Enterprise 2.0 (E 2.0), as it stands today, is the most sought after buzzword. Experts have begun evangelizing it as the rebirth of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). To a certain degree the concept can be attributed to the fact that SOA has not reached holistic levels yet, and there might be a possible justification for E 2.0 as a new paradigm, which utilizes SOA to get a lot of things done. We must see whether E 2.0 and its new found bonding with SOA will live up to the extent of fulfilling the expectations.
What is E 2.0?
E 2.0 can be termed as the ‘Facebook of the enterprise’. Enterprises have realized the need for building a collaborative platform for their employees to drive contributive growth and boost productivity. This is done by bringing the power of Web 2.0 into the corporate firewall. This idea as a whole is often dubbed E 2.0. E 2.0 would include information sharing spaces, self-service portals, collaboration driven intranets, digital dashboards, and consolidated workspace. So the new trend in it is to build Facebook-like applications within the firewall that are trendy, visually appealing, and collaborative, thereby fostering employee usage and productivity.
The lateral path E 2.0 takes is with respect to introducing user level hierarchies and mandating the usage level. Data security and confidentiality play a key role in the success of E 2.0.
Why SOA Never Reached Fruition?
SOA is a principle of governing software modules and providing interoperable services. Simply put, it can be restated as alignment of business and IT through ‘services’. SOA underpins and enables initiatives aimed at cost reduction, such as SaaS or BPM.