Peter Rip, Managing Director at Leapfrog Ventures, wrote a great article about “The Coming Wave of Enterprise Web 2.0“. He and other industry thought leaders are seeing this as a major trend, the convergence of consumer and enterprise apps. He states that Collaboration can be an End or a Means, but I like the part best where Peter emphasizes why collaboration will only be enduring if it is the “Means”. Here is an excerpt from his post, containing his conclusions:
“This is why I think Enterprise Web 2.0 is different from Consumer Web 2.0. Enterprise’s have goals and structure. People around the Enterprise collaborate, but the collaboration is (supposed to be) undemocratic, i.e., ordered and non-chaotic. Ironically, this is not a new category. We used to call it Workflow and it was on the Known Quicksand Sector list at every VC firm, along with Middleware, Knowledge Management, and Enterprise Search. It was a Known Quicksand because no two implementations looked the same. Users couldn’t change the workflow to suit their needs. Users couldn’t automate the dozens of little tasks of collaboration that they do every week.
Despite being Known Quicksand, nearly every VC firm has placed a bet on workflow at one time or another. Why? Because the big Enterprise Apps automate you and me and we’re done. Automating the white space between us is the last untapped source of Big Win in the Enterprise.
This is more than just Workflow. It is Information Flow. And it’s not just an inside-the-firewall problem. In fact, it’s bigger outside than inside. All the wondrous improvements in personal mobility, communications, and 7×24 information access have exacerbated the problem. Customers, field service, sales people, consultants, outsourcers, telecommuters, suppliers, etc., all suffer the rising expectations of responsiveness that comes with personal automation and the sinking realization associated with the quagmire of complexity when trying involve others.
Mobile, Web 2.0, SaaS are going to converge into a set of new, lightweight Enterprise Web 2.0 applications. Collaboration is the Big Driver within Web 2.0 and nowhere is collaboration more valuable than when time is money – the time to assimilate information from the enterprise edge and the time to organize and respond. Prepare to see a wave of Enterprise Web 2.0 collaboration applications in the next 24 months. And, like every wave, it will be 5% innovation and 95% imitation.”
It is great to read this, because this is exactly Collanos’ vision and we have been working on these concepts since 2003. Collanos Workplace connects people around the enterprise, structures cross-organizational team work in secure spaces and essentially automates the “white space between you and me”.
Collanos basically team-enables your computer! Collanos addresses the growing pains of teams being overloaded with information scattered across various communication channels, most notably congested email inboxes. Collanos allows ad hoc, cross-organizational teams to easily access, update and share team knowledge on their computers and within the context of their activities. Teams can reach their goals faster, more securely and more effectively. Team members access shared workspaces locally on their computers, communicate with their colleagues using secure channels, and Collanos’ peer-to-peer technology keeps members’ workspaces in sync. On this foundation, Collanos provides dispersed teams intuitive and transparent solutions that enable superior teamwork. The base version of the product is offered free of charge.
Sphere: Related Content
