Comments on: Musing about enterprise information and flow

By: Vishal

Vishal — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 07:07:34 +0000

Hey JP .. Just discovered your blog. I agree with most of the stuff you have written .. in the end you have written about firewalls, security and confidentiality in such a two-way world.

My view in that is that information security which has till now been focussed on protecting the “perimeter” will become more and more information centric i.e. security is not because information is lying in a particular folder or is being transmitted over a particular network. The security will have to be within the information itself irrespective of location. This means that though information is distributed all over the place .. its control can still be centralized to the “person” or the enterprise. An IIT Bombay incubator company is working on exactly such a technology for web 2.0 .. check them out at http://www.seclore.com

By: Gregory Y

Gregory Y — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 22:39:22 +0000

This is fascinating staff, but I straggle with “how to” aspects of converting unstructured “conversations” into normalized data required to support enterprise business processes. This is one of the loftiest challenges I have encountered in my efforts implementing CRM systems. I agree completely that knowledge workers spent most of their productive time in conversations, but the content is very hard to make useful to their colleagues outside of the context of that specific conversation. Since my background is not technology, but economics and operations research, I was looking at the direction of more “organic”, value driven applications design, where certain people are made responsible (and offered incentives) for distilling specific clusters of information from the conversations they are part of, and enter it into an application. Are we looking at the technology becoming capable of such transformation?

By: Viki

Viki — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 04:19:49 +0000

The thing that strikes me most JP is really in your concluding paragraph ….”the concept alsho shifts and starts becoming personal”. No Shit ! I have multiple conversations with colleagues on internal chat windoes during the day, and many a time, becauseof the open plan favoured architecture these days, there are things I rather not talk over the phone but type away in a chat window….some of them business related and some not. Whilst all our phones on the trading flor are logged as are the various communication channels and cell phones are banned , for reasons obvious, but to have chat channels enterprise wide be ‘visible’ is pushing the envelope on personal & privacy. This will bring us back to being molluscs rather than pearls …social objects no more …conversations will become guarded, will break into coded references, will kill the social framework. Guess what…may even kill productivity. Now, I shall seek more often that chat by the water cooler or take a smoke break more frequently…dunno mate….really dnt know where we headed with this

By: peter

peter — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 21:06:10 +0000

Also, does everyone really want to participate in the extended enterprise?
(I also see some administrative fun to be had with tax returns when I participate in 10 of these, get paid – in some form that might not exist yet – by half of them and my three other clients :)

By: peter

peter — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 20:57:56 +0000

The question for me is whether enterprises actually _do_ want to change? I think most of them choose to resist instead. Just think about your pricing, your key people, whatever you don’t want everyone to know.
Sure, things tend to get out sometimes, but there is good money to be made of information asymmetries.

By: A Web That Works » Blog Archive » Snapshots

A Web That Works » Blog Archive » Snapshots — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 11:46:06 +0000

[...] http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2008/02/18/musing-about-enterprise-information-and-flow/. [...]

By: Off the Shelf Integration in Enterprises. « Simon McManus

Off the Shelf Integration in Enterprises. « Simon McManus — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 12:04:38 +0000

[...] This from PSD and this from JP. [...]

By: Balaji Sowmyanarayanan

Balaji Sowmyanarayanan — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 11:58:37 +0000

When Man was able to control Fire( liquidity?) food habits changed dramatically. Result: Food available ‘On Demand’.
More recently, when the power of water became controllable, textile mills and clothing got ’solved’ leading to the industrial age. Result clothing available ‘On Demand’.

Liquidity of Energy(carbon fuel based or electromagnetic) was central to the Industrial Era. Which incidentally ’solved’ the shelter. Result: Space customization ‘On Demand’.
What was previously available only for special citizens viz., Kings and the likes was democratized and made possible for more common folks.

What basic need will liquidity of Information ’solve’? Is it Attention?
To Know and Be Known On Demand

Will the Information age make it possible to ‘Know’ anyone/everyone ‘On Demand’? [Yeah, I know Wikipedia is already there to some extent. Future is already there - only unevenly distributed!]

In that case, Search and Syndication are more basic than the ephemeral Conversation and Fulfillment.

By: Simon Cast

Simon Cast — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 14:31:24 +0000

The paradigm of flow is interesting and one I've been thinking about for a while. One of the stumbling blocks we have to overcome is that our language is not focused on process but rather objects. There was a very interesting New Scientist article about the effect of language on framing and solving problems. Without using the right language its hard to understand and utilize flow to solve problems. I am going to watch with interest to see how the language of fluid dynamics filters into the broader conversation over the next few years.

By: thingamy

thingamy — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 11:04:17 +0000

DID or PID…

Business is social – gather a group of good people for a purpose. Let information flow uninterrupted amongst the participants wherever and whoever they are, that is the requirement for the most efficient creation and delivery of value. Enter Social…