Stritar's chronolog

Me vs. IT 2.0 vs. Enterprise 2.0

Wed, 30 Jul 2014 20:41:46 GMT

In 2009, I was very excited to present a few funky things we've been developing with Neolab, at the largest independent IT conference in Slovenia. The world was obsessed with "2.0" back then, and we were determined to join that hype. Facebook was already big at that point, and it was becoming clear they will make a huge impact on the future of technology. Tim O'Reilly wrote a seminal article on the topic, arguing how Web 2.0, the new generation of the internet (and software!), has changed everything.

I was amazed by the potential of Web 2.0 as well. Since my main focus is developing business oriented software solutions, I started fantasizing about the possibilities of integrating those concepts into our (serious) applications. If our clients are buying premium custom software from us, we should try to deliver more features with high added value for them. Stuff that enables co-creation and collaboration. Which we did. And called it IT 2.0.

We wanted IT 2.0 to be much more than Enterprise 2.0. At that time, Enterprise 2.0 meant using mostly third-party tools for social networking, wikis, blogs or tagging, assimilating them into enterprise environments. On the other hand, we wanted to take the coolest concepts invented by social networking, wikis, blogs or tagging, and integrate them into our solutions in new ways. You see, our software isn't social per se, our software's main goal is to solve complex and specific business problems. But we've managed to put a social layer on top of that software, making the term Enteprise 2.0 simply not awesome enough to describe it.

But Enteprise 2.0 is awesome. It's actually very awesome. If O'Reilly defined Web 2.0 in 2005, Andrew McAfee defined Enteprise 2.0 in 2006. He was one of the first who has studied the implementation of social software (such as social networking, wikis, blogs or tagging) into enterprise environments. In doing that, he developed the fundamentals of Enterprise 2.0, naming it SLATES (Search, Links, Authorship, Tags, Extensions, Signals). This concept was later on extended by Dion Hinchcliffe with FLATNESSES (adding Freeform, Network-oriented, Social, Emergence) and the 4Cs by Niall Cook (Communication, Collaboration, Connection, Cooperation).

But social software (like any other software) is usually just a means to achieve something greater. The truth is, implementing Enterprise 2.0 tools into the enterprise isn't enough to make collaboration and open innovation work, organizations need to fundamentally change as well. Enterprise 2.0 enables a completely new way of doing business, walking hand in hand with lean and agile approaches, seeking new opportunities in connecting employees, clients, partners, suppliers and even competition. It supports the new global and connected world. But it requires a new way of thinking and a deep corporate culture change.

Organizational culture (change) is very important for innovation and adaptability, but in the academic field, pieces of this equation are missing. Until now, there haven't been many studies about how organizational culture impacts the implementation of collaborative environment and vice versa. But I'm set to change that fact. And I will soon need your help!

I've finally started working on my master's thesis, which will try to find out if there is connection between organizational culture and Enterprise 2.0 adoption. I have already studied 6 books and 50+ articles on the subject, and will soon deploy the survey, which will combine the OCAI (Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument) and a general Enterprise 2.0 questionnaire. Those who will help me and participate in the study, will get the final report in return, besides a concise comment / advice about their specific organization's situation (the survey is not available yet, please ping me on if you're interested). I'm sure the results will be worth the effort.

If IT 2.0 is about new generations of software and user experience, Enterprise 2.0 is about new ways of managing companies. Those who are able to implement such approaches can win big, but then again, not all companies actually have the opportunity to absorb this transformation. There are many huge obstacles for businesses to go 2.0. Stay tuned because soon, we will better understand why.

The final destination, part 1: technologies and concepts enterprise IT will have to adopt

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 18:38:09 GMT

In the past years, we've witnessed a very important transformation: the consumerization of information technologies. Billions of connected users living their life online, overwhelmed by millions of information systems that have been tailored to suit their every need and desire. Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon came a long way with their products and infrastructure, but the enterprise isn't losing any time. Learning from the new paradigms and adopting new funky technologies, that have traditionally been developed in corporate laboratories. Can the Fab 4 also predict where enterprise IT is headed? And what will it become?

A few weeks ago I participated in a panel for PI-PL on Ljubljana's Faculty of Economics, where I was asked this exact question: where do I see corporate IT in 10 years. A very hard question indeed, but the more I thought about the it, the clearer it became. Enterprise data, software and technology will sooner or later integrate everything. Simple as that. But to fully understand how this will happen, we must first try to identify the most important trends that have shaped information technologies as we know them today. Yes, most of them don't have that much to do with the enterprise. But things are changing.

Cloud technologies

While cloud computing may have been present in the enterprise for quite some time, it's still pretty much dominated by web players like Google (mail, docs, etc.) and Amazon (hardware), who are also flirting with the enterprise. Who wouldn't? There are massive benefits for businesses to move their stuff to the cloud, from scalable physical Infrastructure to higher level Platform or Software as a service information systems.

Perhaps the most important thing the Cloud achieved was to render technology infrastructure irrelevant. It doesn't matter any more, what kind of environment you use. What type of security, infrastructure, servers and network you have installed. You can outsource these things to others, and it will be much easier and cheaper, while all your migrating-to-a-bigger-thing problems will be solved with a swipe of a credit card. I was fascinated that Microsoft now offers Linux based servers on their Azure cloud services, which can be changed to Windows with a click of a button. Architecture doesn't matter anymore, and this fact helps IT departments to focus on more important things than system administration.

APIs, mashups, platforms and ecosystems

Heavily connected with the whole Cloud concept, data and information never had it easier to travel from one place to another. System migrations (moving data from one information system to another) and system integrations (connecting multiple information systems into one) have always been one of the biggest challenges of IT. But the web didn't have as much resources as the enterprise, so it had to simplify things. By offering APIs (Application Programming Interface), web applications allowed others applications to work with their data in an easy way. Mashups, hybrid information systems built on top of others, were born.

Pretty much every noteworthy web service has its own API. This helped a lot of them to become a platform. You know, like Facebook and Twitter, who have created an ecosystem, where thousands of other applications live around them? Soon, similar concepts will dominate the enterprise too. There are already players like Salesforce, who not only offer business-oriented Software as a service solutions, but the also a Platform for other developers to build services on top of their services. And since everything is so open, all this data can easily be integrated with other information systems or transferred to a different environment. Modern information systems don't have problems with understanding each other, but IT departments have problems with understanding information systems, since different, more business oriented skills are needed to support these integrations.

Mobile devices and new distribution channels

More than ten years ago, when I was an Information Sciences student, there was still a debate going on about the benefits of web based enterprise information systems over traditional Client - Server architecture. In the end, the Web won, mostly because distribution was so easy, you make the update on the server, and every user gets it instantly. Employees need nothing but a browser. They are acquainted with the environment ever since they started using Hotmail, and took it for their own ever since they started using Facebook.

But today, it seems the Web is losing its ground as the leading infrastructure, since a new technology came into town. Capable mobile devices, like smartphones and tablets, now enable access to information systems from anywhere, anytime in real-time. Besides, they arrived with their own app markets, which enabled a whole potential for software distribution, and perhaps more importantly, for software billing. You give a fair share to the store owner, who also promotes your solution, and you can freely focus on developing and marketing the product. It's true that mobile apps may not be as flexible as web applications, since the users need to install the updates (even though this can also be achieved by combining native mobile and hosted HTML 5), but the trend is clear. Apple already has its Mac store, Microsoft Windows will follow soon. Distribution of mobile and Software as a service information systems is becoming trivial.

Big data and The internet of things

Traditionally, banks, retailers and financial institutions have been the organizations that operated with the most data in the world. Well, things are changing, and we can only wonder who owns the most bytes today: is it Google, Facebook or someone else? Since there are less transactions than there are interactions, we can estimate consumer oriented information systems with billions of users are the biggest in existence. While this data is accessible to the enterprise to some extent, there are also hundreds of other systems the enterprise or its employees use, and they all create massive amounts of data and information, which needs to be integrated into a wider picture.

Not only that. Today, there are already are more connected devices that we have initially anticipated. These devices (cameras, sensors, tools, etc.) create even more data, which the enterprise needs to process. This trend of wired gadgets is called The internet of things, and together with the large amount of interconnectable information systems businesses use, points to one important trend: the typical enterprise was never faced with so much data and information, which somehow needs to be integrated and understood in an interdisciplinary way.

New ways of doing things, on a higher level

In the mean time, these consumer oriented (B2C) web corporation not only became a few of the biggest technology companies in existence, they've also invented new ways of how to get things done. From Google's 20%, to flat organizations without management, more and more companies (not only startups) set out to revolutionize how business is done. In the service oriented society, creativity is important, but so is productivity and the ability to ship fast. Done is better than perfect.

With new types of management concepts, such as lean and agile, modern organizations are becoming more and more flexible. Not only in doing things, but also in switching from one technology to another. These companies have developed their own way of thinking about which software to use. And it probably has a lot to do its price, how fast can you start using it, how scalable and connectable it is, and how fast can you dump if for another. IT requirements are moving to a higher level, and information systems have become just pieces of a puzzle that needs to be completed.

Design and user experience

Design and user experience probably still don't have that much to do with enterprise IT, but they are very much worth mentioning nevertheless. Face it, users are becoming more and more demanding, and software developers need to make better and better software. Even though the above mentioned facts are probably the dominating factor for the choice of which information systems the enterprise will use, design and user experience matter more and more.

Businesses have always had problems with implementing new software, educating the users, going through the whole status quo change. But beautiful and useful software penetrates faster. People perceive beautiful things to be more useful, and it's the whole intuitiveness and usability of software that helps them adopt something without too much resistance and problems. Some software vendors already found out user experience is the new competitive advantage, and in the end it may be the thing that tips the scale. But the whole point behind it is that I can see better, more clever and detailed, information systems force out older ones on an even faster pace. The whole world of information systems need reinvention, and user experience design will be the science behind these upgrades. Benefits are becoming more important than features.

Social, crowdsourcing and gamification

More than 3 years ago, I was very excited to present a concept we have been developing in Neolab on Days of Slovenian IT. I called it IT 2.0, since it meant integrating social services into enterprise software (at that time, Enterprise 2.0 was more widely used for stand-alone social software such as wikis or corporate blogs). The truth is, I didn't get the chance to sell it well, and in the mean time, disruptive social services managed to fully find their way into the enterprise. But business won't stop here; there are many other fascinating things the internet has invented that can fully be applied to corporate environments.

Gamification, the art of using gaming mechanics in non gaming environments, is getting more and more claim beyond the web. Both for motivating employees, as for motivating clients. We all like to play, so why should work be any different? And we all like to participate in something bigger, that is why crowdsourcing, where people coproduce something, can bring such exciting results. Can you see where I'm headed?

We are all human, and in the end, behaving on a very basic level. Sometimes we perform better, sometimes worse, and we all hold hidden potential even ourselves aren't aware of. That is what software in the workplace can sometimes help us discover, and it's something more and more businesses are aware of. Social, gamification and crowdsourcing are only a few approaches that can make us feel better and more motivated, and they are all concepts that enterprise IT will adopt sooner or later. Behind every company, there are only people.

The final destination of enterprise IT

These are the concepts and technologies that will shape enterprise IT of tomorrow. And with it, new challenges will emerge, together with new profiles of people, who will understand and use all of the above. These profiles, such as data scientists and business analysts, will help enterprise IT do what it was destined to do: Integrate life, the universe and everything.

But that's another story. Coming up soon.

Check out the complete The final destination series.

The great technology wars and the transition of software from B2B to B2C

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 11:25:14 GMT

The epic article by Fast Company about the technology wars of 2012 provides great insight into what's happening in Silicon Valley and software in general these days. Four players, or the Fabulous Four, are mentioned to be the real market and innovation leaders: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google. Each of these companies found its place where it dominates and invents new business models, and each one is a role model for new generations of technology startups and leaders. And if you didn't notice, all of them sell software to consumers, not other companies (in case of Google and Facebook, you are the real customer, but advertisers pay for it). Software is becoming more and more consumer-oriented, and the clash of these titans will determine the outcome, the software of the future.

The Fab Four

Who are these fantastic companies? Amazon is the leader in e-commerce. Apple reinvented mobile devices and content distribution. Facebook is the largest social network in the world, a big brother in the making. Google is the biggest web and search company.

I almost won't argue with the choice of the Fab Four. To me, these are truly the technology companies that are moving things forward. To be honest, the list is bit of an understatement for Microsoft, even though that doesn't change the fact I'm trying to put out here. These four corporations (their software at least) are more B2C (Business To Consumer) than B2B (Business To Business) oriented. Even Microsoft, with its XBox, Bing, Windows (Phone and Tablet) programs is shifting focus to consumer markets.

The stock market comparison

The B2B software market is still huge, but electronic commerce, online advertising and the economy of scale of billions of users spending a few dollars is slowly outperforming more expensive business solutions sold fewer times, even if they are deployed millions of times as operating systems, products or services. If you check out the following charts, you can see information about market capitalization, revenue and historical price change of these companies (Facebook is not public yet, but it's IPO could be around $100 billion) compared to traditional technology companies such as Oracle, Microsoft and IBM. The numbers are pretty interesting (source: ycharts).

Market capitalization of Amazon, Apple, Google, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle in the last 10 years (as available)

Change in market capitalization of Amazon, Apple, Google, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle in the last 7 years (as available)

Revenue of Amazon, Apple, Google, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle in the last 10 years (as available)

Change in revenue of Amazon, Apple, Google, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle in the last 8 years (as available)

Change in stock price of Amazon, Apple, Google, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle in the last 7 years (as available)

Why does it matter

As a software architect, I see major shifts in user-centered software compared to business-oriented software. Even if you check Gartner's strategic technologies of 2012, it becomes more and more obvious what's happening:

software is made for and "sold" to users, not management anymore
product cycles and new releases are reaching Warp Speed
the focus is shifting from features to benefits
user experience is becoming more and more important
technology used is getting less and less important
system and data integration is becoming trivial with web services and APIs
there's a new generation of devices that run software (smartphones and tablets, the internet of things)
scaling and performance is not measured in Whateverbytes, but in number of users
new distribution channels (marketplaces) are going beyond the Web
platforms and mashups have emerged, where ecosystems of software are being build around the core service
online software is more disruptive and innovative, business software follows (from Web 2.0 to Enterprise 2.0, adoption of gamification in the enterprise, etc.)

Adaptation

Some business software companies, such as Salesforce.com have managed to adapt to this situation, offering a platform others can upgrade and develop on. We're adapting too, on a smaller scale. Neolab is still mostly focused on B2B software, since that's where we've built our market. Sure, we did a few web portals and are working on deploying our own user-targeted service Twitfluence, but it's business-oriented software that we generally work on. But that doesn't change the fact we are fully aware that the concept of software is changing, and we are on top of it, trying to embrace these trends and include new paradigms in corporate infromation systems. Social, user-oriented, user-friendly. Knowing that people are behind every company.

Software is maturing; consumers are getting more and more demanding, brands behind the software are getting more and more important. And as the Web expands even further, this fact will become yet more obvious. It's you and me who are the ones who are "buying" software. Which is great, since in the end the ordinary people, not corporations, will be those who will decide how software and technology of the future will look like. Interactive, useful and fun. Here we are now, entertain us.

Working in Cape Town - Part 1: First impressions

Sun, 31 Oct 2010 15:33:35 GMT

I managed to be lucky enough to get invited to Cape Town to work on a project for a month. Neolab has been developing an information system for a client stationed here and the results are quite satisfying, both for us and for the client. Therefore they decided it would be best if I came around, so we could work on the system together, while at the same time plan new, advanced features to come. I must say this is one of the greatest projects we've ever did, and I really look forward to implementing the social IT 2.0 features into the system in the future. Clients back home don't seem to recognize the real potential in those services, so it's really satisfying to get real feedback from a client on the concept.

Cape Town and South Africa are beautiful, the landscape is simply amazing, even though the flora resembles the European Mediterranean a bit. It's currently spring time, so this is actually my second trip in spring this year, and first ever to the southern hemisphere. Speaking of the southern hemisphere - I was actually disoriented for the first few days here, subconsciously thinking north was south, which is a fact I find really interesting.

The city of Cape Town is located around Table mountain, a great landmark of the city, where the Devil and the Dutchman often have a pipe smoking competition. The main city center (called the City Bowl) is surrounded with other mountains, while the suburbs and slums behind them stretch for miles. I am located inside the City Bowl, and the office I work at is within walking distance, so I can enjoy the real wibe of the city every day, as good or bad it may be.

View over Table mountain from our office

I live in a building called Lulu's house, an interesting place filled with interesting people. I share the house with a few interns and other travelers from all over the world, some of them have been living here for months. It's really been wonderful to meet all these people and share different views on life, even though I spend most of my free time with my hosts. Meeting these people made my wonder about my connection with Slovenia and the lack of traveling as a student.

Lulu's House, where I live

I was actually a bit shocked about the general cultural situation at first, the racial mixing seems to be working, but you can still feel the post apartheid influences and segregation. There are many beggars, most of them African, and the other day one of them threatened to steal my wallet if I don't give him change. An awkward moment, but I managed to talk my way out of it, hoping to have as little similar situations in the days to come. South Africa still has a long way to reach equality, but it looks like it's well on the right track.

Cape Town street, where I live

The food is nice, even though most of it would tend towards sweet. But I already got accustomed to that in Thailand, so no problems there. Meat is obviously the main component of the diet, both in meals (preferably roasted or as they call it, braaied), as in dry meat snack called Biltong (which is great). The beer is OK, but it's the wine that deserves a special mention. It's really really amazing, so I'm still thinking of a way to bring as much of it as possible back home, even though we have some very nice wines of our own.

A nice meaty meal

These are my first impressions of Cape Town and South Africa after about 10 days since I've been here. The city is actually quite growing on me, and I didn't even have the time to do a safari, shark-diving or many other things you can't do in Europe. So what seemed like a great deal of time when I got here could actually be over really fast, thanks to a lot of work during weekdays and a lot of crazy stuff to do during the weekends. A most delightful and useful journey indeed.

Check out the complete Working in Cape Town series.

Why Web 2.0 is so important

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 20:10:53 GMT

The influence the Internet is having on our every day lives is reaching almost unimaginable levels. The extent of the information revolution can only be compared to inventions of speaking, writing and printing in the past, which are all major achievements that allowed new ways of sharing thoughts and ideas between people. Web 2.0 is the next step of this information (r)evolution, and to understand why it's so important, we have to observe all the significant applications it represents (according to Wikipedia). This will hopefully give us a better insight into the potential they bring to our personal and professional lives, besides their impact on the whole humanity which we still perhaps don't fully comprehend.

Social networking

Social networking sites enabled probably the greatest migration of people to the virtual world. People have a new opportunity to interact not only in real life, but also in cyberspace, where geographical and other physical barriers don't exists. I'm not saying this is a promising thing overall, some people are obviously overdoing it, but it's still useful for keeping in touch with people. Together with the implementation of feeds and streams which enable dynamic information, social networking could represent the biggest and most important component of Web 2.0, reshaping business, marketing, politics and just being plain amazing.

Video sharing

Yesterday we read the newspaper, listened to the radio and watched television. Today, we have a super-medium that supports all of it at once. Video, as the most complex form of multimedia, is something that you can record with your telephone and publish online in minutes, from where it can go anywhere. If distributing a video is easy, anything else surely has to be a piece of cake. This fact obviously holds massive potential for science and arts in general.

Wikis and folksonomies

Wikis and folksonomies are tools which harness the amazing effect of participation and collaboration of millions of people to create information and knowledge. Wikipedia is the biggest encyclopedia in the world, holding knowledge whole mankind can benefit from. Folksonomies, such as tools for collaborative tagging and social indexing enable structured knowledge, while recommendation engines help us get information from massive quantity of data available online. Today, if something important is discovered, everybody knows it in minutes.

Blogs

Most people have the need to express themselves, and blogs (and microblogs) are the perfect tool for that. Plain and simple: anybody can be a journalist and if you have something smart to say, people will listen. Those who are influential enough can even break out of anonymity and become opinion leaders.

Web services and mashups

Web services and mashups enable and use open flows of data from one online service to another, from one online platform to another. System integration used to be one of the most complex things in IT, but thanks to new standards, protocols and technology, data can freely travel from and to different sources. This provides a perfect ground for exchanging information and enables evolution from software services to software platforms.

Perhaps we should also mention cloud computing, which makes hardware requirements irrelevant – the processing power and memory is around in plenty – but computer grids with shared resources have already been around for decades. All the better to understand that Web 2.0 is more about concept than it is about technology.

Web 2.0 is important and revolutionary, both in a good and a bad way. It brings a new perspective and new opportunities to different arts and sciences, such as business, education, sociology, psychology, literature, politics and many other. My professional and academic work focuses mainly on it's influence on information science and technologies, but it's clear that this new paradigm has a huge global effect, whose scale we still can't fully estimate. Now we just have to hope younger generations don't get too overwhelmed because of it and will be able to adjust to this new reality without abusing it too much.

The influence of new generation information systems on modern organizations

Sun, 06 Jun 2010 15:08:48 GMT

The traditional role of Information Science and corresponding Information Technologies is providing organizations with information. This makes it a tool supporting decision process, which can be counted as an organizational process. But today, this role is becoming more widely spread, making Information Sciences and Information Technologies also an important part of the operational process itself. Concepts such as Business Process Reengineering (BPR) make information solutions a vital part of any modern organization process, present in all components in the business cycle of planning, realization and controlling.

The World Wide Web as a platform

If Information Science and Information Technologies revolutionized modern organizations, there is a heavily related technology that revolutionized our every day lives. The Internet and its main service, the World Wide Web hold unimagined potential both for personal and professional goals. This technology enables unlimited knowledge sharing between people and organizations, while at the same providing the platform on which different information systems can be created. Intranets (designed to support internal people and processes) and Extranets (designed for connecting with external entities, such as clients, suppliers, partners and competition) enable effective, flexible, scalable and accessible web-based information systems that can support most of organizational needs of a modern organizations.

To understand the implications of World Wide Web we can also take a look at the companies behind it, as they have become some of the largest IT companies in the world, and their services the most widely used information systems, leaving aside operation systems. There is an important point hidden in that statement – most information systems of today are not used to support organizations any more, they are designed for personal activities. Software solutions are shifting from B2B to B2C, and where management was the key buyer of software yesterday, ordinary everyday user is the main "buyer" of software today.

The Internet with its possibilities to share knowledge is a revolution probably comparable to the inventions of speaking, writing and printing in the past. Those organizations and individuals who are able to recognize this fact have a great opportunity for progress. That potential goes both for getting useful information and knowledge from other sources as for getting useful information about organization to those or any other sources. There is no doubt that today we live in the information era, and those who will not adapt that fact, probably have no future.

Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 and IT 2.0

In the past years, a new generation of World Wide Web solutions has emerged, which we understand as Web 2.0. These services are focused on collaboration, cooperation, communication and connectivity, enabling sharing between millions of users and utilizing the effect of mass participation. The potential marketing revenue, which is the driving force behind the World Wide Web, and the large competition between millions of software companies around the world allow these services to evolve with light speed, making them both technologically and functionally more advanced than classical information systems. It didn’t take long for managers and entrepreneurs to realize the effect of these now approaches and services can also be beneficial on organization, marketing, decision support and other fields of organization and management.

The concept of Enterprise 2.0 adapts Web 2.0 for business-oriented use and represents using these new technologies, approaches, concepts and services in business-oriented environments. With a focus both on internal optimization (wikis, idea banks, social networking tools) and external optimization (blogs and microblogs, RSS, social bookmarking and tagging), it enables companies and their employees new ways to connect and interact between themselves and with other organizations. The focus of information systems is shifting from technical elements to social elements of organizations, and traditional information systems, such as ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems are getting upgraded with modern systems, such as custom developed intranets and extranets.

But Enterprise 2.0 solutions are still mostly partial (separate) software solutions modern organizations can use to optimize their performance and strategies. In my opinion, future information systems will have those concepts and approaches incorporated into the core of the system, enriching traditional business-oriented solutions with social components that will support connections both with other individuals within organizations and with individuals from other organizations. Real-time interactions and communication will be one of the foundations of new business models that are emerging on the market, and IT 2.0 will be the platform that supports those concepts and activities.

It's time for IT to go social

Modern organizations are mostly service-oriented, so traditional ERP systems are becoming used mostly for low value-added activities. These new organizations are founded on innovative business models, knowledge and human capital. High value-add information systems for those organizations are systems for Project Management, Customer Relationship Management, Knowledge Management etc., which are not oriented on technical components of organizations, but on social ones, such as people, relationships, connections, interactions, knowledge, cooperation and other.

New services that Web 2.0 "invented" fit into this picture of new generation IT 2.0 software solutions perfectly. Social networking tools can enable higher connectivity, new forms of interactions, team building and cooperation between all the people in the process. Social bookmarking and tagging produce structured knowledge and can harness the effect of crowdsourcing. Visualizations of data and information can bring more information used for decision making and clearer view on organization process. Feeds and streams enable faster data flow and clearer connections between most individuals inside the organization.

Organization is a system of dynamic relationships, and people are no longer considered only as a part of the machinery, but as complex entities, building even more complex social units. The greatest corporations that exist today were produced by capable individuals, forming even more capable teams. Therefore we must not ignore the science behind it – human capital is the probably the most valuable thing any modern organization can have and most software solutions of the future will be focused on these social components. The interesting symbiosis between new generation information systems and modern organization approaches is more obvious than ever, providing all the elements needed for business-oriented IT to go 2.0.

How mini-feed and other streams revolutionized IT

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 16:59:20 GMT

Web 2.0 brought us a lot of interesting things, approaches and solutions, so it's hard to imagine how we ever managed without it. Most of us are half addicted to floating around in cyberspace, looking at what people are doing and talking to everybody at once. It is a little social revolution that we are witnessing, and it doesn't seem it will end soon. Web 2.0 changed our everyday lives, but for an IT expert such as myself, these new concepts also have a big influence on other sciences and in our case, they will change management, organization and corporate IT forever.

Besides the whole social networking concept, one feature of Web 2.0 stands our as one of the main building blocks of this new paradigm. Call it the news stream, mini feed, activity log or whatever, it is the little information report that makes you come back every hour to see what other people are doing and if something new happened. Without it, Web 2.0 portals and services would be boring and useless, and they definitely wouldn't be as attractive interactive as they are.

Besides being cool and addictive, the mini feed is also a major shift in the presentation of data and information. Until it came around, data was static, but now, we can notice that data has the ability to become dynamic. In Web 2.0, this feature was "invented" to amuse users, but this approach is also fully applicable to business oriented software. Imagine a corporate solution that is intended for project management, where projects are consisted of tasks that have people working on them. The simplified dashboard for a project would probably look something like the table below.

Two weeks ago	Today
Write the documentation (John - Completed)	Write the documentation (John – Completed)
Delegate tasks (John – Active)	Delegate tasks (Mary – Complete)
Design wireframes (Mary – Active)	Design wireframes (Mary – Active)
Enter data (Unassigned)	Enter data (Simon – Active)
Make HTML (Simon – Active)	Make HTML (Simon – Complete)

The two dashboards, even though they represent the same project two weeks apart, look quite similar, and they actually don't give those, who are not directly connected with the project and people working on it a lot of information about the flow of activities, data and work. This data represented is static. But if we add another layer of mini feed / activity report on the same case, things start looking more interesting and give a lot more information about the project. The data becomes dynamic. When we look at the dashboard above, we don't really know that this is what actually happened with our project.

12 days ago – John changed the status of the task Write the documentation to Active.
10 days ago – John added a new note to the task Write the documentation.
10 days ago – John changes the status of the task Write the documentation to Completed.
8 days ago – John made Mary responsible for the task Delegate tasks.
8 days ago – Mary made Simon responsible for the task Enter data.
6 days ago – Mary added a new task Contact client.
5 days ago – Simon changed the status of the task Make HTML to complete.
3 days ago – Mary deleted the task Contact client.
2 days ago – John added a new file to the task Make HTML.
2 days ago – Mary changed the status of the task Make HTML to Incomplete.
1 day ago – Simon added a new note to the task Make HTML.
Today – Simon changed the status of the task Make HTML to Complete.

This dynamic component wasn’t available in business oriented software until now, except in the most sophisticated analytical systems, where data mining and other high level approaches provided dynamic information. Using Web 2.0 approaches such as the mini feed, operational and transactional information systems finally got the dynamic component too. Not to amuse, but to inform.

These are the approaches we use and things we think about when developing our software solutions. There are actually more useful applications of the mini feed we already noticed, but some mystery must remain. If you are interested, say hi to Neolab, one of the first companies in the world to offer fully integrated Web 2.0 features in business oriented software, all part of the IT 2.0 concept we are developing, for which already got an award for. Made in Slovenia, shipping worldwide.

Neolab in 2009

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 19:38:32 GMT

2009 was a hard year for everybody, specially for start-ups such as Neolab. Greed and wrong decisions of global financial institutions and their leaders turned the world upside down. Luckily we were able to survive, to stand tall against all the challenges that await for us next year. Projects have been confirmed, so the biggest issue that we face now is consolidating our inner organization and finishing our software framework that we put so much time and energy into.

A few weeks ago, Neolab celebrated it’s second birthday. The first two years are supposedly decisive for the survival of start-ups, so if this unfriendly situation won’t last too long, looks like we’ll make it. To sum it up: for us, 2008 was the year of checking out the scene, where we were observing if it’s possible to make it on our own. The second year, 2009, was the year of marketing, where we presented ourselves to broader audience.

Our presentation was quite successful. After a few years of building and optimizing our design and marketing concept with IlovarStritar, we finally launched our web page, a thing we are very proud of. Until this post we (they) have already received two awards for Neolab’s broader corporate identity, Brumen award and Taiwan international award. This confirmed we made the right decision by doing something special with our image.

The whole story of our design identity is built around a fictional ecosystem of pixelized mutant animals, representing connectivity of people, organizations and processes using information technology. Different animals are used for different documents and people so the whole concept is scalable, artistic, interesting and fun. If you like, you can check out the whole showcase on the IlovarStritar website.

We are becoming one of the biggest slovenian experts in IT. In april we received an award on the Slovenian IT conference for best paper on the subject of IT 2.0. If that wasn’t enough, we were also named the Emerging web agency of 2009 on Slovenia's biggest web authority, Netko. The barriers between organization, marketing, IT and web are obviously getting thinner and thinner, and Neolab stands strong right in the middle of it.

We may look good on the outside, but we are also healthy on the inside. At this point we employ six people, which actually brought a bit of organizational confusion. By adopting stronger approaches in project management, things are turning for the better. Besides, our big investment into our framework, which now stands stable, scalable and promising, will soon be complete, so we are more than ready for all the projects that are coming upon us.

Hopefully this year will be more welcoming. As we and our services mature, new challenges for our clients, suppliers, partners, supporters and ourselves are on the horizon, so you better be ready for all the things we have in store. To a successful 2010!

IT + Web 2.0 = IT 2.0

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 15:43:32 GMT

Web 2.0 is one of the hottest things around. Everybody is talking about it, and it is revolutionizing the way we work, communicate and enjoy our free time. It is obvious even now that such services will be the main tools of marketing and political movements of the future. Now we have to wait and see how far it goes and where it ends.

It did not take long for executives and technology officers to see that Web 2.0 could also have interesting applications on business oriented environment. Therefore, Enterprise 2.0 was "invented". It represents using new discovered approaches such as tagging, wikis and blogs for corporate goals. It works and I think companies shoud embrace it, because it's modern and effective.

We have taken it to another level, partially because we have become quite obsessed with developing not partial, but wholistict software systems. Web 2.0 is not just a collection of tools for better communication, it is a new concept of interaction, data visualization and user participation which was originaly discovered for one purpose - to amuse users and to earn more money from advertising. Usefulness came with it, and in this case the market economy worked.

Neolab is one of the first companies in the world that is offering business oriented software, fully integrated with Web 2.0 services, such as internal social networking, mini-feed reports, content tagging, cloud visualizations and more. As it is an integrated concept, we have dubbed it IT 2.0. We think that this approach helps both the users and the management with easier use, stronger belonging to the company and richer information than classic information systems.

Hopefully there will be more professional articles available on that topic in the future. It's hard to find the correct equilibrium between academic research and real life development. At this stage It has more and more scientific background each day, and the implementations prove it works. IT 2.0 is born.