精彩的人生

As you read the title of this new blog, the first question some of you will ask is if Web 2.0 is really important to the enterprise.  To this I offer a resounding affirmation.  It's more than just keeping up with the next trendy wave of innovation on the Web, or being able to issue the latest buzzword from the CTO's office.  Web 2.0 is the recognition that a fundamental shift in software and user experience is occuring, and that the Web is driving it.

There is a well known saying that no smaller system can encounter a larger system without being fundamentally changed by the experience. Once you see a much better way to do something, you can't wait to start. While traditional IT efforts still routinely underdeliver and underperform, the so-called Web 2.0 approaches to applications and user interaction are raising the bar on expectations for how software should work. These new models are offering practical techniques that seem to result in simpler, better software that's recognizably more engaging, changeable, and reusable.  And as important as any of this, people and their connections to each other are put where we've always needed them to be, at the center of the software experience.

If I had to summarize simply why Enterprise Web 2.0 is a vital concept, the vision of software ecosystems converging would be it.  It isn't that it's useful to version the Web, or even understand every aspect of the overloaded term that is "Web 2.0" to appreciate what's happening.  To understand this is to realize that the forces of change are intensely powerful in an online system that now contains over 1 billion users.  No entity can possibly remain unaffected by sustained exposure to such a large system.  In other words, whatever is happening on the Web today will only have an increasingly pronounced effect on the enterprise.

Then there are the particular aspects of Web 2.0 which are shaping software inside, outside, and across the firewall; the innovations in interactive, online applications, two-way flows of information between users and the Web, free-form organization of content, and the increasing use of social engagement to create communities.  Then there is the growing openness and interconnectedness of all the systems on the Web into a real information ecosystem via lightweight Web services like RSS, XML/HTTP, and REST. 

We can actually see waves of new innovative online software that's made this way arriving daily via sources like Michael Arrington's terrific TechCrunch.  Or we can witness Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and nimble Web 2.0 companies like 37signals, challenge each other as they seek to create the next major generation of software, online.  It's not that all the innovation in software is happening on the Web by any means, but it's the massive scaling factor that makes all the difference.

Fellow ZDNet blogger David Berlind recently offered some fascinating evidence of his own of the ease at which Web 2.0-style software "mashups" can be created out of the raw fabric of the Web (or the enterprise, which is the point). With such a vast landscape of easily exploitable functionality and data, software will by necessity be created increasingly by combining what already exists.  Isolated, standalone software just can't compete.

This vision is actually pretty familiar to those involved with a current best practice in enterprises today: service-oriented architecture.  As it turns out, just about any examination of the vibrant, integrated service ecosystem of the Web invariably makes SOA and EAI appear far too rigid and slow-moving in comparison.  Once you see a much better way to do something, you can't wait to start.

The reality is that the Web has become a higher-order platform that has a strong tendency to absorb (and yes, I'm resisting the urge to say assimilate) the smaller systems it encounters.  Traditional software and even operating systems won't go away soon but just aren't as relevant when all the important information and function is moving online.  At the same time, the Web is fostering global communities of people that feel enriched and enabled by the democratization of content and experience brought to them by the Web in the form of blogs, wikis, media sharing, instant messaging, and much more.

These are the themes and concepts that I'll continue to explore in this blog, I do hope you'll follow along.

For another view that's a bit self-serving but informative, see venture capitalist Peter Rip on Enterprise Web 2.0.

原文地址：http://blogs.zdnet.com/Hinchcliffe/?p=3

As the Web matures into a richly intertwined ecosystem of shared content and open services, what some call The Web As Platform, some innovative companies are beginning to offer potentially disruptive products that leverage the Web's growing "platformness".  Increasing in popularity in particular are what some people call Ajax desktops, or personalized start pages.  Well exemplified by Microsoft's Live.com, but also by the likes of the popular Protopage and Netvibes, the interest in these online desktops is being driven by a confluence of factors.

One major factor is that we are struggling with attention scarcity; finding enough time to digest the proliferating sources of information we need to track on a daily basis.  I don't need to tell you that the sheer variety can be daunting and now usually includes e-mail, calendars, contacts, to do lists, news, weather, school closings, blogs and work documents like spreadsheets, presentations, and more. 

Another factor is having to manage all the software and information location (URLs and directory trees) needed to consume our information sources.  So as important sources of information only continue to proliferate, it's driving a desire to simplify and centralize their consumption. Not helping is the aging model of personal computing, which wasn't designed with this blizzard of federated content and functionality in mind.Not helping is the aging model of personal computing, which wasn't designed with this blizzard of federated content and functionality in mind.  Notwithstanding the capable RSS and OPML features offered by the forthcoming Windows Vista, today's PC operating environment is increasingly unable to offer users a meaningful solution to managing their information. And with attention scarcer and scarcer, people are also less willing to spend time installing, upgrading, and patching all the instances of the productivity software, e-mail clients, and PIMs they use.  Constantly synchronizing information between home, work, and family PCs is also another growing chore.  The final nail in the coffin is that as more and more content is available as services via RSS and other Web services it's finally making consolidation of consumption truly possible.

This is making the simplicity and elegance of online desktops ever more attractive.  A quick check of Alexa traffic for Protopage, Netvibes, and the compelling new entry Pageflakes, shows that marketshare amongst the small players is clearly growing but still up for grabs.  Live.com by contrast is growing by leaps and bounds and its reach already far exceeds any of the small Ajax desktops.  But the growth of all is clear and the model for going to a single place that has all of our information ready to consume is a powerful draw.  And now, increasingly, Ajax desktops are offering some integration with real Web 2.0 online applications like Writely and Zoho Writer, two online word processors that have partnered with Netvibes and Pageflakes, respectively.  And Live.com is expected to have integration with the forthcoming Office Live, though I don't specifically have confirmation of that yet.

Now, for those of you that haven't used Ajax desktops yet, they are a far cry from the HTML portals of yesterday.  Yes, all of the new Ajax desktops do the traditional portal of work of gathering the content sources that interest you, from news and weather to your favorite blogs and del.icio.us bookmarks.  But a number of things make the new online desktops a serious native desktop alternative that will increasingly compete with today's PC desktop, both on the Web and in the enterprise.

 Value proposition for online Ajax desktops

• One Stop - Centralized online consumption of content and services
• Accessible Anywhere - Roaming accessibility from anywhere with Web connectivity
• All Your Data - Easy integration of most existing information sources including e-mail, calendars, bookmarks, news, blogs, pictures, etc.
• Engaging, Fun, Fast - Rich, interactive experiences that match native software
• A Platform that Grows And Evolves - Open platform for in-browser third-party software add-ons (Live.com's Gadgets and Pageflakes' Community Flakes)
• Real Software Not Just Data - Increasing integration with Web 2.0 software applications like word processors, messaging, and wikis, plus rich Javascript widgets
• Intelligent Consumption -  Ad-hoc, decentralized, user guided content filtering and mashup creation

In other words, Ajax desktops vie for the coveted spot, along with traditional PCs and native software, for the center of the user experience.  But as we spend more and more time online, and more of our information increasingly comes from online sources, these online desktops will be hard to pass-up alternatives.  Microsoft's Live.com clearly anticipates this and is ready to capitalize on the trend as more users get comfortable storing and managing their information online.

Out of all of this, two trends are particularly interesting.  One is that some of these start pages are truly open platforms, and there seems to be enough engaged users ready to develop compelling add-ons that extend the experience and make them thriving communities.  This represents two key tenets of Web 2.0: that a platform beats an application every time, and that great software makes itself reusable and extendable in unintended ways.  In particular, Microsoft's Live.com Gadgets are offering consistently interesting new software that lives right in the browser, which anyone can create and share.

The second is that mainstream users are at least a year away from being ready for this, probably two.  Since this space is still fairly empty in terms of users and the fact that small, new companies like Pageflakes can still build some of the best offerings so far demonstrates that this will be an exciting space to watch as innovation continues apace.  As for the enterprise aspects of this, I would observe that as organizations increasingly convert their application silos to landscapes of reusable content and services, that these desktops will potentially become some of the larger consumers of your organization's services.  If users can find an RSS feed or a motivated employee builds a great gadget for your SOAP services, expect some exciting things.  Plan on leveraging this and making your SOAs and ESBs Web 2.0-friendly; you may very well end up being rewarded with the results.

What do you think, will online desktops really become the center of the average user's experience? 



  原文地址：http://blogs.zdnet.com/Hinchcliffe/index.php?p=8

I was invited recently to a high-level enterprise architecture forum being conducted by Microsoft entitled SPARK.  Held the weekend before the increasingly buzz-generating MIX 06 conference (where Bill Gates and Web 2.0 promoter and book publisher Tim O'Reilly are now confirmed to be keynoting together), SPARK has the interesting and ambitious goal of creating a detailed mapping between the concepts of SOA, SaaS, and Web 2.0.

Microsoft has increasingly been courting Web 2.0 concepts explicitly, Microsoft has increasingly been courting Web 2.0 concepts explicitly, having previously avoided the term and used placeholders like Live Software instead. having previously avoided the term and used placeholders like Live Software instead.  Live Software is Microsoft's fairly extensive initiative for providing online software that provides a virtually complete and seamless experience online using Ajax, start pages, gadgets, and SaaS techniques.  But Live Software is primarily a Web-centric vision and doesn't address the actively overlapping architectural concerns of SOA and Web 2.0, which meet and cross over at the juncture of the enterprise and the greater Internet.

With Microsoft's apparently growing interest in sorting out the increasingly confusing enterprise architecture landscape, it appears that Microsoft is aiming at achieving some technical and marketing high-ground.  John deVadoss, at his MSDN blog, has video and article coverage from his keynote at the recent Software Architecture Summit that discusses Microsoft's current vision for reconciling and deconflicting these overlapping organizing principles in enterprise software.

As I've written before, Web 2.0 is very closely related to SOA in that both approaches view software as Web services to be composited and remixed into solutions to meet the specific needs of users.  But there are significant differences in scale, approach, and perspective that make neither Web 2.0 or SOA a complete architectural solution unto itself.  And there is no centralized vision that presents even a comparison and contrast, much a unified view, of the architectural forces and constraints in each model.

Hence Microsoft's effort with the SPARK conference, where they are hoping to assemble a few dozen industry leaders with the ambitious goal of creating a manifesto that defines a roadmap that will hopefully help the community navigate these complex topics. It's an earnest attempt and one that can pay key dividends by providing the world of enterprise architecture a clear and usable vision that takes into account the best aspects of the next generation of the Web, SaaS, and Service-Oriented Architecture.  If it can be pulled off, it could potentially put Microsoft in a lead position in terms of industry leadership in the nascent Enterprise Web 2.0 space.

SPARK starts Saturday, March 18th and I'll blog here from Las Vegas at both MIX 06 and SPARK as much as time permits.

Would you really find a concrete mapping between Web 2.0, SaaS, and SOA useful to your work?




原文地址：http://blogs.zdnet.com/Hinchcliffe/?p=5