Talk given at the Wharton School, Nov 2007

1. Enterprise awareness networks
Jon Udell
Microsoft
Nov 2, 2007

2. What is this a picture of?

3. Premises
• Enterprises are exploiting service-oriented
architecture

4. Premises
• Enterprises are exploiting service-oriented
architecture
• But are not yet exploiting syndication-
oriented architecture

5. Syndication-oriented?

6. Examples of syndication
• Combined GRL2020 feed
• Phil’s birthday on Facebook
• Jon’s keystroke and mouse feed

7. Global Research Library 2020

8. Mashing up GRL2020 feeds

9. Reading the combined feed

10. Phil’s birthday on Facebook

11. Jon’s keystroke and mouse feed

12. Services plus syndication
• Service composition for business processes
• People are the exception handlers!
• Syndication connects people and processes

13. Lessons from the blogosophere
• Contributions along a continuum of effort
– Blog posting: heavyweight
– Twitter “tweet”: lighter
– Social bookmark: almost effortless

14. Lessons from the blogosphere
• All contributions can be:
– Syndicated
– Filtered
– Resyndicated

15. Lessons from Facebook
• No effort required to make you aware:
– That my birthday is upcoming
– That I have begun using a new application
• Delivers the effects of syndication while hiding
the mechanics

16. Manufactured serendipity
• Too important to leave to chance!
• “It’s snowing in Boston”
• Unlikely connections become less unlikely

17. Enablers of enterprise
awareness networks
• XML
• RSS (and friends)

18. Thanks to XML…
• Interprocess and interpersonal
communication can share common workflow
packets
• Those packets can mix schematized and ad-
hoc XML
• Example: Word and Excel can preserve the full
fidelity of a machine-to-machine message,
while enabling people to annotate it.

19. Thanks to RSS…
• Interprocess and interpersonal messages can
participate equally in lightweight syndication
• Which can be enhanced by enterprise-grade
infrastructure
• Example: The Internet Service Bus enables
federation of RSS feeds across enterprises,
with strong guarantees of privacy, reliability,
auditing.

20. WS-Heavy? WS-Light?
WS-JustRight!