Enter Unified Communications

A colleague of mine commented on an internal blog I wrote on the same topic of Web 2.0 in the Enterprise. I thought his comments were very insightful and reflected some of what we've talked about in this blog. He said:

"Web 2.0 is about Collaboration. The early phases of Web 2.0 were text driven. However, Collaboration is more powerful when you can add richer elements like voice and video. Web 2.0 in the Enterprise should equal Unified Communications."

Enterprise Web 2.0 Lesson #2: In order to realize the full benefits of Web 2.o in the corporate world you need to look beyond blogs and wiki's. Instead, you need to focus on building your strategy around the set of principles and concepts that Web 2.0 represents.

In fact, Unified Communications (UC) shares a number of core principles with Web 2.0, as illustrated by the "meme map" that was developed at a brainstorming session during FOO Camp in 2005 (a conference at O'Reilly Media). If I were to redraw the meme map for UC it may look something like the following - note that the principles and concepts are the same, UC just puts them in a different context.

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To dive a little deeper, here are four examples of Web2.0 principles that are core to Unified Communications:

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As you can see, many of the concepts and principles that have helped define Web 2.0 in social-context are applicable to Web 2.0 and UC in the enterprise-context. Next week we'll explore some scenarios that illustrate how UC can leverage core Web 2.0 principles to enhance collaboration and drive value.