David Neal

I’ve had quite the 2.0 month these past four weeks. I have been talking to a lot of firms about Web 2.0, or, if we prefer, Enterprise 2.0, and the effect all these new online gewgaws are having on the way companies do business and their productivity.

In a future issue of your favourite IT magazine you will find an analysis by me into whether companies are ready, willing and able to take advantage of Web 2.0 tools and functionality, and a very interesting interview that I did with the head of IT at technology consulting and outsourcing services provider Accenture, who is an enthusiastic member of the Web 2.0 Appreciation Society ­ or he certainly would be if such a body existed.

Not all corporate IT leaders are so open to fresh thinking and innovation. At most companies, Web 2.0 staples such as social networking sites, wikis and blogs are tightly controlled if not banned completely. Such draconian policies are understandable, I guess. Used in the wrong way by the wrong people, these tools can eat into productivity faster than a sumo wrestler tackling a Cumberland sausage.

That said, I think that firms ought to be embracing these tools like long-lost aunties, or at least investigating their potential business uses before imposing a ban. In particular, I am thinking about the recent announcements by IBM and Google of their respective solutions for enabling non-technical users to build customised web applications, or mashups.

There’s no doubt that this type of technology raises some sticky issues. For a start, they are developed for and run on platforms that are outside the control of the IT department. And then there is the issue of the power these tools give to users. Should firms really allow the people in sales, for example, to base important business decisions on web applications that they have cobbled together themselves without any meaningful input from the IT department?

The fact that these systems reside in the cloud is one of their key attractions. At the very least it means users do not have to draw on inhouse IT resources when the urge to mashup apps comes upon them.

Now let’s look at that second issue. It’s easy to imagine why IT managers might be a bit lukewarm about this kind of user empowerment. You can easily picture the following scenario: one day a call comes from an excited chap in sales extolling the virtues of “linking calendars with targets, with customers, with maps, with football grounds, with the availability of pies, and the likelihood of them wanting to talk scores on a Monday morning as a lead-in to a sales discussion in a Facebook-like view…”

Now a short-sighted IT department would file such a request in the bin. The thing is, that idea is probably a very good one. Think about it. Who better than a sales person to know what kind of sales-support system will help them do their job better and in turn increase company revenues?

Whether they are actually up to the task of creating the links between the applications is another matter. I downloaded the Google SDK and attempted to make some sense of it, and failed.

No matter how much the likes of Google and IBM bang on about how their web application platforms are designed to be used by non-technical users, there will always be non-technical users who find the non-technical solutions just a tad too technical for them to use.

Perhaps such things are best left to the IT experts after all?

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