Everyone must have heard of Web 2.0 by now. Various software gurus across the globe have been touting Web 2.0 for the past 3-4 years. Wikipedia has this to say of Web 2.0: “The term “Web 2.0” describes the changing trends in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aim to enhance creativity, communications, secure information sharing, collaboration and functionality of the web”. One can make the argument that a similar term can be applied while talking about the changing trends in enterprise software. Some of the key new factors shaping the behavior of enterprise software are:

* Global Scope: Enterprises span national boundaries and are becoming more global in scope. This is introducing concepts of globalization and localization to enterprise application architectures.

* Communication and Connectedness: Applications can no longer operate in “Silos”. Better communication between applications is needed to handle the desire of business users to have more powerful tools that enable quick and effective decision making. Applications need to communicate with one another in a way that goes well beyond the concepts of Enterprise Application Integration (EAI). True applications integration can only be achieved on the basis of new modular and services based architecture.

* Better Trading Partner Collaboration: There is tremendous need for better communication across enterprise boundaries: vendors and customers. The “Wal-Marts” of the world have redefined the definitions of collaboration across their supply chains.

The above mentioned trends are forcing enterprise applications to be more flexible, scalable and part of a collaborative application framework. We could apply the term “Enterprise 2.0” to describe the next generation of enterprise applications.