) offering the best of external functionality with the application of a dedicated business network. Concentrating on an array of shifting demands and individual client solutions, enterprise 2.0 enhances workforce productivity, knowledge management and online interaction to provide competitive advantages to the company.

Posted by: Mrudula Paladugu | November 20, 2009 4:33 AM

@Michael Ogrinz, I agree with you. Too much about what Enterprise 2.0 will deliver and very little about how to control it (and its side effect on security, ROI etc). Every new technology brings risks and rewards and right now the conversation is all about the reward and head in the sand about the risks.

Posted by: Khürt Williams  | December 11, 2009 3:29 PM