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Abstract: In 1995, Netscape
introduced the Internet/Web revolution with its first web browser;
it was also 1995 when Amazon revolutionized the business world
with its Internet-based book-selling business. Now, five years
after the dot-com collapse that resulted from exaggerated
expectations about that revolution, a new revolution is beginning:
computer scientists, industry observers, and far-sighted corporate
IT executives are referring to it as Web 2.0.
The "paradigm" of the original Web (or Web 1.0, as it's
now called) was that of a corporate/government entity publishing
"content" to be consumed by large numbers of customers
or citizens. Indeed, the first thing that many companies did was
to "publish" their catalogs, brochures, advertising
material, and user manuals on their web sites. Users were
sometimes allowed to respond to this material, and were certainly
encouraged to enter orders and provide their credit-card
information; but they did not create any content of their own.
The paradigm of Web 2.0 is that of "content" being
created by customers and the entire Internet community, as well as
corporations and the "mainstream" media. Sometimes this
grass-roots content is aggregated and distributed by the
traditional publishers; but often it exists as tiny, stand-alone
creations on the Internet - such as the 40 million blogs that have
sprung into existence in the past few years.
What does this mean for companies in today's competitive
environment? Most important, it's forcing them to adopt a more
"open" approach to their systems: instead of closed,
proprietary systems and databases, more and more companies like
AOL, Yahoo, and Google are providing "API" interfaces so
that end-users and small software providers can add their own
content. And it means that more and more companies are under
pressure to provide tools to their end-users, which may
cannibalize existing revenue-producing tools; a good example is
the pressure that Google has placed on Microsoft by introducing a
free Internet-based spreadsheet product.
Other companies are focusing on the social aspect of Web 2.0, by
emphasizing the collaboration opportunities of an Internet-enabled
society. Some observers refer to this as the "wiki
phenomenon," after the highly popular "Wikipedia"
website; others refer to it as "crowd sourcing," to
emphasize that literally millions of individuals can contribute
their ideas, suggestions, digital content (e.g., images), and
skills to a shared activity. Several traditional and conservative
companies in the U.S. have begun creating collaborative efforts
involving their retired work-force, their customers, and college
students and hobbyists, to tackle major research problems that
would otherwise take years for their traditional R&D
departments to solve.
Technology certainly plays an important role in the new Web 2.0
world, with XML, Ajax, and Ruby on Rails being three of the
leading examples of development technologies helping companies
build new Web-based systems more quickly and easily than before.
And integration of these new systems with existing Web 1.0 systems
and older legacy systems will continue to be important: nobody is
suggesting that all of the older systems should be scrapped or
rewritten.
But most of all, Web 2.0 is a "strategic" issue: it
requires senior corporate executives - including the CIO and
senior IT managers - to rethink basic assumptions about their
business, their customers, their suppliers, their work-force,
their revenue models, and the day-to-day processes by which they
carry out their business. As these strategic issues are discussed
and debated in the coming years, we may possibly see some of the
same exaggeration and "hype" that occurred during the
early years of Web 1.0; but when the dust settles ten years from
now, we will certainly see some new "winners" who have
achieved the same kind of success that Amazon and Yahoo did back
in 1995.
Bio: A veteran of the IT industry
for over 40 years, Ed Yourdon has been deeply involved in the
Internet revolution since it began in the mid-1990s; he has served
on Boards of Directors and technical advisory boards for numerous
high-tech startup companies in the U.S. and India. He has been
involved in Web 2.0 since its beginnings in the 2002-2003 period,
and he currently consults, lectures, and writes about various
aspects of the new technologies. Ed will summarize the
technologies, identify the strategic issues facing IT managers and
senior executives today. |
