The term “Web 2.0” has clearly taken hold after the first O’Reilley Media Web 2.0 conference in 2004. The dot-com burst in the fall of 2001 was once seen as if the web had overhyped. In fact, the shakeouts marked the technological revolutions and had separated the pretenders and the real success stories.
Web 2.0 did not introduce new technical specifications. What makes it different from Web 1.0 is that it changes the way on how the end users and software developers use the web. It is an expression referred to the second generation of the Internet-based services, such as the social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies. It aims to facilitate collaboration, creativity, and sharing among the users.
Web 2.0 is the trend in the Internet technology. Social networks are growing like weeds and have attracted millions of users that integrated these sites into their daily lives. This creates fear among the employers who worry that the trend will cause the workers to waste their time on the social network sites during working hours and share the corporate information on the sites, which are not protected by corporate firewalls.
Since the Web has already made its way into most of our heart, it is appropriate that the employers start accepting this fact and implement the social networking tools to drive business value and gain competitive advantage to the company. In fact, most corporate executives believe that Web 2.0 assist the employees to work more efficiently.
Security ProPortal.com stated that 472 executives around the world had been surveyed by the professional services firm and the Economist Intelligence Unit and nearly 70% said they believed that Web 2.0 tools will help the employees to work more efficiently. 75% said that Web 2.0 tools would foster innovation within their businesses and 86% see them improving knowledge sharing.
Another survey done by Sophos last year has shown that the respondents perceived that good productivity is the result of good management. Some of them worry that the employees might try to get round the Web filters and try to gain access to the site in some other way.
Israeli-American software company, WorkLight Inc., is one of the growing number of software companies that provides secure server-based software product that provides a secure, simple, and customisable “Web 2.0 style” access to corporate data that resides in the enterprise application. These accesses include RSS readers, personalised homepages, gadgets/widgets, application mashups, and instant messaging. The employees are the one who define how they want the information to be aggregated and presented.
WorkLight was approached by a major US bank that has 70, 000 employees (and about 10% on Facebook) and was focusing on communication among remote users and expertise. The investment bank installed IBM’s Lotus Connection but it is not adopted by the employees in a meaningful way. The solution for this is the WorkBook.
WorkLight launched WorkBook Facebook application in the UK on 19th February 2008. This is to address the issues caused by the usage of social networking sites among the employees. Since many employees are already familiar with Facebook, it requires no training and they are able to pick up the new software instantly.
To install WorkBook, log on to Facebook and install it like FunWall, SuperPoke or other Facebook applications. It will appear in your application list and when you click on it, you will be asked for authentification with your organisation’s identity services. You can have your company information on your Facebook profile but it is only visible in the WorkBook application. Workbook enables you to communicate securely with colleagues and to perform the functions you normally find on Facebook, such as form groups, share information and ideas, as well as search for employees with specific expertise or by the location, department, project etc. It also allows you to receive activity streams from the Facebook news feed.
Apart from implementing social networks for enterprise, WorkLight has begun trial to allow customers to view their credit card and bank account transaction history on NetVibes, iGoogle or Yahoo homepage. WorkLight also has a software that enables the employees to fill out their expenses on their personalised homepage. Unlike SAP software, which requires the employees to go through tedious steps just to file their expenses, there are no flags, no codes to memorise, and no need to involve a help desk on WorkLight.
All of these applications are hosted on the company server and are protected by security layers as the software deals with highly valuable and private personal or corporate information. Only those who are presently on the company network or who sign in via VPN are allowed to gain access to the WorkBook.
While these benefits are encouraging companies to implement the system, putting up highly confidential data on the Internet is always a risky business. Will you adopt the social networking site as your collaboration tool for your company?
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