Web 2.0 with all its plethora of collaborative social tools is encroaching on work. Once upon a time, social media was a corporate taboo, viewed as a time waster, but today, ‘no business colleague is an island entire of itself; Every manager is a piece of the corporation’ and social media makes it as easy and quick to share business information with others, as it is to share photos and chitchat with family and friends.
The business benefits of Web 2.0 characteristics would seem to be well worth embedding into enterprise IT: The increasing value of technology is making IT a partner to business, so collaboration will increasingly be valued. With major IT investments continually fading into obsolescence, interoperability between legacy, and newer applications will save time and costs, and the ability to share information, especially BI on a real time basis, should improve decision making.
The need to better understand how to use these tools, and how to utilize them in an enterprise environment, is however, not quite cut and dried. Certainly with the rapid changes of these technologies, and the rise of new ones, and don’t forget the malware that can ride along, there are questions as to how best to use these tools, whether they should be embedded in the enterprise IT, and how can it be done in a way it can be controlled and monitored for risk and compliance needs.
With the increasing trend toward cloud computing additionally new questions are looming on the horizon. How much collaboration will need to occur between enterprises that are enthusiastic adopters of social media tools and solution providers? With the increasing sophistication of malware, how much risk will there be using public social media web tools like chat, RSS, Blogs, and sites like FaceBook on the same gadgets used to deliver enterprise applications over private or public cloud? Tune in on November 23rd, when CIO Talk Radio hosts SuperValu SVP & CIO Wayne Shurts, and other guests, to discuss, “Can a CIO use Social Media to deliver better IT?”
The rewiring of an enterprise to accommodate disruptive new technology is no small task. If you are looking for tips on how to rewire your organization to take advantage of Web 2.0 social media tools, we also recommend the December 2010 show archive: Rewiring your enterprise with social media. For a good read we also recommend own blog: Do Social Media and Enterprise Architecture Coexist Well?
