The web as a platform
Friday, December 19th, 2008
There are several aspects which characterize web 2.0, such as the importance of information, the simplicity and the methods with which information is accessed, the centrality of users and the value given to collective intelligence, but also the fact that the web has become a platform.
Users can work on many of their favourite applications directly from their browser and, as O’Reilly says, “Web 2.0 is the shift towards the network as a platform”.
This has several very important implications.
First, we have the possibility to considerably reduce infrastructure costs, as the applications are executed on an external server (SaaS: Software as a Service) and communicate with the client only the information connected to the graphic interface and the operations to perform.
It is thus no more necessary to install the software on every single client, or to worry about carrying out problematic updates (Perpetual Beta).
But we can also “build” applications which include components from different sources, “mixing” in one only environment (or solution) technologies that are different but able to interact.
This phenomenon of integration and interoperability between different components is called “mash-up”.
At this point, after introducing the concepts of “Software as a Service” and “Mash-Up”, we just have to introduce another very important aspect of the technologies which lie behind Web 2.0 considered as a platform: SOA, that is, Service Oriented Architectures.
Service Oriented Architectures make it possible to design applications that can be used by other applications, in order to carry out Mash-Up, interoperability and exchange of information between different application approaches.
This technological bent has given the applications that are typical of Web 2.0 a great flexibility and capability to adapt to market changes: the same flexibility that Enterprise 2.0 applications are today giving to enterprises.
For enterprises, this flexibility and capability to react result in a better management of their internal resources (cost reduction and value given to know-how) and in a higher competitive advantage (services which respond better and more quickly to their customers’ or partners’ requests).
