The 2010 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium Notes: Enterprise 3.0?

I recently attended the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium for the second time. It is an annual one-day conference, held on the MIT campus. The site describes it as an event “where CIOs and other senior business executives from around the world gather to explore how leading-edge academic research and innovative technologies can help address the practical challenges faced in today's changing economy.”

I attended a session, Enterprise 3.0 led by Andy McAfee, now Research Scientist, Center for Digital Business, MIT Sloan School of Management. Panel members included Ralph Swick
, COO, W3C, Gregg Hansen, VP of IT, Advanced MicroDevices, Gene Rodgers
President and COO
Clearway, and Edward Curry, Research Scientist, DERI.

Andy held up his Enterprise 2.0 book and said to hurry up and buy it as it may become obsolete as we are now on to Enterprise 3.0. He promised to define the term during the session. That was my question: WTF is enterprise 3.0?

Ralph mentioned that the Web is only twenty years old. Many people have only known its premise and not its absence. Many Web 2.0 features such as writing to the Web were part of the original proposal 20 years ago.  It just took a while for them to take hold. Andy asked for definitions of Web 3.0 and he admitted it was fuzzy for him.

Ed said Web 3.0 is trying to break down barriers between data. Andy interrupted and said that this was part of Web 2.0. Ed said that the Web 2.0 effort was related to documents (and other content.) Now he is talking about standardized ways to work with data (inside content as well in data warehouses). Now we need to integrate data, rather than simply systems, and make it easier to work with data. There have been three barriers – need to make data available, need to make it easy to access the data – do not require learning different technology for each data set, need to be able see relationships to other data that is relevant. Web 2.0 did this to documents (assume that means any Web content including blog posts) and Web 3.0 tries to do it to data.

Ralph added that we are not talking about a massive consolidation of data warehouses but opening access to it where it lives. The reason to open data is to discover new things to do with it. (sounds a bit like mashups to me – and they said this later). Andy says that he gets confused when he hears about the semantic web (me too). Is it making it easier for people to find data and connect it or for systems to find data and link it? Ralph said the current step is to make data available, presumably to both people and systems. 

Gene said he is still trying to understand enterprise 20 but he sees enterprise 3.0 as driving context and insights on top of data use, His development teams work globally, not sharing language or time. They are using new tools for this. His teams collaborate using web 2.0 methods but what is missing is context - can you bring a bug tracking system itself as part of the conversation on how to make it better – enterprise 2.0 creates its own silos, It needs the enable greater connections to enterprise apps and people.  I agree and have written about this a bit. He said with enterprise 3.0 search becomes the key enabler. It becomes a system for deriving insight and sharing it with a team.

Gregg said that people need to be able to add their context to data and share it so perspectives are shared. Then insight gets aggregated. We need to avoid having to start from scratch each time when working on a problem. We need to see complete history of efforts easily.

Ralph said enterprise 3.0 is finding the relevant information and bringing it into the conversation. Andy says that this sounds like a lot of work. Ralph said it does not have to be complex if you set things up right. You can go back to find stuff when it as needed. 

Andy asked if we need to go back and retrofit the existing legacy systems? Ralph said that you can drill holes into existing systems to gain access and do not have to wait for them to die. So you will have to do some work but not have to throw them away.  You also need to find the high value data sets and focus efforts there. You do not have to have everything connected before you start. It can be evolutionary.

Gregg mentioned Attivio and ways to join structured and unstructured data.  (see my recent video with Arttivio CTO, Sid Probstein) This use is built around dashboards and mashups.  For example, today marketing teams mine social media for sentiment. They create reports. Meanwhile the sales teams in the same firm may be using old style technology to manage accounts. It would be a logical extension to get the sales teams using social media for their own communication. Then you can more easily feed in the sentiment analysis form the Web as preparation for sales calls.

Andy asked about the difference between the new world of mashups and the old world of systems integration. Gregg said it is in the interface and the intelligence. Ralph said the big difference is that now users can do it themselves and not have to bring a system integration team.  Andy asked if are we making a geek mistake to assume that regular people will want to this themselves? Ralph said that 90% of the people will just want to push a button. But the 10% power users will want to do things themselves and then they can share it with other 90%. 

Andy said the enriched data connections (of semantic tech) always seems to be just around the corner – for the past dozen years – why is it going to happen now?  Gregg said it is already happening now but the challenge of handling data is complex. The point about enabling power users to lead the way Is spot on. But it is hard and that is why it has been so slow.  Some of the early adoptions of semantic technology have been inside the enterprise (where there is more control) rather than on the outside Web.  This more controlled environment makes it easier.

I think this clears away a bit of the fog around enterprise 3.0 (aka semantic web). But it still seems to be an aspiration that is only emerging (see my Enterprise Search Summit post - Is Semantic Technology Real?). I would also not use the enterprise 3.0 label for something that has been around before enterprise 2.0 and Web 2.0. Why not just call it the semantic web?

Comments

[Rminicucci]

Thank you for coming, Bill. Great overview! See you next year.

[Ravi PRasad]

Bill, thanks a lot for the capturing the panel discussion. I was the panel captain and got great positive feedback from the audience.

[bill Ives]

Ravi and Robert - Thanks for a great event and your comments. Bill