The Conversation on Enterprise 2.0
Comments, Analysis, Events, Web2.0, Framework, RIA, Integration, Persona, Enterprise, Personalization, Enterprise2.0, Software architecture No Comments »Following its introduction in 2006 by Harvard Business School professor Andrew McAfee, the “Enterprise 2.0″ notion is a hotly debated concept. McAfee and Babson College professor Tom Davenport were discussing it recently at the eponym conference held in Boston last week. Interim conclusions from the debate highlighted the foreseeable problems and open questions:
- Single sign-on and ease-of-use are a prerequisite for enterprise use of Web 2.0 applications
- The usual conundrum facing adoption of any new technology or practice - commitment from the IT department, possibly from senior management, and so forth
- Overarching concerns about security and productivity at the workplace
These are really architectural questions rather than simply technical issues. The legitimate concerns are about how Web 2.0-inspired applications and practices can be efficiently merged with legacy enterprise applications and business processes.
Our work at DreamFace Interactive is geared at addressing precisely these questions. Much of the attention in our design has been devoted to the recurring problems of integration which underlie the yet to be found Enterprise 2.0 architecture.
The DreamFace Interactive Framework, in contrast to Ajax libraries, seeks to provide architectural solutions to such questions:
- With class libraries programmers reuse only implementations, whereas with frameworks they reuse design. The DreamFace WebChannels, Persona and WebPrograms are design abstractions mapping to a heterogeneous world of data and programs.
- With a class library, the code the programmer writes instantiates objects and calls their member functions. It’s possible to instantiate and call objects in the same way with a framework–that is, to treat the framework as a class library–but to take full advantage of a framework’s reusable design, a programmer writes code that overrides and is called by the framework. The framework manages the flow of control among its objects. The DreamFace Interactive Framework cranks up this principle to the business user level, where only simple personalization is required from the business developer and no programming.
- Class libraries are essentially collections of behaviors that you can call when you want those individual behaviors in your program. The DreamFace Interactive Framework, on the other hand, provides not only behavior but also the protocol or set of rules that govern the ways in which behaviors can be combined. The business user simply customizes these behaviors to suit her personal preferences and professional requirements.
Additionally, as described in a recent post, firmly casting the business user in the pivotal role is key to the proper integration for Enterprise 2.0.
Needed: a shared architectural view of Enterprise 2.0; DreamFace Interactive: a proposed framework for Enterprise 2.0.