Thursday, August 14, 2008

Web 2.0 - "near its dreaded Trough of Disillusionment"

I found this article, it's implications and comments very interesting.  Good News, Bad news for Web 2.0 (Gartner's Hype Cycle). In relation to enterprise Web 2.0 I have a few points of note;

You see, I had Web 2.0 down really as primarily asynchronous communications between browser and something else ( real time events). The Web 1.0 as was, led to mostly uninteresting web pages based on the mainframe synchronous concept (fill in a form, submit and get another form (page) of results). After the mainframe came the unix/dec mid-range systems that supported asynchronous applications - Enter a field, see real-time results/validation/events - All sounds like Web 2.0 to me ;)

I love all asynchronous applications, emulation, client server or web (2.0). The concept of instant event based communications is not only great, it's for the most part, the only right way. I remember building asynchronous web applications in 1998 (using a legacy host to activex as the "broker"). It was really cool and now it's Web 2.0. What's missing now, is how to take enterprise applications to the next level with it.

 Sure with CSS/XML/DHMTL/JSCRIPT/VBSCRIPT (Ajax), you can get a web page (Web 2.0) looking good but it's a real lot of work. Did I hear someone say legacy applications were hard to support - good luck supporting web 2.0!

I can say I saw this coming - because I did - the hype description around web 2.0 is hardly surprising because it's wrapped around old thinking (The Browser legacy). New mash-up vendors are out there, competing to be the next 4GL (power builder) for the web and in my view, whomever REALLY gets that right, will have the killer Web 2.0 IDE on their hands. I can't wait, I feel someone is really really close. Will it be Adobe (Flex) or Microsoft (SilverLight).. Jackbe.. Wavemaker... We shall see. Let the fun begin.





No comments: