BEA is, or was, a 'middleware' company which quietly got on with making different systems communicate with each other effectively. Unsung heroes, BEA products liberated siloed information and sped corporate IT processes. Acquisitions, such as Plumtree, widened the company's brief right up to the user/consumer of information.
Meanwhile, some enterprising information professionals were implementing new 'social computing' systems to get people communicating and collaborating, independently of email and the IT department. Such systems are usually regarded with deep suspicion by IT and management alike. In technological terms they are beyond the pale - outside the existing IT system. In human terms, they are quite the opposite - connecting communities of practice within, and sometimes beyond, the organisation.
The trouble with separated systems like this is that some of their embedded information needs to get into the corporate knowledge base, and vice versa. At the moment, the two environments are like oil and water - coexisting but rarely mingling.
Now BEA has started to demonstrate some new services which aim to demolish that barrier. It is close to releasing a blog/wiki tool called Builder. The important thing is it can surface 'legacy information' such as a SAP table right there in the wiki. (Thanks Rod Boothby for the tip-off.)
Another service called Runner, will take care of back-end security stuff such as access control and audit trails. This is a vital element in these days of close regulatory scrutiny.
There's more, of course, and we'll have to wait a few months for this to see the light of day but this strikes me as a very smart move by BEA.
Comments here -- http://www.jroller.com/page/MasterMark?entry=omg_it_s_enterprise_2
ReplyDeleteTypepad told me that the trackback I sent from Roller was interpreted as comment spam ... :-(
Bizarre. You can try again: Edit/Add trackback/Save and see what happens. I'll be watching.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I enjoyed reading your post. As someone who's now met the Scrupskis, Woodrows, etc (at Office 2.0) last month, you're right, people's position in the panoply does determine their take on the 2.0 stuff.
Someone told me that 2.0 is a state of mind. They're right. It's lots of people who want to get stuff done in time for it to be useful to them.
On unifying the silos, I think that decent search can be the 'glue'. Whether it's totally desirable or not is another matter.
Now readers will have to follow your link back to find out what the heck I'm banging on about.
Take a look at this blogsite as there is an interesting article looking at social computing and whether it is a Sustainable Reality
ReplyDeletehttp://luddites-or-laggards.blogspot.com/
I'm guessing (and I'm probably right) that you are the author of the post you are referring readers to.
ReplyDeleteThe observations in that post apply to manipulation of the public through various kinds of social media. This seems a bit of a disconnect from the post that started this conversation. This is about surfacing corporate information.
I notice you also refer to yourself as RW there, rather than revealing your name and attribution. I find that interesting. Is anonymity a good basis for trust?
Perhaps you'd like to tell us more about yourself and why you've linked to the other post? I'd like to think that it's not just an attempt to drive traffic there.