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Can Web 2.0 Evolve Into an Enterprise Technology?: Page 3 of 11

"It means a Google map can show up on a Deki page, and we're building an uber-search," he says. "In my ideal setup, Deki would be a front-end to Alfresco." The API also lets the wiki use the bank's existing security architecture to limit user access to specific pages, important for preserving the Chinese wall between analysis and sales.

According to Hathaway, the wiki is now providing a real ROI.

"It helps people find their way around the organization, and protects the organization against any one person leaving." Of course, what protects the organization can be seen as threatening to the individual, so internal marketing is important.

"Investment banking is a world where you go out and you eat what you kill, but we are trying to get away from that. I pitched it as a way to get people to track their own information," he says. "People are much more likely to hit an edit button than create an article."

A wiki is more user-friendly than a full CMS, but on its own it can't yet provide some CMS functionality, like working with documents and files. This has led several wikis to add extension capabilities, such as Deki Wiki's API. TWiki also has a plug-in system that lets programmers extend it without editing source code; more than 200 modules are already available to cover applications such as calendaring and automated editing. The most ambitious is IBM's QEDWiki, which aims to be a platform for user-created mashups and other simple applications, rather than just content. The mashup aspect empowers users even more than the "edit" button and also helps integrate the wiki with IBM's other applications.