Oracle's View On Enterprise 2.0

When conversations on Enterprise 2.0 turn to vendors, most of the time you will hear a list of small vendors (e.g., Atlassian, Connectbeam, Jive, Socialtext, Telligent, etc) as well as traditional collaboration and content platform players (e.g., IBM, Microsoft) and some potential new entrants (perhaps Cisco or Google). Rarely does Oracle come up in those conversations. That will change in 2009 - in part because Oracle's E2.0 portfolio is becoming more cohesive - but also because economic conditions will likely persuade many organizations that sticking with large platform vendors is a safer bet.

The article below provides insight to how Oracle views E2.0 from a philosophical perspective (there is no mention of products). Billy Cripe is the director of product management, Enterprise 2.0 and ECM, at Oracle. Vince Casarez is vice president of product mangement, Enterprise 2.0 and WebCenter at Oracle.

My thoughts on the article:

The article is fairly consistent with the E2.0 tenets proposed my Andrew McAfee:

“Enterprise 2.0 is the use of emergent social software platforms within companies, or between companies and their partners or customers.”

– Andrew McAfee, Harvard Business School

Two key points are further explained in McAfee's Enterprise 2.0, version 2.0 blog post:

"Platforms are digital environments in which contributions and interactions are globally visible and persistent over time."

"Emergent means that the software is freeform, and that it contains mechanisms to let the patterns and structure inherent in people's interactions become visible over time."

Some points-to-ponder as I read through the article (each [number] is inserted into the article citation below for ease-of-reference):

1. Thumbs-up: Oracle calls out a link to identity which is frequently overlooked
2. Thumbs-down: The notion that employees start off with a "shared purpose" with the enterprise is an assumption that could have been explained better. Organizations would love to have healthy and vibrant cultures where communities thrive and people are passionate about business success - but that's often not the starting point for E2.0. The idea of shared business drivers is almost an anti-pattern between top-down/centralized goals of management and the more self-organizing, networked employee work model that E2.0 promises.
3. Thumbs-down: McAfee equates platform to digital environments whereas Oracle implies that it is a single system (probably from Oracle - or from IBM or from Microsoft if those vendors had authored such an article).
4. Thumbs-up: The idea that the platform must have a modular architecture gets us closer to the concept of a "digital environment" vs. a single vendor platform.
5. Thumbs-up: The idea of one single repository is somewhat idealistic but I read this as more of a centralized approach in terms of policies and management (critical for compliance demands), which I would agree with - I would also agree with another interpretation that Oracle means a centralized framework to integrate/federate a collection of systems.
6. Thumbs-up: Barely. The collaboration story could be explained better - native services are good but also reinforce the idea that the modular architecture supports third-party capabilities as well. It is more conversation/communication centric and does not account for other collaborative models (e.g., workspaces, forums). But the idea of conversational collaboration is one I do agree with.
7. Thumbs-up: Sure - contextual integration with business applications I buy.
8. Thumbs-down: "employees to leverage technology to further the success of the company, not their personal social lives" - Ouch. Back to traditional big-company thinking. The interweaving of digital work and digital live makes this read "employees to leverage technology to further the success of the company and their personal social lives". The idea of personal value to the employee as a way to encourage participation and contributions is key - the idea that employees will participate and contribute "for the good of the company" is an altruistic view.
9. Thumbs-down: "In all, Enterprise 2.0 is about bringing content to the employee in context so that attention will be kept on topic." I would agree that it is one facet but probably not what E2.0 "is about". The remaining thoughts in this paragraph reflect a portal-centric viewpoint of E2.0.
10. Thumbs-up: Tapping into expertise, aggregating inputs, etc. Probably closer to what E2.0 "is about".
11. Thumbs-up: The idea of seamless participation gets to user experience as well as platform and digital environment,

Final Score:

7 Thumbs-up and 4 Thumbs-down. In this article, Oracle appears to understand much of what E2.0 represents but at times seems to tie it back to an institutional viewpoint vs. the individual and community perspectives. 

Enterprise Systems | Demystifying Enterprise 2.0: It's About Sharing, Not Technology

..... Enterprise 2.0 starts where Web 2.0 cannot -- it originates within the business. On the public Web, the overriding presumption is that users begin their conversation with others anonymously. Any person may navigate to LinkedIn.com and browse public user profiles. This paradigm is flipped on its head within the enterprise setting. Users start off as known entities with a specific identity or role [1] . After all, they are employees of an organization working towards a common goal, just like the honey bee scouts.

They start with a shared purpose [2] -- the success of the business. Enterprise 2.0 capabilities begin with these shared business drivers that are missing from Web 2.0. Enterprise 2.0 then combines the many components of Web 2.0 capabilities into a complete and comprehensive platform on which business conversations and tasks are executed in context of the business goals. The Enterprise 2.0 platform combines all of the point features of Web 2.0 sites onto a [3] single, business-enabled, context-aware system.

The successful Enterprise 2.0 platform is modular in its architecture [4]. This way, businesses are able to add the features required as the business grows. There are three fundamental capabilities that any rich Enterprise 2.0 platform should incorporate from the outset.

The first is a centralized content or information management system [5]. The concept of collaborating always begs the question of collaborating on what. Like the honey bee, workers are collaborating on shared goals that involve passing information in an efficient way. In business settings, this type of content sharing is subject to regulations and best practices. Where the human assembles conversational information in the mind, an Enterprise 2.0 platform aggregates conversational information in the content management repository.

Second, the rich Enterprise 2.0 platform incorporates native collaboration services.[6] A rich Enterprise 2.0 platform should include participation services for social real-time conversations (e.g., instant messages), social content creation (e.g., wikis) and socially defined trust and authority systems (e.g., tagging and ratings). Where humans converse with voices in real time, the Enterprise 2.0 platform facilitates asynchronous conversations between not only people but also between communities and systems.

Finally, the rich Enterprise 2.0 platform must enable enterprise applications to participate in the business conversation. [7] Knowledge and process workers collaborate on information that is used as the input to or output from business applications. A true Enterprise 2.0 platform explicitly enables employees to leverage technology to further the success of the company, not their personal social lives. [8] Where humans converse on wide ranges of topics, the Enterprise 2.0 platform ensures that those conversations are relevant to the business.

Collection, Voting, Action

In all, Enterprise 2.0 is about bringing content to the employee in context so that attention will be kept on topic. [9] The Enterprise 2.0 platform forms an information fabric in which knowledge and process workers are woven together with colleagues, customers, systems, and information. All relevant information is presented to the employee in the context that best suits the job or task at hand. Users are encouraged to participate conversationally with the systems, colleagues, and information that make up the daily work.

Ultimately, the goal of this participation is to tap into the energies and expertise of every individual and to deliver a synthesis of the good ideas. [10] Aggregating the varied inputs, precipitating the valuable outcomes through team-enabled decision making, and enabling employees to make better business decisions is the result.

There is no substitute for creating an ecosystem inside the business where relationships and information come together in shared context. Users must be able to participate seamlessly with each other using systems that allow them to share information. [11] The process efficiencies gained, the business intelligence gained, the trends predicted and spotted all lead to a significant competitive advantage. This new emergent enterprise is what business and Enterprise 2.0 is all about.

Enterprise Systems | Demystifying Enterprise 2.0: It's About Sharing, Not Technology

Comments

[Billy]

Thanks for taking the time to read and respond to the article! The conversation is good. I've taken some time to respond to the "thumbs downs" on my blog. Hope to continue the interaction! Best.

Response here
http://blogs.oracle.com/fusionecm/2009/01/dialoguing_with_mike_gotta_of.html

[susan scrupski]

Okay. Shorter comment now. I applaud Oracle's sudden interest in all things e20. It's like I was saying to @georgedearing (Telligent) the #1 barrier to adoption in the enterprise is still Awareness. #2 is Culture (and Oracle misses this), but before we can begin working on the culture issues, enterprise buyers need to "get" what all the fuss is about. I don't care if Oracle wants to spin the definition to suit their needs. In reality, the definition falls apart with every customized social network/collaboration effort anyway. And to your point on employees and cake-eating, I agree with you, but we both know mgmt owns the budget-making decisions for enterprise initiatives. Companies like Oracle are speaking to them in a language they understand.

[jose del moral]

Is this just an article by Oracle or does it mean they are really going to take it into practice. I don't trust text. I want to see some real changes in the way the company works inside or the type of products they develop and put on the market.