Enterprise awareness networks

Jon UdellMicrosoft

Nov 2, 2007

What is this a picture of?

Premises

1. Enterprises are exploiting service-oriented architecture

Premises

1. Enterprises are exploiting service-oriented architecture

2. But are not yet exploiting syndication-oriented architecture

Syndication-oriented?

Examples of syndication

• Combined GRL2020 feed• Phil’s birthday on Facebook• Jon’s keystroke and mouse feed

Global Research Library 2020

Mashing up GRL2020 feeds

Reading the combined feed

Phil’s birthday on Facebook

Jon’s keystroke and mouse feed

Services plus syndication

• Service composition for business processes• People are the exception handlers! • Syndication connects people and processes

Lessons from the blogosophere

• Contributions along a continuum of effort– Blog posting: heavyweight– Twitter “tweet”: lighter– Social bookmark: almost effortless

Lessons from the blogosphere

• All contributions can be:– Syndicated– Filtered– Resyndicated

Lessons from Facebook

• No effort required to make you aware:– That my birthday is upcoming– That I have begun using a new application

• Delivers the effects of syndication while hiding the mechanics

Manufactured serendipity

• Too important to leave to chance!• “It’s snowing in Boston”• Unlikely connections become less unlikely

Enablers of enterprise awareness networks

• XML

• RSS (and friends)

Thanks to XML…

• Interprocess and interpersonal communication can share common workflow packets

• Those packets can mix schematized and ad-hoc XML

• Example: Word and Excel can preserve the full fidelity of a machine-to-machine message, while enabling people to annotate it.

Thanks to RSS…

• Interprocess and interpersonal messages can participate equally in lightweight syndication

• Which can be enhanced by enterprise-grade infrastructure

• Example: The Internet Service Bus enables federation of RSS feeds across enterprises, with strong guarantees of privacy, reliability, auditing.

WS-Heavy? WS-Light? WS-JustRight!