Comments on: Why Enterprise 2.0 Will Fail

By: Richard Veryard

Richard Veryard — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 11:28:46 +0000

I agree that shifting away from firewall-based security is a significant strategic move for an organization, not just infrastructure but also political. There are some political issues that would have to be tackled, if the organization is to achieve any potential benefits from Enterprise 2.0.

But the shift away from firewall (sometimes called Deperimeterization) doesn’t necessarily entail the second shift Dean mentions, from a ‘network of networks’ paradigm to a ‘unified network’ approach, and I am not advocating this. There will perhaps always be limits to interoperability, and there will always be some structure to the network of networks, but this structure will be more open and innovative, and not driven primarily by an obsolete security architecture.

By: Dean

Dean — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:51:46 +0000

Hey Richard,

It’s true that many forward-thinking organizations are becoming more transparent, and the borders between them are becoming less distinct. Still, eliminating the firewall altogether would require a lot of infrastructure changes. For one thing, until IPv6 is implemented worldwide, there simply aren’t enough IP addresses for everyone. Network address translation (NAT) makes the computers inside the corporate network opaque to outsiders.

An even bigger challenge is the political one. Changing the Internet from a “network of networks” paradigm to a “unified network” approach would require far more coordination than most companies — and countries — would be willing to undertake.

But I agree that the presence of company firewalls in the first place is an unspoken assumption of mine. Maybe it should be item #3 in my Enterprise 2.0 distortion field?

By: Richard Veryard

Richard Veryard — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 13:03:08 +0000

I think the main problem with the case for “E2.0 inside the firewall” is the word “firewall”, which represents an outdated but still common attitude towards maintaining organizational boundaries. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if an organization that relies on firewalls struggles to get the benefits from open distributed business and technology, including Enterprise 2.0.

By: vanderwal

vanderwal — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:04:37 +0000

I largely agree, but there is another reason why E2.0 is being brought in, which is many mid to larger firms moved to enterprise portals (enterprise CMS) to provide consistency, ease of management of information, and one stop interface to get to internal resources. The downside is so few people are trained well enough in these large systems very little information and resources make it into the services and tools. It has inhibited people from adding and modifying information as needed and there is no collective intelligence available.

There is a balance of personal employee value and system organization focus needed with these tools and services. Sadly, much of the selling of the product is to people who only see the systems organization benefits, without any grasp that the tools will have limited adoption, long term engagement by employees, and therefore limited value to the organization if the employee value focus is not perceived. The employee value is much harder and complicated to grasp and the tools have to do a much better job at embracing how humans are social (their needs, fears, concerns, and various understandings of these dynamics as 1-to-1 social, small group, large group, and whole organization social interaction needs from the perspective of the person sharing information).

By: You get what (someone else) paid for | Infovark

You get what (someone else) paid for | Infovark — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:15:05 +0000

[...] post about the impending failure of Enterprise 2.0 got me thinking a lot about the strange nature of selling enterprise software, and of selling [...]