The New Web for The Enterprise

When I started on the web, the very idea that it is comprised of billions of documents weaved together by numerous links was quite enthralling. The definition of web has changed considerably since then, it’s becoming more and more a world of connected data then just connected documents.

Today the web which started as a huge information repository is changing the way companies run their businesses and the way people connect. For the enterprise, the new web is not only making optimizations to the existing business processes but also defining newer and better business models altogether. Here I try to analyze and explore the blue oceans for the web from a development solution provider standpoint.

In the “Emerging Trends and Technologies” research by Gartner for 2010-2015, few growth areas have been identified as “Hot Spots”. These include; The Real World Web (objects and places), Leveraging Connections (People and Community) and Redefining Data (applications and processes).

Assume the world where the online ads are context aware, a shopping web store, automatically redefines the product pricing/positioning based on a pre-defined set of business rules. A HR person utilizes a social network to know employee concerns, making policies around attrition, retention and recognition. Applications run independent of the device, so on and so forth.

Over the web, we’re progressing towards a developing a culture where the control shifts from the technology guys to the business user/end user. Web applications like Salesforce.com and the CMS enabled websites are early examples of this.

Forrester research in one of its reports, “The Dynamic Business Applications Imperative [2007]” brings up the concept of continuously evolving applications with changing business needs. They identify “build for change” as the key-phrase for next generation web applications. They say that, today applications designers take data integrity, performance and scalability factors into account but the new applications are going to be “build for change”, driven by business rules.

Also, Gartner in the “Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies - 2005” identified “Business Rule Engines” as one of the future technologies, and I see this playing a vital role in shaping the applications for the future.

The coming years are essentially going to change the way software gets architected. It’s already changing from colossal black boxes to amalgamated applications. The intelligence is moving from applications to data, with technology advancements as RDF, OWL and SWRL.

The new buzzword, Web 2.0, has shifted the spotlight from the enterprise to the consumer. If web 1.0 was all e-commerce, enterprise architecture, then web 2.0 is all consumers, it’s all user experience.

Someone may call attention to the belief that web 2.0 is a non-enterprise stuff; it might appeal to the younger generation but not relevant to the corporate. Moreover, companies have already started seeing opportunities in collaboration, blogs and tagging kind of web 2.0 practices.

This web 2.0 technology upgrade is surely an opportunity area for smaller vendors. CNet’s Antony Brydon says, “Corporate customers have distinct needs from consumers, but software companies, particularly smaller challengers, can employ consumer market tactics to take on large, entrenched rivals.” Ray Lane, former oracle president adds, "All these things that are thought to be consumer services are coming into the enterprise".

Web is becoming much bigger than what anybody envisaged it to be. In times to come, the demarcation between desktop and web application space is likely to get blurred. Google the bellwether of business models over the web is forging all its nerves towards defining this new model where web applications run and behave as desktop applications. Adobe AIR, Mozilla Prism and Microsoft LiveSpaces are again endeavors in this very direction.

Now what it essentially means for solution providers is that the rules of the game are changing.

Forrester envisions Service Oriented Architecture clubbed with B3 (BI + BPM + Business Rules) as the new computing platform and Information Workplace with Social Computing as the new user experience.

To my mind, I see some new roles emerging and firms should be ready to go belt and braces to hone their resource pool on those lines. Firstly, people who are responsible for defining and analyzing business rules are going to be vital. Forrester in it's report says, “In the Dynamic Business Applications era, business analysts — increasingly called business architects in some of the early adopter companies — must deepen their technical skills to participate in development more actively, creating models, business rules definitions, mashups, and other live assets to drive IT development.”

Second but perhaps the most important for web applications would be the UX consultants, the guys responsible for defining the user experience. These are the people who understand the UI aesthetics and user psychology at the same time. Though for business applications, these folks would need to whet their ability on “how it works” and “what options are available, technically”.

The business models for web 2.0 with enterprise systems would be an interesting thing to watch, but something important to take note of is that, web 2.0 in itself follows a services kind of model, and thus closely associates with SOA, SAAS style of applications.

Conclusively, one thing which I can indisputably say about the new web is that it gives new ways of solving old problems. The open question is that, Why won’t the phenomenal one-click usability breakthroughs come to the enterprise?

:-Muktesh Kandpal