IBM’s presentation was cleverly titled 2mor0@Wrk - Tomororow work and Web 2.0.

Overview

Web 2.0 is delivering a whole different paradigm of communication. The slide is Lotus Symphony - NOT PPT. Over 2 million downloads.

There is an information overload that impacts individual productivity in the workplace. It has a profound effect on organizational productivity. A more complex organization entity provides more pressure and more inefficiencies in workplace. Up to 70% of time can be used looking for the WRONG information.

Collaboration mitigates information overload. It allows you to identify experts and opinions.

The collaboration agenda. Enterprises are at the onset of exploring these features. Web 2.0 is giving us the capacity to do more. Collaboration optimizes business outcomes - global, secure and dynamic.The most progressive companies are looking at UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS. Making sure that directories and profiles are fully mobile.

Collaboration should be a contextual part of the workflow, going directly into applications.

IBM’s collaboration strategy is to deliver these services through online or offline services.

Demonstration

Executive IT architect Ron Sebastian provided a demonstration of IBM’s collaboration strategy. IBM’s Web 2.0 solutions span delivery platforms:

• Platform - web as  platform
• Application - development
• People - social computing

Lotus Connections - a family of social computing software that provides profile lookup and community capabilities. Think of Facebook, Yahoo Groups, and delicious combined in one portal.

Ron demonstrated these social services embedded into a healthcare provider application. Semantic tagging is available, contact information and commenting. Not only are we providing service to customers, you can integrate sync capability to directly call the person you want.

The biggest aspect of Lotus Connection? It’s all integrated.

A new service - Project Bluehouse. This is a SaaS delivery of these collaborated capabilities. The store and share can manage and share documents within and outside the company. Access control is no longer an issue.

Collaborative Web 2.0 services available as standalone products that also work in a mobile environment.

Case Study: Natural Disaster Management Mashup

Boeing came up with twenty different scenarios that they could handle through their systems. The problem was the one they didn’t count on. One example was Katrina - how to deliver supplies to the area: what airports were open? Where could they land? The problem was they could not find one list of public, private and military airports, nor what was open. The mashup took different feeds to allow the deacon maker to make a more rapid and intelligent decision based on information on where they could fly in the appropriate supplies. From open information sites like AirNav.com and personal contacts, users were able to mashup the information to make better decisions.

Conclusion

IBM announced the IBM Center for Social Software, proving their commitment to connect, collaborate, and innovate. Users and academics can work together to how these innovations can be applied to businesses and provide value to the market.

There has been some question of whether or not IBM can pull this off and move into the collaborative Web 2.0 market. Despite some criticism, it looks like IBM has really taken a step forward in advancing their products and services to meet market needs.

People drive better business outcomes. Connecting, collaboration, and innovation is key. Having the right tools and information to do that eases pressure that many organizations feel and brings Web 2.0 technologies to the heart of businesses.

A couple of weeks ago Parag Khanna had an article in the NY Sunday Times Magazine called "Waving Goodbye to Hegemony". I thought this was one of the most important and enlightening articles I have read in years.  For me it crystallized up my own thoughts about what is going on in the crazy world we all live in. The gist of the article is that over the first decade of the 21st century we have seen a fundamental shift in the distribution of power in the world.  While we were busy fighting a crusade, the so called peace dividend of the post-cold war "new world order" never materialized and the unipolar American hegemony that was going to bring peace, prosperity and democracy to the world never materialized.  Instead we find ourselves increasingly in a multi-polar world with two budding new superpowers (could Europe and China really be new?) - the European Union and China, competing very successfully, filling the vacuum we have left in many parts of the world.  There has been no lessening of violence or new golden age of mankind. Instead it seems like more of the same old, with the peoples of the world vying for more and more scarce resources.  The only thing for sure is certainly we are all interconnected economically more than ever.  This presents its own unique challenges and strategies. Who knows how the rest of this century will play out and whether or not it will be another "American Century" or not.  My blog is also not the right forum to explore my feelings on this topic either.

However, while reading an article in InfoWorld by Galen Gruman today on whether it is "Time to dump Windows", I was struck by the parallels (no pun intended with the Mac VM program which enables so much Mac adoption) between Microsoft and the US.  Like the US, about 10 or 15 years ago Microsoft was officially declared a monopoly.  It was the one true superpower of IT. Yeah, Larry Ellison and Scott McNealy could tweak Bill's nose and drive fast cars, boats and planes, but lets face it they were midgets compared to the Redmond giants.  Microsoft rolled over competition like Lotus, Wordperfect and Netscape the way we did Mexico in the US-Mexican war. They even invested in Apple to prop them up as a potential rival like the US did in setting up banana republics. By the late 90's did anyone in the mainstream dare to speak out in public about Microsoft being potentially vulnerable and competing with them? Quite the contrary, companies who found out that Microsoft was entering their space would roll over and die.  I didn't think I would live to see in my lifetime so much talk of Microsoft being a dinosaur and not able to compete.

But as I wrote about last week, it seems articles like Grumans are the topic du jour. It is quite fashionable to say that Microsoft's time as the undisputed alpha dog may be drawing to a close.  They are under attack via the SaaS/Web 2.0 space from Google (and who knows what a Google dominated world looks like, it could be the frying pan to the fryer), their OS monopoly is being eroded like a bite out of the apple everday by shiny silver laptops and sleek wide screen monitors.  On the server front, Linux continues to capture share. The specter of thin clients running some java based non-windows OS still hangs out there.  The list goes on and on.

So is it the sunset of the American dynasty and Microsofts?  I think not.  As I wrote earlier, rumors of their demise are pre-mature. Yes, all things change and one company or country (or political party or sports team for that matter) cannot dominate forever.  But just because viable competitors come to the fore, does not mean that great companies or countries shrivel up and die.  In fact good competition can drive these old dogs to learn new tricks and become greater than ever.  I for one would not vote against either Microsoft or the US in the coming years continuing their pre-eminent positions in the world.