Dion Hincliffe is a well known blogger in the Enterprise 2.0/Web 2.0 space. He recently posted an article on his predictions for Enterprise 2.0 in 2009.
One thing that struck me as I read it is GroupSwim is completely aligned with the majority of his predictions:
- Tight budgets will drive the adoption of low-cost Web 2.0 and cloud/SaaS solutions.
No doubt about this one. The current economic climate is going to require all companies to spend more wisely. Other than “free” or consumer oriented solutions, there is no better value for money for businesses than GroupSwim. - Online community and 2.0 technologies become a priority for most organizations.
I hope he is spot-on here. This is exactly what we have built. GroupSwim Community and Community+ were created to provide online communities that leverage web 2.0 technology and techniques. - Cloud computing will remain one of the biggest new Internet developments.
GroupSwim is a great example of cloud computing. We use Amazon S3 to store documents and we will soon use EC2 to scale our computing power and enhance performance. We will be able to innovate, grow and keep our prices low by taking advantage of cloud computing. - Internal use of 2.0 will continue growth in large enterprises while the struggle continues with market-facing 2.0 products.
GroupSwim Collaboration is a product directly aimed and internal use of 2.0 technology. We hope and agree that it will continue to grow and thrive. - The economic climate will at long last drive major advances towards aligning IT with business.
Businesses can no longer afford to have IT fiefdoms. Business will continue to drive IT more aggressively and more and more components of IT will go off-site or be outsources. Managing email servers, databases, etc. are usually not the core competencies of companies, and there is no reason to keep them in-house when there are cheaper and better solutions elsewhere. We see business units coming to GroupSwim for help, because they can’t get it from IT and the plethora of solutions that aren’t integrated or easy-to-use that are forced on them.
