This free white paper from the experts at IDC reveals the profound impact of social technologies-also known as Web 2.0-on enterprise IT. Users are demanding capabilities including collaboratively working across regions, knowledge capture, and community and brand building outside the firewall. But you can meet those demands-if you're ready. Learn 5 key challenges every enterprise should prepare for as it goes "Enterprise 2.0"; the specific software and hardware you'll need to optimize your Web 2.0 deployment, right down to specific features and chip types; the servers, storage systems, open storage software, and services to consider as you build out your social strategy; and more. Social technology adoption is making the difference between success and failure for thousands of companies around the world. Make sure you're ready to do it right-download this free IDC white paper now.
W H I T E P AP E R P r e p a r i n g f o r t h e 2 . 0 W o r l d : H o w E n t e r p r i s e s N e e d t o T h i n k Ab o u t E m e r g e n t S o c i a l T e c h n o l o g i e s Sponsored by: Sun Microsystems Matthew Eastwood April 2009
E X E C U T I V E S U M M A R Y moc. Social technologies, commonly called Web 2.0, were originally used to describe cdi. consumer technologies that enable groups to organize and share information and ww media. But enterprises quickly caught on to the value of these easy-to-use tools for w capturing and sharing ad hoc information that may otherwise not be documented. 510 This is having a profound impact on the tools that enterprise IT customers need to 4.53 implement and support in order to meet the demands and needs of their users, such 9.8 as collaboratively working across regions, knowledge capture, and community and 05.F brand building outside the firewall. 002 While this creates a new challenge for IT shops, it also represents a great opportunity 8.2 to enhance their ability to support better communication within their enterprise and 78.8 with other entities. Many tools and applications are available, and ample opportunity 05. exists to use outsourcing as well. On the hardware side, IT can leverage existing P infrastructure and/or outsource to obtain computing resources. Newer hardware AS technologies utilizing virtualization and a dense form factor with proven best practices U 10 from existing Web deployments will drive many of the new hardware purchases for 710 these types of environments. AM ,mahg S I T U AT I O N O V E R V I E W nimar Enterprise 2.0 (E2.0) is here: 24% of enterprise employees use social networking F t tools to collaborate, 14% of Fortune 100 employees have a profile on LinkedIn, and eert 2% of enterprise employees use microblogging to collaborate. It is no longer a S n question of if or when enterprise employees will use Web 2.0 tools — the genie is out eep of the bottle. The questions now are: S 5 :sr ! e What tools are customers, employees, and partners using? trauqd ! What information are employees sharing and with whom? aeH la ! Where is information that is shared in social media tools stored? bolG ! Who is talking online about your company, your products, your services, and your employees, and how is it changing over time?
! How can you leverage these tools for internal employee collaboration and external brand building, community engagement, and R&D?
E n t e r p r i s e 2 . 0
According to Tim O'Reilly, Web 2.0 is "the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform. Chief among those rules is this: Build applications that harness network effects to get better the more people use them." In common usage, Web 2.0 often refers to the evolution of the Web from static pages to dynamic and interactive tools. Effectively, Web 2.0 combines content, social relationships, and interaction to make the Internet channel an ever-changing ecosystem largely driven by the needs and interests of the users. Enterprise 2.0 then is the transference of this paradigm to the corporate environment. Specific features associated with this paradigm are blogs, tagging, comments, wikis, and social networks.
Drivers of Enterprise 2.0 Similar to consumer Web 2.0 trends, evolution in the enterprise environment is being driven by the user. The availability of consumer and SaaS solutions is giving employees access to tools that are cheap and easy to deploy. Frustrated by slow-moving and highly regulated IT processes as well as hard-to-use, unappealing enterprise-class applications, employees have taken matters into their own hands. For example, generally speaking, enterprise applications are designed from the top down and do not typically consider the value delivered to the user; rather, they consider only the value delivered to the enterprise. On the flip side, Web 2.0 applications are designed from the bottom up by users, who create solutions that provide value to themselves.
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