Last month IWR put a group of young Web 2.0 darlings in the same room as the cream of the online information industry. In the ensuing no-hold-barred debate, both sides learnt a little more about each other and some new ways of delivering must-have information to users.

One month later and we posed the same difficult questions about Web 2.0 to the information management suppliers – everyone from web content and enterprise content management companies to the search providers.

Web content management

Leicester-based Jadu looks and feels like a Web 2.0 outfit. It is a young and thrusting company that has developed systems that don’t follow the norm and whose very different approach has been the basis of some lucrative deals. So will Web 2.0 kill off this young gun, or are Jadu’s business muscles still limber enough to change rapidly?

Jadu’s founder and CEO Suraj Kika stared into his lava lamps and predicted a bright future for Web 2.0 and the web content management providers.

“Web 2.0 is just an evolution of existing technology,” Kika says, but is careful not to dismiss it. “Blogs and wikis have been around for ages; they are very good marketing terms that we can use to tell people about a new user experience.”

As IWR revealed last month, many in the Web 2.0 community as well as the traditional information community feel that the most important element in Web 2.0 is that it defines a common way of thinking. This is certainly Kika’s stance. He says Jadu and its products are part of a new wave of information management systems built around a user’s experiences rather than a repurposing of existing software.

Jadu has written a white paper about Enterprise 2.0 which outlines how web content management and Web 2.0 can leverage each other.

“Unlocking (or web-enabling) this content facilitates web-based search and indexing (for content discovery) and content re-use for publishing,” says the paper, championing the ease of re-use of information created in a Web 2.0 environment rather than proprietary enterprise content management systems.

Kika believes the interest in Web 2.0 comes from its user focus, which drives the information management community’s development of user-focused systems.

“Customers (internal and external) are expecting to be given greater control over content and the way in which they interact with both their own personal content and content published by the service-driven organisation.”

Kika says that one of the greatest liberations, both for users and managers of information, is the replacement of the draconian taxonomy. “Managing information structures suddenly becomes non-technical, for example, with taxonomy structures being replaced by tagging and search,” he says.

Kika is also keen to highlight the role of the user and is confident about the advantages Web 2.0 offers web content management providers and users. Jadu’s white paper says that the Web 2.0 term is gaining acceptance because it describes the organisational delivery model for information.

Enterprise Content Management

Doug Coombs, IBM FileNet’s product marketing manager, echoes Kika’s assertion on user focus. Speaking to IWR about the company’s recent launch of version 4.0 of its P8 software, Coombs cited IBM research conducted last year that found clients didn’t want to be constrained with one user interface and wanted more open interfaces with plug-in features. Coombs believes this is driven by users creating content and processes.

“The reality is that clients want to build their applications and not be locked in,” says Coombs. “However, building to these principles actually makes it easier.”

Looking forward, Coombs concedes that blogging and wikis are on the fringes of what IBM FileNet is doing, although they are growing in importance as the community opens up. By next year, Coombs believes there will be a more concrete definition of Web 2.0 and its purpose in the enterprise arena. “We are trying to create a landscape about what users require and are seeing demands for different styles of interfaces,” he says.

RedDot, the web content management division of OpenText , also recognises the trend for acceptance of Web 2.0 terminology, and rising demand for the technology.

Group marketing manager Andy Bellinger says: “Web 2.0 suddenly appeared on people’s radar screens and they realised the benefits could be applied to their businesses, such as through intranets.”

But Bellinger cautions that there is “concern among clients about bad Web 2.0 habits they have experienced online, as well as the more public incidents such as fraudulent claims made in various Wikipedia cases in the US”.

Could Democratic representative Marty Meehan’s admission of massaging the facts in his biography on Wikipedia have damaged Web 2.0 more than we realise?

Nonetheless, Bellinger is sure confidence can be maintained, although he says that “customers need support and guidance from vendors about this”.

Is the emerging Web 2.0 field of technologies going to herald something akin to the dotcom boom and bust?

Bellinger doesn’t think so. “People have learnt from past bubbles,” he says. “A brick wall has been hit just before implementation as clients are checking whether they need it and are adopting a responsible attitude rather than pacing ahead.”

Similarly, Bellinger believes that early adopters and propagators of Web 2.0 are now looking at the commercial realities rather than purely the traditional nirvana of open source. So what does that mean for larger organisations like RedDot or its parent OpenText?

Bellinger admits that established firms “aren’t as nimble as a small company” although that doesn’t stop them recognising potential. “The benefit of small companies is that they give a good indication of where the market is going and as such are the lifeblood of the industry,” he says.

Bellinger is particularly eager to stress that although Web 2.0 may be all singing and all dancing, that doesn’t mean much without an effective search solution.

“People expect it now,” he says. “It’s a de facto requirement.”

Search

With search in mind, Mike Lynch, the CEO, managing director and founder of Autonomy , is keeping his head out of the clouds when it comes to Web 2.0. While he recognises that Web 2.0 technology can be effective for some tasks, its usefulness depends on arrangement and type of content.

“Web 2.0 approaches will typically lead to more metadata around information,” Lynch says. “This can be very useful for popular, but relatively simple subject matter such as music, travel destinations and real estate, but for more esoteric or controversial subject matter the results will be less useful as users struggle to wade through a mass of competing ideas.”

Like Bellinger, Lynch identifies with concerns of bad practice within the corporate sphere. Although he offers a nod to the strengths of Web 2.0, Lynch feels that some communal-generated content can be problematic.

“Folksonomies, for example, have many benefits such as the ability to gather collected wisdom on a particular topic from across the company. However, user-generated and tagged content could open up a company to serious legal issues.”

Lynch points out that organisations are starting to operate strict blogging rules in an effort to exert some control over content output.

So what of the future if effective search, particularly in the enterprise world, is of such importance?

Essentially, Lynch believes that it is recognising and understanding the concepts as well as the context between disparate pieces of content. As far as Autonomy is concerned, this is where meaning-based technology comes in. Lynch cites the process of clustering, where a wide range of sources of information and Web 2.0 formats from different locations can be categorised and therefore analysed to spot trends and themes.

“The ability to search audio and video files is growing in importance as the application and use of rich media increases, particularly within enterprises” says Lynch. He points out the path Autonomy is taking with its Web 2.0-enabled Idol platform.

Does this mean we can expect even more hype about Web 2.0 as the technology becomes more powerful?

Lynch hopes not. “There has certainly been a lot of buzz around Web 2.0 which has clouded the issue. The result is that people have not appreciated the limitations,” he says.

While Lynch agrees that Web 2.0 applications can be effective and have their place, he also makes a call for some perspective. “These approaches are useful tools, but they are not a panacea for all the challenges we face in information creation and management,” he says. “Like any tools, they work well when applied to the right problem but fail when used out of context. It’s time to apply a reality check to the Web 2.0 buzz.”