Weplus

I just got back home from attending a half day conference put on by Politecnico of Milano, School of Management called, “Enterprise 2.0 – the Revolution of the Web.” It was kicked off by two professors from the School of Management responsible for Enterprise 2.0, Mariano Corso (HR) and Stefano Mainetti (IT) presenting market research on Enterprise 2.0 after surveying 65 CIOs. Mariano Corso started the day by highlighting the interests of those 65 CIOs who participated in the study. Topics included; social networks, content management, real-time collaboration, adaptability, global mobility and openness.  What interested me most was the attitude of the CIOs regarding Enterprise 2.0, 11% were negative or conservative and 11% were positive or visionary, so that left 78% somewhere in the middle. Stefano Mainetti did a real nice job comparing Social Computing to the tip of a ice-berg sticking out of the water and enterprise applications: ERP, CRM, SCM and Legacy systems are shown beneath the surface. He explained the link between SOA, Mash-Ups and SaaS and how BPM played a roll. Next we had case studies presented by Costa Crociere, Intesa SanPaolo, Telecom Italia and Seat Pagine Gialle. I found, I had a hard time understanding how presenting server schemes and applications like Domino or SharePoint was helping the audience understand how Enterprise 2.0 can help them in business. The projects presented were large, took years, and looked to be huge investment on that company’s part. I would have preferred to see a company present; here was my business challenge, here were the processes and tools for change, we selected this technology or platform for the following reasons and here are the benefits we have received to date. Then maybe the 700+ attendees may have walked away with more information then what was presented. The final part of the day, which saved the day, was a round table that included, IBM, Microsoft, Yooplus, Google, it Consult and SAP. A who’s who in the technology arena. As most speakers pitched technology, only one presenter, spoke about Enterprise 2.0 being centered around “people, collaboration and simplicity” and that was Luigi Grimaldi, President of Yooplus. We need to be carefull not to fall into the re-occuring trap. When new ideas lead to new applications of technology, we all get excited for “technology sake,” rather then getting excited for ‘business sake.” Enterprise 2.0 is instead the adoption of Web 2.0, within your business, and is centered around your professionals, collaboration, communications and the use of Web 2.0 tools and technologies as an enablement to increase knowledge, transparency and productivity.