I had an interesting conversation with a friend who works over at Sun Microsystems regarding the next area of growth for software start-up’s. He feels that the explosion we’ve seen in consumer software, fondly known as web 2.0. has vastly applicability to the dormant enterprise market.
ERP has become very boring, the modules, like Finance, HR, Manufacturing are done and dusted.
What we’ll see is more social networking within companies. Allowing your employees to know and interact with their colleagues beyond the annual Holiday party. Companies like smallworldlabs have a great product in the market.
We’ll see more collobaration with products like Yammer that is a twitter clone for companies. Allowing colleagues to know what you’re working on. Wouldn’t that be nice…
Confluence a wiki allowing document collobaration.
I think he’s right enterprises need to leverage ideas and technology developed on the consumer side not just because their competitors will, nor because it’ll improve their efficiency, but because their employees will demand it. The same employees are consumers and are familar with the benefits they can accure.
