Octopz demonstrated a slightly different spin on document collaboration. Rather than edit files directly, its offering enables users to mark them up using separate metadata that can travel along with voice, video and IM sessions. Because it has only to read files, not write to them, Octopz can support more than 100 different types, including CAD and video formats in addition to standard Office documents.
BLOGS AND WIKIS
Blogs have quickly overtaken Usenet and public e-mail lists as the preferred venue for Internet discussion, while their participatory features help them rival the Web sites of offline media. However, blogs haven't taken off within the enterprise—most employees have neither the time nor the inclination to write blog entries.
For internal use, most enterprises will find the collaborative authoring, organization and versioning capabilities of wikis more useful than the personal publishing of blogs, so the space has attracted a large number of vendors. Atlassian Software Systems, Socialtext, CustomerVision, Near-Time and Mindquarry all showed off enterprise wiki systems, with most also offering blogs or similar capabilities. Mindquarry in particular aims to make blogs more accessible by fusing them with e-mail and IM, which can be used to read and write comments.
TAGGING AND SOCIAL BOOKMARKING
Enterprise search is a hard nut to crack, in part because few hyperlinks show relationships among documents. Several vendors see social bookmarking as the solution: As employees tag documents or share bookmarks, a map of documents' relevance to particular subjects can be built up. If the people who authored documents or applied tags are also tracked, the system can keep tabs on employee expertise, sorting into groups those who know a lot about a particular topic.
The problem, of course, is motivating employees to tag documents.
Connectbeam is a pioneer in this space, with a system that works with several popular enterprise search engines, including those from Google, IBM and Yahoo. BEA also sees potential, using the show to demonstrate its Pathways product, due to launch next month.
WEB 2.0 APPLIANCES
In the true mashup spirit, some vendors are offering all-in-one suites that combine several features. Blogtronix has gone further, packaging a combination of blog, wiki and social bookmarking software that can be purchased as a hardware appliance, in addition to software and hosted service options. Encouraged by a Gartner report that said 61 percent of enterprises would rather buy Enterprise 2.0 technologies as a single suite from a well-known vendor, Intel Corp. has launched Suite Two. Essentially a bundle of software from six other vendors (Six Apart, Socialtext, NewsGator, SimpleFeed, SpikeSource and Visible Path Corp.), Suite Two is available with or without an Intel server to run it on.
Subsea cable alternatives can provide a level of comfort for those concerned about disruptions. Realistically, they will continue to play a small, but critical role in the short term.
Maintaining existing network infrastructures often incurs huge technical debt before newer technologies are adopted over time.
Amid ongoing regional uncertainties, telecom infrastructure in the Middle East has expand to include terrestrial low-latency network infrastructure, which offers resilience and agility in navigating political complexities without relying solely on undersea networks.
