Thursday, May 18, 2006
Why most enterprise architects simply don't get Web 2.0!
Figured I would list some reasons as to why my peers in the industry are clueless about web 2.0...
1. Web 2.0 requires a fondness of scripting languages. Us enterprisey folks only believe in compiled languages for enterprise applications and won't consider the possibilities of scripting.
2. User behavior is emergent. This rules out our savage practice of user-centered design where we attempt to do big user design upfront.
3. Web 2.0 actually requires you to trust your users. We all know that we have to idiot-proof systems and trust no one is our mantra.
4. Web 2.0 enables democracy. For example bloggers have counted corporate cultures in determining what is news. It is diametrically opposed to our indoctrination into controlling the message.
5. We can't possibly learn anything about release management. The thought that flickr can do production releases every thirty minutes isn't of interest to us. We would rather take valuable time by coordinating heavyweight processes and create lots of lets go around the table ceremonial meetings so we can justify doing releases not every 30 minutes but every 30 days when we are feeling aggressive.
6. We don't actually understand what our intellectual property is. We may all use google and get it twisted to think theirs is all around search algorithms but will never do any homework to figure out that what really matters to them is systems administration, operations and load balancing which they have never hinted at exposing.
7. Web 2.0 is simply too cheap. How can someone build a site with high availability on $50K when we can't do it for millions. Maybe if the industry analysts that cover infrastructure started doing case studies on how these 2.0 companies operate, then we might pay attention, but otherwise we will continue spending more money than we should.
8. Analysts simply aren't covering topics on how to be lightweight in this regard. Maybe they also don't have a clue about how web 2.0 works or even what it is...
| | View blog reactions1. Web 2.0 requires a fondness of scripting languages. Us enterprisey folks only believe in compiled languages for enterprise applications and won't consider the possibilities of scripting.
2. User behavior is emergent. This rules out our savage practice of user-centered design where we attempt to do big user design upfront.
3. Web 2.0 actually requires you to trust your users. We all know that we have to idiot-proof systems and trust no one is our mantra.
4. Web 2.0 enables democracy. For example bloggers have counted corporate cultures in determining what is news. It is diametrically opposed to our indoctrination into controlling the message.
5. We can't possibly learn anything about release management. The thought that flickr can do production releases every thirty minutes isn't of interest to us. We would rather take valuable time by coordinating heavyweight processes and create lots of lets go around the table ceremonial meetings so we can justify doing releases not every 30 minutes but every 30 days when we are feeling aggressive.
6. We don't actually understand what our intellectual property is. We may all use google and get it twisted to think theirs is all around search algorithms but will never do any homework to figure out that what really matters to them is systems administration, operations and load balancing which they have never hinted at exposing.
7. Web 2.0 is simply too cheap. How can someone build a site with high availability on $50K when we can't do it for millions. Maybe if the industry analysts that cover infrastructure started doing case studies on how these 2.0 companies operate, then we might pay attention, but otherwise we will continue spending more money than we should.
8. Analysts simply aren't covering topics on how to be lightweight in this regard. Maybe they also don't have a clue about how web 2.0 works or even what it is...
