©2003-2008 James Dellow/Chief Technology Solutions. Web: http://www.chieftech.com.au/ Phone: +61 414 233 711Disclaimer: The information in this article is of a general nature. Please seek advice for specific circumstances.

"Helping you to get on, not get by, with information technology"

Looking for Intranet 2.0

In the world of fashion, the job of ‘cool hunters’ is to seek out

emerging trends in street style and fashion for adoption into thecommercial mainstream. Likewise, information and knowledgemanagement cool hunters have been peering out over the firewall andobserving how the consumer led innovation of Web 2.0 is changingthe way we use, contribute and interact with information on theInternet.

By James Dellow.

For the early adopter, Web 2.0presented an exciting world of user participation, socialnetworking, rich user friendlyinterfaces and rapid Web-application development thatthey eagerly copied to create theirown internal version, calledIntranet 2.0. There are nownumerous Intranet 2.0 successstories from around the world

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from the original DresdnerKleinwort cited by AndrewMcAfee through to Janssen-Cilagin Australia - that are urging therest of us to adopt wikis, blogsand other Web 2.0 technologiesinto our mainstream intranets.But if your organisation has beenslow to follow the Intranet 2.0path, how can you judiciously buyinto this trend? And perhaps moreimportantly, how do you knowyou have picked the righttechnology path?Despite celebrated success stories- and as with other informationmanagement technologies - thereis no standard blueprint forimplementing Intranet 2.0. This ispartly because it is by no meansclear what Intranet 2.0 actually is,reflecting the fact that it isdifficult to find consensus on thedefinition of the broader conceptsbundled into the idea of Web 2.0.However, if we brainstormed theideal themes and attributes of Intranet 2.0 we might pick out

characteristics such as ‘userdriven’, ‘social’, ‘collaborative’,‘activity centred’, ‘Mash

able’ and‘developed incrementally’. These

are all characteristics inspired bythe Web 2.0 experience, but of course they typically describeInternet experiences and anintranet is not the Internet

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inother words, the goal of a userdriven intranet describes theoutcome but not how to go aboutproviding it inside the firewall.If the fact there is no commonblueprint is due in part to a lack of common understanding of Intranet 2.0, the greater gap isabout understanding the needs of the organisation in relation tothese new Web 2.0 technologies.Rather than debating definitionsor focusing on what your Intranet2.0 should look like, a better

"Helping you to get on, not get by, with information technology"

Once you understand what you want to achieve, youshould consider your Intranet 2.0 objectives for fit against three possiblestrategies

starting point is to focus on whatyou are trying to achieve. A Web2.0 inspired intranet presentsmany potential benefits,including:

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Ease of site management andimproved usability;

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Support for conversationalcollaboration (in addition todocument-centriccollaboration) enabling peopleto connect with each othermore easily;

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Better shared access tocontextually relevant internaland external data, includingpublicly available geospatialdata such as Google Maps;

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Greater flexibility to meetemergent needs; and

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A platform for others to createand share solutions.For some organisations Intranet2.0 might also be cheaper toimplement and manage

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eitherthrough the use of open sourcesoftware or through greater user-generated content (reducing theneed for dedicated contentcreators and content managers).Through these reduced costs italso becomes possible toimplement technologies thatmight have previously been costprohibitive

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for example,collaborative workspaces;however it is important torecognise that achieving theseparticular outcomes is not limitedto the Intranet 2.0

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open sourceis valid strategy in othertechnology domains anddistributed authoring is already awell established contentmanagement approach.Once you understand what youwant to achieve, you shouldconsider your Intranet 2.0objectives for fit against threepossible strategies:1.

Tactical Social Computing;2.

Enterprise Web 2.0 (or aWeb 2.0 OrientedIntranet); and3.

Enterprise 2.0.If none of these fit, then theoption of achieving Intranet 2.0through alternative andcomplementary technologies mayalso be available, depending onyour vision.To explore each strategy in turn:A

tactical social computingstrategy

involves the use of socialcomputing tools (typically wikis,discussion (or chat) forums, andblogs) to solve a particularbusiness challenge. For example,using an open source wiki as acontent management system tosave money, a project team thatuses a blog to improvecollaboration, or an HRdepartment that launches a forumto gather feedback and answerquestions from employees. Onclose inspection, many of thereported case studies andexamples of organisationsimplementing Enterprise 2.0actually represent the success of atactical social computing strategy.In some respects, a tactical

"Helping you to get on, not get by, with information technology"

An Enterprise 2.0 strategy is something quite different from either the tactical useof social computing or thenarrow adoption of Web2.0 technologies.

strategy might be thought asIntranet 1.x and could provide avalid innovation pathway forintroducing Intranet 2.0 to yourorganisation. This approach mayalso help where you need todemonstrate a business case formanagement and the ITdepartment. However, just likeany tactical technology approach,it is important to understand thatthis strategy can not by itself deliver a sustainable Intranet 2.0system over the long term.An

Enterprise Web 2.0

strategy(perhaps better described as aWeb 2.0 Oriented Intranet)embraces standards-basedtechnologies of XML, ATOM, etc,Web-application frameworks(such as AJAX, Adobe AIR, etc) andsoftware developmentphilosophies of Web 2.0 inside theenterprise, but leaves the socialaspects behind. In this approachyou will find there is more to Web2.0 than blogs and wikis with thepotential for organisations to getvalue from:

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Dashboards that can be rapidly

“mashed” together in days to

answer an emergent businessproblems;

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Alerting systems that integrateinformation from internal andexternal systems using RSS; or

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Rich and intuitive AJAXinterfaces on Web-applicationsthat people want to use andreduce the need for extensiveend-user training.If you follow this path, be awarethat an Enterprise Web 2.0strategy may perhapsunintentionally open the door toEnterprise 2.0. Once the lid is off the box, it may be difficult toquarantine the social aspects fromthe technology components of theWeb 2.0 software developmentphilosophy. The nature of Web2.0 tools and a key ingredient of their success is that theyempower users to build their owntools and contribute content, sogetting the benefits of Web 2.0technologies without the socialelement will need to be carefullymanaged. As a partial alternative,some organisations might alsofind that traditional intranetportals tools, such as MicrosoftSharePoint, can provide a goodenough Web 2.0-like capabilitywith the right governanceprocesses and configuration.However, an

Enterprise 2.0

strategy is something quitedifferent from either the tacticaluse of social computing or thenarrow adoption of Web 2.0technologies

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it is both atechnology and business change,where social computing tools bothhelp to flatten and also reflect theflatness of organisations. HarvardBusiness School associateprofessor, Andrew McAfee, whocoined the term Enterprise 2.0 inhis 2006, provided us with theSLATES (Search, Links, Authoring,Tags, Extensions, Signals) modelto define the basic technologyrequirements of an Enterprise 2.0system and a tactical strategy isunlikely provide the entireinfrastructure required to meet