Steve introduced the third speaker … Ambuj Goyal from IBM, general manager of Information Management at IBM. Apparently Mike Rhodin couldn’t come.

Ambuj is going to play the role of the fat, happy executive who doesn’t want to shift into the next generation. About 12 years ago, Web 1.0 tools and technologies began to become popular. For many IT departments, they asked, “with all that we already provide, why do we need the Web?”. Because … it enables cross-organizational communication. Intranets and extranets started to flourish … for putting up information anywhere and accessing it.

There were extreme views in the e-Business phase … that brick-and-mortar companies would disappear, traditional businesses would lose out to e-Business companies … but it didn’t happen because the existing players changed.

So … what’s the difference for Enterprise 2.0? The technologies have existed for a long time … but why name it now?. From a corporate perspective: you can put up information anywhere, and you can comment on it … that’s the transition .. and why a new name is required.

Web 2.0 Goes to Work … the new phrase from IBM. Web 2.0 combines economic (new business designs), technology (lighter-weight infrastructure and simpler programming models), and community (tapping the collective knowledge). The business impacts … personalization of the experience to millions of markets (of dozens of people), improving quality of product documentation (eg, through wiki pages on the Intranet), forums and communities of interest for supporting specific products, suppliers are permitted to create content on your site … we are no longer at the stage of mashups … but are starting to move these technologies into a space to combine communities and commerce to drive enhanced business results.

Will this be driven off entirely new platforms? No, Web 2.0 technologies will impact on existing technologies.

• Eg, IBM WebSphere Portal … to rapidly assemble business mashups, to use RSS for notifications, to deliver rich desktop-like interfaces, to leverage existing investments, and more. Within the portal, you should be able to update directly.
• Eg, IBM WebSphere Commerce … dynamic customer-driven experiences … with a video shown
• Eg, IBM Web Interface for Content Management … an out-of-the-box, easy-to-use, highly interactive Web client featuring Web 2.0 and AJAX support … pulling on enterprise repositories.
• Eg, “info2.0” … an integrated suite that enables the creation of mash-able content into easily customizable, instant dashboards. Transform data, discover data, serve feed content, and mash-up content. This new technology is due later this year.
• Eg, QEDWiki … a mashup maker for the enterprise. Focus on the simplicity, data driven, remixability, open APIs, rich internet applications, user generated content. See more at the IBM Booth on the Demo floor. QEDWiki is available today at IBM AlphaWorks
• Eg, IBM Lotus Connections … social software for business that empowers employees to be more innovative and execute more quickly. Includes activities, communities, blogs, profiles, and bookmarks. It’s built on the same underlying technologies as previous generations, but it’s a new integration and a new suite.
• Eg, Lotus Quickr … for content sharing, team blogs, wikis, team calendar, and lists. The next step of IBM’s easy and quick to establish team collaboration offering.
• Eg, Many Eyes … a data visualization technology developed by IBM Research’s Visual Communications Lab. Users can upload a data set and choose from 14 data visualization types.

There were two video demos during the talk … but neither worked perfectly during the presentation. The audio didn’t work, but one of Ambuj’s colleagues was in the audience, and came up to the platform and spoke us through it. It wasn’t what was intended, but it actually worked AOK.

Conclusion
The world is changing to a more dynamic business environment … it’s not structured and procedure-driven, but is shifting to knowledge-based where individuals have to understand needs, information availability, responsibility and teaming interaction.