Enterprise 2.0

Immediacy entered the Web 1.0 world in the 1990s with a very ‘Web 2.0’ message.

Our vision of ‘Content Management for all’ sought to break down the over-engineered and over-priced solutions of that time with a solution that was simple, powerful and affordable and extended out the capability of publishing to the web from the chosen few to the many.

The Immediacy browser-based content Editor was an early example of the Rich Internet Applications that have become all the rage under the Web 2.0 banner and our advanced ‘Word-like’ interface, stretched the boundaries of what was possible in a web browser to create a solution that users readily adopted.

Our message has stayed consistent over the last 7 years and now, with the rise of the Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 movements, the rest of the world seems to be catching up.

Although we have stuck to our principles, our developments have moved on to become significantly more robust, scalable and extensible. As a company we have become more mature and developed the quality of support services and account management that we know our customers appreciate. We have also created vibrant and active user communities, both offline and online, where knowledge and ideas are shared.

Having been through these learning curves and pain barriers, we know what faces younger, less mature companies, as they seek to serve the breadth of customer base and diversity of needs that we support on a daily basis.

So, to organisations who seek the power of Web 2.0 ideas for Enterprise level application but don’t like the risks associated with less mature, venture capital funded start-ups, we say Immediacy is your ideal partner.

What does Web 2.0 mean to you?

Research amongst senior executives conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit in January 2007 listed the concepts or technologies that it is believed characterise Web 2.0. The top 5 answers were as follows:

1. Enabling users to easily create content	58%
2. Social networks	57%
3. Collaborative content creation	54%
4. Leveraging collective intelligence through tagging	39%
5. Online search	37%

What we think...

The difference between Web 2.0 styled easy content creation tools and 2^nd generation Content Management Systems is minimal. Blogs and Wikis are becoming more CMS like and CMS developers are adding blog and wiki capabilities.

Social Networks are primarily about easily created homepages and profiles that help provide the content, context and connections to enable social interaction to flourish, be that in a personal or business context. If you recognise what they are and how they work you can utilise this power within an Enterprise and a Content Management System can provide the platform and tools you need to do it.

Blogging is a valuable way to create useful and authentic content both within and outside and organisation. Blogging capabilities built within a mature Content Management System provide both the power of topical, chronological content creation and commenting as well as the means to protect an organisation from anti-social abuse that can damage brand image.

Collaboration is becoming an established ‘basic service’ within the IT infrastructure, from large enterprises to small businesses. It makes most sense for Content Management Systems to harness the power of infrastructure based collaboration capabilities through connectors and integration rather than seeking to re-invent them.

User generated tagging and folksonomies demonstrate the power of democratic processes in managing large volumes of information but potentially undermine the strict compliance environments that many organisations have to operate in. Auto-categorisation capabilities offer the opportunity to bridge the gap between metadata categorisation and classification requirements and the ability for the user to add knowledge in the web content and document creation process.

The dominance of online search as the primary means to find information puts a major emphasis on the ability of a Content Management System to manage Search Engine Marketing. This includes in-built capabilities that help websites rank well in organic search returns and the capabilities to build measurable landing pages and microsites to help drive web traffic and improve Pay Per Click conversions.

The rise of the perpetual beta emphasises the importance of user engagement and listening to customers. Established software vendors, such as Immediacy, have been actively growing their offline and online user communities and using these as a source of feature requests and prioritisation of user needs.

Successful website initiatives put an emphasis on ‘try, tune, repeat’ to maximise the effectiveness of a site to build web traffic and convert it to meaningful and useful actions, be that measurable sales leads or requests for information. Content Management Systems that enable effective and easy integration of web analytic services, such as Google Analytics, make the ‘try, tune, repeat’ process simpler to implement.

Increasing emphasis on APIs and open standards is opening up possibilities for ‘mashing-up’ data sources and applications and making application integration, rather than proprietary ‘lock-in’ an attractive proposition for enterprises. Web Content Management Systems like Immediacy have placed considerable emphasis on use of standard protocols such as xml, SOAP and WebDAV to enable simpler and effective integration.

The willingness of organisations to access software solutions over the web and subscribe to them on a monthly, predictable cost, basis is growing rapidly. Content Management Systems vendors like Immediacy are increasingly offering hosted solution and predictable payment options and evaluating where ‘Software as a Service’ provision makes more sense for some or all of their products.