A new world is emerging. It is a world where software is delivered as a service, where browser-based systems replace fat client architectures, and where new business models begin to reshape the sourcing of enterprise IT. Winners in this world will live on the Web, not hide behind the firewall in the corporate cave. The most valued individuals will be those who have the ability to assess when a service is appropriate for a particular under- or over-served segment, as well as the ability to pull together the right combination of services to meet business needs. On this Study Tour, we will examine the changing Web landscape, looking at how new technology environments such as AJAX, coupled with new business models that are often based upon the $600 billion global advertising market, are accelerating change in the use of enterprise IT. This funding source has created companies with capital investment budgets that dwarf even those of the largest enterprises. With its strong emphasis on user participation,Web 2.0 is giving both employees and customers the power to become increasingly self-sufficient, innovative and collaborative. Where will you fit in this new world? Will you become a savvy consumer and broker of services, or will you be an old line supplier, watching as your share of enterprise IT erodes? Business and IT are
co-evolving, putting evolutionary pressure on each other. Are you ready to evolve your enterprise IT? Come learn how Web 2.0 differs from the first generation of the Internet and what these differences mean for enterprise agility, innovation, and the careers of IT directors. The future, for all of us, is living
on the Web. A key question is when specific services will be appropriate to meet specific segments in large enterprises. The rate of improvement of Web 2.0 services has been dramatic, and assessments made just last year are likely to be out of date. You need to know where the new suppliers stand and what they want from you in return. We will examine these issues through discussions with the companies listed in this agenda, and with the experts who will accompany us throughout the Study Tour. Additionally, delegates will learn from the questions and experiences of fellow delegates who are also interested in Web 2.0, and particularly in its influence on the enterprise. Everybody will have the opportunity to develop a point of view. Attendees will be in a position, when they return home, to present a report to their boards. This year’s tour will take place in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, from 15-20 October 2006. Please contact Jane Kingston at jkingsto@csc.com, or complete and return the registration form, if you are
interested in joining us. Saturday,
14 October 2006 Sunday,
15 October 2006 Tour of San Francisco Join us for a tour of some of the fascinating sights of San Francisco. This will be followed in the evening, back at the hotel, with a presentation by Jim Ginsburgh, VP of Enterprise Architecture at BP, who will share with us BP’s experiences of ‘living on the Web’ and describe developments since last year’s presentation on deploying consumerized technology within BP. Following Jim’s talk there will be a drinks reception and informal buffet dinner – your chance to talk to other delegates and exchange views on Web 2.0. Monday,
16 October 2006 Leading Edge Forum’s View on Web 2.0 We will start the week with an introduction to tour attendees, together with a briefing on the week ahead and the companies we are visiting. Following this, Douglas Neal, Research Fellow, Leading Edge Forum, will present his findings from our research on Web 2.0. Amazon While it is well known that Amazon allows partners to embed Amazon’s sales capabilities in their sites, it is less well known that Amazon has replaced its early monolithic system with a true Service Oriented Architecture platform called Amazon Web Services. Now Amazon is making some of its internal services available on the web, on a fee-for-service basis. Instead of building your own disk farm, you can host a new application on the same scale infrastructure that Amazon has, paying only for what you use. Take a look at Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3 at www.amazon.com/s3). Many of our sponsors are looking to make a move in the direction of SOA. Our visit from Amazon will let us hear from a firm that has done it - and done it at scale. Six Apart Six Apart is the world leader in blogging software and services, enhancing the way millions of individuals, organizations and corporations connect and communicate across the world every day. Founded in 2002 by husband and wife team Ben Trott and Mena G Trott, Six Apart has grown into a global company with its headquarters in San Francisco, offices in Europe and Japan, and more than 10 million customers. The company continues to lead in the blogging and social media industry with the Movable Type publishing platform, the TypePad hosted blogging service, and LiveJournal, an online community organized around personal journals. In June 2006, Six Apart introduced a preview version of Vox, a hosted personal blogging service that will be publicly available in late 2006. Tuesday,
17 October 2006 Clarus Systems Like any other complex system, an enterprise-wide IP-telephony system is difficult to test. You might be able to do it by getting a volunteer army of employees to make phone calls all at the same time, but using Clarus Systems test tools will prove both easier and less expensive. This is an aspect of IP telephony which is often overlooked. Brendan Reidy, CEO of Clarus, is no stranger to CSC Study Tours having led a memorable discussion of US West’s Customer Relationship Management implementation some years ago. This session is an opportunity, not just to hear about Clarus Systems, but to explore Brendan’s independent view of where IP Telephony is going, and how seriously we should be considering its deployment. Adobe Everyone with an Internet presence now knows that they need to make it a rich experience. However, AJAX is not the only choice. For example, with Flex 2.0 and Adobe Flash® Player 8.5, Adobe provides the leading application development solution for delivering rich Internet applications that help organizations engage users more effectively, increase productivity, and deliver better business results. Microsoft Last autumn, Bill Gates and Ray Ozzi issued a clarion call to Microsoft, warning that “complexity kills” and that the future was moving to the Web. Since then, Microsoft has been working hard to create a Web presence with services like Windows Live and OneCare. Having years ago originally developed what has since become AJAX, Microsoft is now looking to reclaim its position with new browser capabilities, such as its new email client that spell-checks as you type in the browser. There are questions to ask about how serious Microsoft is about the Web, how capable its new development tools (such as Atlas) are, and how all of this will play with the roll out of Office 2007 and Vista. Wednesday,
18 October 2006 FeedBurner FeedBurner is a venture-funded emerging technology company headquartered in Chicago, with a branch office in San Francisco. The company’s feed and advertising platform addresses the problems of monitoring, managing and monetizing Web content from both personal sources, such as blogs, and large scale commercial publishers, such as Reuters. Subscribing to feeds makes it possible to review a large amount of online content in a very short time. Feeds permit instant distribution of content and the ability to make it ‘subscribable’. FeedBurner supports more than 17 million subscribers in 190 countries
on behalf of 200,000 publishers. 3tera 3tera is developing a grid operating system, AppLogic, which allows the integration of large numbers of commodity servers into an easily-managed grid which can be utilized by existing applications without modification. The grid provides redundancy and scalability as well as economical performance. Omnidrive With Australian roots, Omnidrive is leading the Web 2.0 storage revolution. Omnidrive enables you to easily access, share and publish your content and files from any PC, Mac, mobile device or Web browser. Omnidrive provides a scalable and custom storage platform. Its partners can build value-added services on top of it, or integrate other applications with it. Omnidrive currently has over 50,000 users and hundreds of partners. Its headquarters are in Silicon Valley, and development offices in both Australia and India. ThinkFree ThinkFree is the leading developer of online and cross-platform office productivity solutions. ThinkFree Online, Server, Desktop, and Portable Editions include word processing, spreadsheet and presentation applications – seamlessly compatible with Microsoft® Office. Platform-independent and Web-enabled ThinkFree offers a way for document production anytime, anywhere. Workshop At this point in the tour, we will take the opportunity to spend some time discussing what we have heard from participants so far, and what we feel the implications are for us. Time to relax, reflect and recuperate Drinks Reception and Dinner Thursday,
19 October 2006 Salesforce.com Salesforce.com is a leading provider of software as a service, and faces relentless pressure from its customers to improve on a daily basis, not as an annual event. In addition to providing a stream of new capabilities and making it possible for end users to configure the system in ways that work best for them, salesforce.com has developed a platform called the AppExchange, on which extensions to its base product can be developed. These extensions are hosted on the salesforce.com site and may be either given away or sold for a fee, as the developer chooses. In all cases the extensions may be quickly tested online and if found valuable, immediately deployed. A key issue is the extent of acceptance of AppExchange as a platform. Google Google continues to set the pace for combining advertising revenue with many innovative services. Currently, it has one percent of the global advertising budget. Google makes it extremely easy for others to leverage its services either as end users or as part of other systems, such as the Prudential Real Estate mashup. Most of its capabilities are available, for use on demand, without prior negotiation. For example, you can make free use of the Google Maps API but if you expect to use more than 500,000 page views a day, Google would like to know about it so that it can provision more hardware. A key challenge for us will be to understand when segments within our enterprises should make use of Google tools, such as the new spreadsheet capability. Friday,
20 October 2006 Cisco Systems When you purchase something from Cisco, the whole order, fulfillment, installation and service may well be done by people who are not Cisco employees. Cisco has learned to work well with partners to provide a supply chain that feels seamless to the customer. Additionally, it has made extensive use of Web services internally, especially as it has consolidated systems after the dot.com boom which left it with many versions of basically the same system. Key to this was the development of shared vocabularies across the systems and business units. It is not just technology that makes Cisco interesting, but also its renewed market focus on consumers. Linksys taught it important lessons about speed to market. Cisco’s recent purchase of set-top box maker Scientific Atlanta will extend its reach into the home. Workshop The tour will conclude with an intensive discussion among the delegates of what they have learned and what actions they might take. Delegates on previous Study Tours have reported that such workshops are extremely useful to put the whole week into context, and highlight issues that still need research. Transportation to San Francisco Airport will be provided for delegates flying out on Friday evening. Arrival time at the airport will be approximately 3.00pm. |
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