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New Dev Suite Lets LongJump Work With Other Apps

When LongJump first launched, the PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) model was only just taking off. Since then, we've seen Google launch their App Engine and more services than ever are taking advantage of Amazon's EC2. Today, the Sunnyvale, California-based PaaS provider, LongJump, tries to one-up those big-name sites with the launch of their new LongJump Development Suite, a tool set that helps developers extend the power of LongJump by allowing interoperability with other systems and applications.

According to Forrester Research, we're in the initial phases of a new 16-year cycle of technology innovation and growth called "IT Everywhere." This shift comes on the heels of the previous cycle which brought us networked computing technologies for our enterprise applications and the Internet. During this transitional period, CIOs need to be aware of which trends from the older cycle are still important and which of the new trends they should also be paying attention to. Forrester has summed up their findings in a recent report which focuses on these emerging trends.

A new report from Forrester Research, a company that has been closely following the adoption of web 2.0 and social technologies by businesses, now says that their earlier predications about Web 2.0 in the enterprise may have been too timid. Last year, they said that in 2008 I.T. shops would start to take a leadership role in Web 2.0 adoption by business, but this latest report is now debunking the conventional wisdom that I.T. is as skeptical as once thought.

Here are some of the highlights from the week's Web Tech action on ReadWriteWeb. On the product side we analyzed Adobe's new Web Office suite, investigated a worrying exodus of sellers from eBay, looked some more at Yahoo's Search Monkey, and showed you 6 tools to save links with. On the trends side we explored the latest Web happenings in Asia, provided an overview of I.T. 2.0, analyzed the exploding popularity of online video, and checked out the readiness of banking customers to use Web gadgets.

How Changing Technology is Having Big Impacts on Business

In case you haven't heard yet - the I.T. world is changing. The rise of social computing technologies, generally branded as "Web 2.0" and including things like wikis, blogs, social networking, RSS, and more are slowly making their way into the business world. This new movement is called Enterprise 2.0, and it's no small shift. They're even having a conference about it next week. But the change encompasses more than just the introduction of new, social software into the formerly stodgy business world - it also includes the movement of server software from in-house data centers to the cloud, the rise of a mobile workforce, the rebirth of thin client computing, a self-provisioning user base, and more.

In her post Google Sites the Next Sharepoint? Maybe Not...., Sarah Perez argues that Google's strategy with Google Apps is to "subvert the IT department altogether and appeal directly to the worker." But commenter benkepes said that IT is still key to Google Apps' success: "any success Google has within an enterprise setting [...] would seem to be to be a comment on the efficacy of the IT department itself." It's a fascinating discussion and thanks Sarah and benkepes - and all our other commenters - for putting the Google Apps hype under the microsoft microscope. Congratulations bennkeps, you've won a $30 Amazon voucher - courtesy of our competition sponsors AdaptiveBlue and their Amazon WishList Widget. Here's his full comment:

Lately, we've been discussing the concept of tech populism and the how enterprises are moving towards a more people-centric focus when it comes to their IT infrastructure. Although we support this movement of bringing social tools into the workspace, one could argue that there's a right way and a wrong way to do this. For some, it's a matter of introducing social or collaborative features into enterprise software; for others, like WorkLight, it's about adapting existing consumer tools for the enterprise.

Thanks to a more technology-savvy workforce, ubiquitous broadband, online collaboration, and social networking tools, it is individual workers, and not IT organizations, that are creating a new trend in business, a trend being called "technology populism." Despite the rewards of using web-based tools and the ease-of-use they provide, this new trend has inherent risks as well. And any IT managers who are ignoring the new, open internet and the power it provides are also ignoring the risks and security threats technology populism brings to the strategically planned IT infrastructures that they have helped build.