Web 2.0 Goes to Work for Business

Business leaders

Gaining competitive value through Web 2.0

Businesses are taking advantage of IBM Web 2.0 technologies today, extending the value of computing to the extranet and increasing the efficiency of the value network. Now, your company can more easily preserve the tacit knowledge of the organization and optimize the efficiency and creativity of a global talent pool.

A Web 2.0 vision that delivers value to businesses today

The IBM Web 2.0 vision is built on three main tenants, all of which enable the Power of Participation. They are People (Social Computing), Platform (Web as a platform) and Enabling Technologies.

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Social Computing from IBM is focused on enabling people to connect, collaborate and innovate. More simply, it enables your teams to capture and preserve the collective knowledge and expertise of the entire value chain — across geographic boundaries. This can help create a more collaborative and dynamic company culture that fosters innovation.

Today's businesses need to recognize that a younger, more technology-savvy generation of people (referred to as 'Generation Y') comprise about 25% of the workforce today and will make up about 47% of the workforce by 2014. This is the generation of people who have grown up with the latest technologies and who have become highly adaptable and interactive. As the Gen Y'ers become a larger population in the workforce, companies will increasingly benefit from adapting and supporting social computing technologies.

Learn more about social computing for business.

Next, our view of the Web as a Delivery Platform erases boundaries and extends the value networks. This part of our vision offers the advantage of economies of scale, lowering the barrier of entry and associated up-front costs. Using the Web as a platform, businesses can more easily capture user created content and participation value along with more effective use of information. Web as a delivery platform promotes a globally integrated virtual enterprise, extending the discovery and use of expertise across an entire ecosystem.

IBM has announced "Bluehouse", code name for a future software as a service (SaaS) solutions Web platform designed for companies with five to 500 employees and with limited or no in-house technical resources. Bluehouse will provide smaller businesses extranet collaboration services for open social networking, instant messaging, file sharing, project management and web conferencing.

Learn more about Web as a delivery platform for business.

Enabling Technology is the next tenant of our Web 2.0 vision. Web 2.0 technologies from IBM are focused on making applications simple to build, quick to remix and easy to extend. And so we have changed the economics of application development by delivering development tools that satisfy the needs of a range of skill levels. This approach enables businesses to leverage existing in-house talent, enterprise information and data easily and to build targeted applications to smaller audiences more rapidly and with lower costs. And now, even your line-of-business people can build focused applications without requiring IT assistance.

Learn more about enabling technologies.

What customers, analysts and press are saying:

As a business leader who is considering Web 2.0 for business, you want to be confident that you are teaming with a vendor that is a recognized leader by industry experts and by many satisfied customers that have already teamed with IBM on Web 2.0. IBM has received an exhaustive list of accolades from the press, industry analysts and our customers. This is attributed to a Web 2.0 vision that was tested within IBM and then shared with our customers. Here is a sampling...

"Up-to-date collaboration and communications tools are also essential for employers wishing to attract the best talent in the industry. The new generation entering the job market is already familiar with instant messaging and social networking tools. These young professionals want to utilize the same capabilities in their day-to-day work." — Pauli Nuutinen, VP Corporate IT, Metso Corporation

"Our strategy has been to reinvent the way people shop for outdoor, surf, skate and snowboard apparel and equipment. IBM - through its technology and retail thought leadership - has been instrumental in helping us realize this vision." — Jeffrey Wolfe, COO, Moosejaw Mountaineering

"Interestingly, given that it's an established tech company from an earlier generation, IBM appears to be at the top of its Web 2.0 game. It was the highest-ranking firm in the Social Media survey, placing in the top 20 percentile. By most metrics — from its product rollout to enterprise strategy to even cultural heros — IBM is making all the right moves." — Louis Columbus, an analyst with Cincom, told CRM Buyer. CRM Buyer - "CRM and the Enterprise 2.0 Challenge" - June 13, 2008

"Thanks to Lotus Connections, IBM is already ahead of the game when it comes to enterprise social software, and now IBM looks set to do it again in the area of enterprise mashups, a mashup being the lightweight, tactical integration of multi-sourced applications into a single "experience". - Computerwire - AnalystWatch, "IBM Unfurls Mashup Strategy", Richard Edwards, Butler Group, April 14, 2008