Some time ago I talked about Enterprise 2.0,  the transformation taking place within the enterprise as companies move towards embracing Web 2.0 technologies and practices. Two interesting components of this corporate trend are enterprise widgets and enterprise mashups. Enterprise widgets are hardly a new concept – a growing number of companies have been using widget to distribute software and services to enterprise web sites and desktops. Organization as large as IBM are getting behind mashups  and in fact have recently partnered with Google to allow integration of more than 4,000 Google Gadgets with WebSphere portals. Others like SAP have been experimenting with widget and are finding that  enterprise widgets have  requirements not seen in the consumer space. When it comes to deployment, some like Etelos (CRMforGoogle) are deploying widgets using existing web-based platforms (iGoogle, Netvibes, i.e.) while other are sticking to desktop platforms (like Windows Vista), stand-alone widgets or proprietary widget engines.

If your company is considering enterprise widgets, here are some common requirements that may impact your enterprise widgets efforts:

• The ability to work well within a firewall environment
• Integration with existing SSO (Single-sign on) systems
• Improved cross-platform support
• Support for enterprise security
• Support for notification and alerts
• Integration with CRM, ERP and Business Analytics (BA) systems

Widget platform providers are paying attention and are adding support for enterprise widgets. Netvibes, for example, is partnering with WorkLight provide secure enterprise widgets for transactional use within companies. iGoogle is being used by IBM and SAP and has a 600 person organization dedicated to bringing Google technology to the enterprise. Expect more and more companies to embrace enterprise widgets to deliver real-time information and notifications from enterprise systems.

The term Enterprise 2.0 has become a popular term used to describe the general transformation taking place within the enterprise as companies move towards embracing Web 2.0 technologies and practices.  I mentioned the trend a couple of days ago. The phenomena is actually very simple and very prevalent – what makes sense on the Internet, eventually makes sense in the enterprise – think Enterprise Mashups, Enterprise Widgets, Enterprise Social Networks, Enterprise Video and even Enterprise user-generated content!

Enterprise 2.0 User Interface Design:
More recently companies have gotten around to updating internal (and external) web-based application to incorporate Web 2.0 design and technologies. Here are some of macro and micro trends we have seen or proposed as it relates to enterprise clients:

• Updating their presentation layers to leverage XHTML/CSS
• Incorporating AJAX and FLEX components in their UI’s
• Moving away from “Frame-based” design to simpler CSS-inspired skinnable UIs (this CSS Zen Garden for the Enterprise)
• Adding support for user feedback and user-generated content in the form of rating widgets, user comments and discussions, as well as content upload capabilities
• Adding support for RSS and other forms of syndication to their applications
• Mashup that integrate both Internet and enterprise feeds
• Continued move towards Enterprise “start-pages” (Enterprise dashboards like Netvibe, i.e.) and Enterprise Widget
• Increased support for Video and other rich media content
• Mobile application support (especially for the iPhone and Blackberry)
• Converting from SOAP and WSUI based web service architectures to more modern XML REST and JSON

Most of our Enterprise clients are very much involved in moving their organizations towards becoming more “2.0″.  The concept of Enterprise 2.0 has in the past represented “technologies and business practices that liberate the workforce from the constraints of legacy communication and productivity tools like email”.  Enterprise 2.0 Conference came out with a chart that did a pretty good job of identifying some of the organizational differences between Enterprise 1.0 and Enterprise 2.0.

Here is a quick roundup of a couple of recent interesting widget news and trends:

• Book Widgets for Authors: Authors use widgets to help promote their books and online communities.
• What’s Next For The NYTimes Online: Excellent example of comprehensive social media marketing by the New York Times! More and more companies are beginning to realize that social media outreach needs to be comprehensive and broad in order to be effective.
• Understanding Widgets: Not a trend or news piece but nice short post that helps “frame” widgets for those thinking about have one developed.
• Enterprise Widgets: I liked this piece about a new and emerging breed of widgets – widget being used within the enterprise!
• Political Widgets on Facebook: Makes absolute sense this election season, I think every politician should have their own widget
• Mobile Widgets?: Kind of – Nokia labs launches widget initiative that tries to integrate your desktop with your phone (build on the Yahoo! widget engine). I am more interested, however, in seeing widgets move to mobile platforms in more meaningful ways.

We’ll cover some of these trends in more detail in upcoming weeks!

Tags: trends, widgets, mobile, politics, enterprise