Ray Lane on the Inter-personal Enterprise

Ray Lane gave a great opening keynote that I'm sure will be covered elsewhere. The first half of it he has said before, but then it got really damn interesting. What was new is a call to Re-think the software industry, encouraging greater risk taking in changing their business model. Overcome challenges for access, evaluation cycles, integration, installability, value creation, business model ($) and renewal. Leverage opportunities such as white space, low effort improvement, free now (and pay later) and individual value. "The enterprise software industry made one big mistate in the late 90s, we focused on the buyer instead of the user." He thinks there are three characteristics of a software company going forward: 1. Low Resistance: clear value to users, immeadiate value and short decision-cycle 2. TCO (viral): Low cost barrier for adoption, encourages viral spread 3. Instability (viral): Easy to install and use, increased installation increases personal value, viral effect His examples of virality (e.g. iPods) were actually word of mouth, but the point is web-enabled capabilities that we experience as consumers will be drawn into the enterprise. He gets explicit with "Web 2.0" as easier and friendlier. Project ahead in five years and it will be so easy and so secure that enterprises will gobble it up. We built enterprise software before for transactions, today it is about collaboration (I swear Ray must read my blog). He used a wiki and ideas were flowing, "you get on at midnight and share ideas!" Speaks of Dan Farber Add to document.write("Del.icio.us") | Yahoo! My Web Technorati: Socialtext, an emerging provider of Enterprise Social Software that dramatically increases group productivity and develops a group memory.