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Enterprise 2.0 Is Growing Up

The business opportunity continues to lure major software companies, as indicated by the fact that Adobe, Avaya and Oracle set up booths for the first time at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference , now in its seventh year. They joined other big players such as IBM, Microsoft and Cisco at the Boston event this week along with venture-backed companies such as Jive Software .

While most big organizations have some Enterprise 2.0 users companies adopting such tools wholesale are still a minority, said one of the leading authorities on the trend, Andrew McAfee, principal research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The big opportunity, he said in an interview, is to standardize the technology and bake it into the enterprise.

In a keynote address at the conference, McAfee identified a potential threat to Enterprise 2.0: bosses who still subscribe to the heads-down, cubicle mentality, and the technology behind Watson, IBM’s Jeopardy-playing computer. Watson’s ability to process unrelated data will enable such executives to extract all sorts of useful information about employees working in isolation without the need for social networking.

McAfee said later that Watson technology is bound to penetrate the enterprise but hoped it wouldn’t be an either-or proposition. In his speech, he said computers are not good at answering questions such as “what do our customers want next?” and advised developers of Enterprise 2.0 technology to focus on “that series of eureka questions.”

But it’s clear that as social networking technology grows in enterprises so will the demand to analyze all the data generated, just as it has on the consumer side.

While IBM’s booth in the conference’s exhibit hall featured an opportunity for attendees to match wits with Watson on a Jeopardy board, keynoter Michael Rhodin, senior vice president of IBM’s software solutions group, emphasized the importance of infusing intelligence in the way people interact. He also drew parallels between the dot-com boom and the current social-networking craze.

The real dot-com winners were companies like Amazon.com that “fundamentally changed a business process,” Rhodin said in an interview. When he talks to venture capitalists, he said, “I’m looking for something that can transcend the current fads.”

Big vendors continue to swoop into the Enterprise 2.0 space, but there is no clear leader in the market, said Steve Wylie, general manager of the conference. Nor is there a one-size-fits-all approach to implementing the technology within the enterprise, he said.

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Join us this weekend for the 5th Annual Health and Fitness Expo. After just a few years, this event has captured the attention of tens of thousands of health conscious consumers. Spend the weekend at the Hynes Convention Center learning how you can take better care of yourself and tips on how to live a healthier life.

Have access to potentially life saving health tests and screenings and valuable medical and health information for free!  Learn how to eat better through the Healthy Cooking demonstrations, and enjoy activities such as soccer, rock climbing, and much more. There is lots to see and learn at this Boston health event. Make it a family event!

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