Durga Apoorv Durga

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Social Networking within the Enterprise

23-Jan-2007

Tags: Document Management (ECM), , Implementation

Yesterday, Janus shared news from LotusSphere about IBM's announcement new software for social networking. IBM has been trying to bring consumer web technologies to the enterprise (witness free search). The trend towards consolidating major features into one product should make it easier for organizations to experiment with social networking: Web 2.0, blogs, wikis and so on. But the lack of an integrated product offering here was not the only reason why most enterprises have not yet embraced these technologies. I think the bigger reason is more cultural and organizational. The public Internet has fewer controls and is inherently more open; hence the success of such tools on the consumer side. On the other hand, most intranets focus on processes and controls. So for social networking to work behind the firewall, enterprises have to work to change cultural norms around collaboration and openness, and only then start using new tools to take advantage of new paradigms. Success in the consumer world does not guarantee success on the enterprise side...

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