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One of the things that swamped me in the past month was setting up a new computer. Never fun. This one was interesting as I was forced to migrate to Vista. There has been a lot of talk about Vista in the industry, especially it's failure to succeed. InfoWorld is spearheading a petition to keep XP, and I even signed the petition knowing I would be buying a new computer soon. This week InfoWorld published an interesting article "Was Vista DOA?" The article talks about the early bugs with drivers that did not work and compatibility issues. But this paragraph summed it up for me:

"Here was an OS that, from an enterprise IT standpoint, had almost nothing going for it: No major new technologies; no paradigm-shifting architectural changes; nothing to whet a system administrator's appetite. What it did have was layers and layers of consumer-focused baggage: Pervasive DRM plumbing; dubious multimedia prioritization tweaks; OS X-envy driven eye candy. Basically, it was an OS designed to secure Microsoft's seat at the RIAA/MPAA roundtable, and little else."

Here was the eye opener. Vista represents little more than an expense for IT departments - it has nothing else to offer. But I must admit, even after having to spend more than I would have liked to upgrade software which was admittedly old but still did the job I needed it to do, I like Vista. The user experience is a big improvement over XP. Eye candy is part of the appeal. But it all seems to work more smoothly. It's easier to use. There's less arm wrestling with MS Word and Powerpoint. Things are more integrated. It feels more productive. Now from an IT enterprise point of view I have to admit it's probably not enough to justify the expense. But it made me understand the appeal of the Mac. My son-in-law asked for the new Mac OS for his birthday. Can you imagine any PC user wanting the gift of an operating system for their birthday? Usually I'm squarely on the side of enterprise IT, but I'm starting to change my tune a bit. The end user experience should not be discounted as unimportant eye candy. IT needs to enable a smooth and seamless user experience. It cannot be a mere secondary afterthought to other IT requirements.

Which brings me to my musings on Web 2.0. On Mar. 19th ebizQ held it's first Web 2.0 virtual event, a live Roundtable Discussion on Web 2.0 and SOA (you can view the archive). We had an all-star panel including Dion Hinchcliffe, Ron Schmelzer and Doug Wilson, and they were all great at explaining the role and benefits of Web 2.0 in the enterprise. But the audience questions were equally interesting. One attendee stated that while blogging was successful in the enterprise, they experienced problems with viruses from social networking sites such as Facebook, even after deploying all the virus, adware and malware protection, and wondered what the ROI was for the organization. Another attendee wondered if spending time on social networking sites meant lost productivity of employees. Dion Hinchcliffe said they have reviewed all the case study data and there is definitely an ROI for Web 2.0. Doug Wilson of IBM stated that internally deployed social networking software has lead to increased productivity across the organization. He made that case that many business services are executed by humans who need to interface with other humans as well as systems to do their job. Web 2.0 provides the support to carry out human based business services which in turn rely on back end system services.

So the whole idea of how humans interact with computers is becoming more important in the enterprise. Interestingly, a poll of attendees showed that 50% of the live online audience were investigating Web 2.0 solutions, 13% were piloting them, 38% had Web 2.0 solution(s) in production, but 0% said that Web 2.0 was prevalent throughout the organization. However, Doug Wilson indicated that the social networking solution internal to IBM is largely responsible for enabling the the highly matrixed reporting structure and enabling people to connect more easily.

Bottom line - Web 2.0, while difficult to precisely define, is here, growing, and likely to change our expectations of the way we work. In the future, we are going to expect a seamless experience. We are going to be less tolerant of being forced to do things the way IT works, we are going to expect IT to enable the way we want to work. So shame on you Microsoft for creating an OS that enterprise IT doesn't need but end users do. And shame on all the IT folks dismissing Vista as DOA and not considering for a moment the benefits of the human interface advancements as being valid. There's a lesson to be learned on both sides.

Now I think I'll go tag something.

Posted by bethgb at 10:58 AM in Industry Trends | Digg This | Add to del.icio.us

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