Enterprise 2.0 in action (In my life)

Enterprise 2.0 in action since 1996

Reading the Wikinomics blog (http://www.wikinomics.com/blog/) and exploring the new business model presented (Peering; Being Open; Sharing; Acting Global) where the collaboration is the key, all those concepts make perfect sense to me. And there is no doubt the wikipedia creators explored those concepts in a fantastic way.

However, the business model presented forced my mind back to early 90’s, I know must readers are not IT related people, but as you known I am IT centric, and my life experience is surrounded by IT. Moreover, I am pretty sure any non IT people know what the brand Microsoft means. Also, if you lived in 90’s, you know what the name Bill Gates means and you know what the IT market dominance from Microsoft means. Now, let’s have a look in some stats about Microsoft: 

	90’s		Today
	Microsoft	Others	Microsoft	Others
Web browser	90% (I.E.)	10%	25%	75%
Web Server	80% (IIS)	20%	30%	70%
Database	65% (MSSQL)	35%	30%	70%
Development Languages	60% (Visual Basic)	40%	45% (.Net)	65%

(source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_web_browser, the values are approximately)

As I said, I am not going to explore the Microsoft’s market drop; I just want to use this as an Enterprise 2.0 in action example, and that happened back in the 90’s. I remember very clearly some Microsoft competitors like linux based companies (e.g. Red Hat, Suse, Slackware), or Database competitor such as MySQL, or companies like SUN (has been bough by Oracle in 2006), all of them talking about the concept of OpenSource (suggest reading for basic concept: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software, very good reading: http://tim.oreilly.com/articles/paradigmshift_0504.html)

 In my opinion the Open Source ideology fits perfectly in the new business model presented:

 Peering:

An open source software component or system can get contributions from graduate students, consultants and experienced developers at the same time.

 Being Open:

Nothing can more open than the Open-Source Paradigm.

 Sharing:

Open source is called Architecture of Participation. The code by itself owns to the community. And the community shares the intellectual participation.

 Acting Global:

To give an example the linux compilation Slackware receives collaboration from developers living in 23 different countries.

The tools that enabled that Open Source style are the used today for code repository and code sharing (e.g. SVN, CVS, Git, Microsoft VSS, etc).

Can we consider code repository and Open-source approach as Enterprise 2.0?

—————————————–//——————————————————-

Enterprise 2.0 in action today

 Wiki style

 As a software developer there are 3 sets of information produced all the time by my team. And they are vital for our day-by-day activities:

1)      Environment configuration information (which tools do I will to install and start developing, for example: eclipse, soap-ui, database client, etc)

2)      Environment information (Development, Test, UAT and Production environment). Information like server name, user credential, urls, etc

3)      Release plan and release information (date, time, status, components)

 These 3 set of information are produced in collaboration by different team members, also the information is very dynamic, they change all the time.

Needless to say, a wiki style tool fits perfectly for that scenario. In my last three consulting companies we have been using a wiki style tool for those sets of information because we need: collaboration from the team to produce the info, easily changed style, centralized.  So, WIKI as my first Enterprise 2.0 tool in action currently.

Professional Social Media (linkein.com)

Working for a consultant company, I have been all the time to update my CV. And I remember the nightmare to keep my CV’s up to date in a centralized repository some years ago.

Thanks for the professional Social Media (linkein.com) as tool to keep your CV centralized, also we can enjoy all the beauty of a social media, like finding your previous work-mates, keep tracking about your previous companies web sites, receiving recommendations, etc.

My current company is using linkein as a official tool, and when a new potential client ask for a consultant portfolio, our company sends out our linkein URL. Isn’t that fantastic?