Enterprise 2.0 inside the firewall?

@infovark 's Dean blogs why he thinks Enterprise 2.0 will fail, and claims that the case for E2.0 inside the firewall is considerably more difficult.

I think the main problem with the case for “E2.0 inside the firewall” is the word “firewall”, which represents an outdated but still common attitude towards maintaining organizational boundaries.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.

Dean replies

"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. ... 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."

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.

Holistic Industry Analysis

James McGovern ( @mcgoverntheory ) claims that Burton Group is one step ahead of Gartner by focusing on interoperability between products over just vendor characteristics.

I don't wish to comment on his assessment of these two firms. (Although it might be amusing to place these firms into a magic quadrant, it wouldn't mean much.)

However, what I strongly endorse is his statement that focusing on the interoperability between products is at least one step beyond focusing on vendor characteristics, and much more relevant to the concerns of those purchasing, deploying and using the products.

Industry analysts need to provide a joined-up (dare I say "holistic") account of emerging software technology and its relationship to the customer experience. In order to do this, we need to recognize three critical points of asymmetry.

1. The product is not the technology.
2. The solution is not the business.
3. The customer experience is not the customer demand.

Feature Interaction at Google

Google owns Blogger and Feedburner. So when I added a Blogger-related Feedflare to a Feedburner Feed of a Blogger blog (why did I think this was a good idea? don't ask!), I hoped this would be pretty painless.

Unfortunately not.

Feedburner gave me an error:

The URL you entered does not appear to be a valid feed ...

And when I went to look at my feed to check the problem, I got an error from Google

We're sorry ... but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can't process your request right now.

Sigh. It looks as if this combination of features is triggering some auto-immune response. Is my blog going to come out in spots, or be laid up for a few days? I hope not, but you never know.

Of course this kind of thing is depressingly common. We can never assume that two lumps of software or service will interoperate cleanly, just because they are owned and operated by the same software company. At least some software companies (including Google) do make an effort to integrate and rationalize after acquisition; some don't even try.

From Oracle to SOA Governance

Consolidation: Oracle acquires Siebel

Oracle's acquisition of Siebel (together with its previous acquisition of PeopleSoft) is attracting a great deal of interest. Some stakeholders and observers have made interesting comparisons. 

 

§	Oracle is the new Computer Associates	Marc Benioff (SalesForce.com)
§	Oracle is the new Microsoft	Dana Blankenhorn (ZDNet), Paul Roberts (eWeek)

 

Both of these statements need to be taken sceptically in my view; each large IT company has its own style of acquisition, its own style of managing (and possibly integrating) its expanding product portfolio. 

Nicholas (Does IT Matter?) Carr comments on the duality of this event: consolidation and disruption. At one level, enteprise software becoming a mature commodity ripe for consolidation; at a higher level enterprise solutions becoming decomposed and recomposed according to SOA principles. See also commentary by Dan Farber (ZDnet). 

 

Disruption: Salesforce

If there is to be disruption, the business model being promoted by SalesForce.com seems like a good candidate. A number of commentators (see above) have been convinced by Marc Benioff's bullish statements at DreamForce (the SalesForce.com conference). However E. Schwartz (InfoWorld TechWatch) posts a sceptical note. The key question here is whether large corporate users will be willing to rely upon a smaller service provider, and how long can SalesForce.com remain independent. (Many commentators have been unable to resist speculating about a possible future acquisition of SalesForce.com; and it is always fun to imagine various win-win permutations.)

 

Asymmetric Rationalization

Industry consolidation involves a form of supply-side rationalization: rationalization of the vendor by the vendor for the vendor. Of course, acquisition is only the first step of this process. There are various possible outcomes in terms of the consolidation of sales and marketing, the consolidation of brands, the consolidation of underlying technologies, components and platforms. Large software companies are generally trying to get a good balance between extracting maximum revenue from cash-cow software products and/or services, and developing new markets for new products/services. 

Meanwhile, large corporate users are also under pressure to rationalize their IT provision - to achieve maximum economies and value-for-money while continuing to support the complex and changing IT requirements of the business. 

The relationship between these two rationalization processes is a complex one. While there are some obvious conflicts of interest, there are also many opportunities for collaboration: between vendors, between users, as well as across the vendor-user divide. OpenSource and ApplicationExchange (which Nicholas Carr sees as a reincarnation of IBM SHARE) can both be regarded as forms of sociotechnical collaboration. 

 

SOA Governance

Which somehow brings us to Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA).

James Governor (Redmonk) suggests that the Oracle consolidation provides a trigger for user organizations to sort out IT governance - as a defence against the growing monopoly power of Oracle. Perhaps now is the time to sort out your relationships across the IT vendorspace, sort out your platform and procurement strategy. This is the user side of vendor rationalization. 

Radovan Janecek (Systinet) (SOAG Starting Point, Ultimate Vision of SOA) explains why this is an SOA governance issue and not just an IT governance issue. The bones of his argument are like this: business goals ... IT services ... reuse ... trust ... contract ... control ... metadata. And for Joe McKendrick (ZDNet), SOA provides a vision of independence from any single vendor. 

At one level, standardization on a product or platform ties you to a specific vendor or vendor community. Software monoculture carries significant risk - both because it increases the likely impact of any security breaches, and because it may foreclose some forms of innovation. However, if you can standardize the interfaces at the right level, you may be able to combine software economies with requisite variety and software biodiversity. Doing this properly is a complex architectural trick, but if it is achieved it provides a great argument for SOA. 

The big picture is broader than a single organization. While large organizations will need internal SOA governance, they will also increasingly need to participate in external SOA-based collaborations. There are two kinds of interoperability involved - endo-interoperability (within a single enterprise) and exo-interoperability - and therefore at least two kinds of SOA governance. 

For more on SOA Governance, please look at my article on Metropolis and SOA Governance. written with Philip Boxer and published in the Microsoft Architecture Journal. We are currently working on a sequel, in which we will illustrate the concepts of endo-interoperability and exo-interoperability, and explore their implications for structure, process and organization. Any discussion would be most welcome.