Web 2.0: First of all, what is it?

Menlo Park, Calif. –  IT dignitaries discussing Web 2.0 in the enterprise during a panel session Wednesday debated, for starters, what exactly Web 2.0 is and then pondered where it is headed.

Officials including Scott Dietzen, president and CTO of Zimbra and former CTO of BEA Systems, and Jeff Nolan, director of the Apollo Strategy Group at SAP Ventures, covered the topic of Web 2.0 at an IBDNetwork event.

“The hardest thing about it is actually nailing down [what Web 2.0 is],” Nolan said.

[ Talk back to us: What is Web 2.0? ]

“Web 2.0 is REST (Representational State Transfer),” featuring loosely coupled applications and the notion that applications do not have to be hard-wired together, Nolan said.

Collaboration is a big factor in Web 2.0 but not just blogs and wikis, he said. Also part of Web 2.0 is the ability to deliver ad hoc, user-generated applications but not necessarily mashups, he said. Blogs and wikis, meanwhile, could be a precursor to something more compelling, said Nolan.

But Dietzen stressed the importance of the mashup. A mashup involves quickly combining services to form new applications.

“[What] makes Web 2.0 come alive is the concept of the mashup,” with the Web being used in an authoring model instead of just a consuming model, Dietzen said.

But panelist Michael Glaser, a partner at the law firm of Perkins Coie, advised that when creating a mashup, companies should be aware of possible licensing issues.

Whereas Web 1.0 was about technologies such as HTML, HTTP, and SSL, Web 2.0 is more about technologies such as AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), XML, and SOA as well as applications such as Flash, Dietzen said.

With Web 2.0, CIOs and CTOs are wondering how they can improve their own internal-facing applications, said Todd Burke, an enterprise sales official at Adobe Systems. Dietzen stressed that boosting productivity and cutting down the time users must spend on e-mail will be part of Web 2.0.

“E-mail and calendaring are going to be killer apps for Web 2.0 technology,” Dietzen said.

E-mail can be made more compelling by merging it more onto the Web, he said. Users should not be required to leave the context of what they are doing to tend to e-mail, said Diezten.

He also advised using existing infrastructure for Web 2.0. “Your focus is what’s the application look like and how can I deliver some compelling value,” said Dietzen.

SAP’s Nolan, however, rejected the notion that Web 2.0 means replacing something that already exists.  SAP is relatively secure in the new paradigm because users have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on applications and these will not be replaced, Nolan said.

“Shouldn’t we really be thinking about the new applications that haven’t even been thought about yet rather than replacing the ones that have already been built?” Nolan asked. 

SAP is embracing the concept of componentized applications, while not necessarily thinking of Web 2.0 in this context, said Nolan.

With Web 2.0, “IT is less and less in control,” he said.

An audience member said Web 2.0 is more than just technology and stressed the service-based delivery of applications. Another audience member said Web 2.0 on a global basis includes the convergence of the mobile and PC worlds.

Issues around liability with respect to Web 2.0 were raised, such as a recent lawsuit against Google by a party objecting to its data being on Google’s servers.  The issue is “an unsettled area of law,” Glaser said. Perkins Coie represents Google.

“Most companies want to be picked up,” by Google, he said. The panel suggested that companies who do not want to be screen-scraped by Google will have to just say so.

Panelists also pondered business models for new applications, debating subscription, licensing and advertising models.

Until a year ago, there was no indication customers would support subscription models, SAP’s Nolan said. But now, a software company deploying an actual licensing model will have tough time getting funding, he said.

An audience member said Microsoft’s Office package will be hurt by Web 2.0. While a lot of customers in places such as Asia use Office without paying Microsoft anything, companies such as Zimbra will enable them to use what Microsoft Office provides but in a much more legal way, the audience member said.

Zimbra provides open source technology for messaging and collaboration.