On the soon-to-be emergence of corporate tag gardeners

The Peer 1 folks are so hip! They've got an active contingent on Facebook and just started a Ning social network. I'm impressed - even if Vinnie Mirchandani might scold Lance and Rajan for not making faster progress.

In his latest post, Vinnie calls similar experimental initiatives at Oracle AppsLab and SAP "a thin coat of innovation paint" on old business models that don't come close to delivering the transparent, interactive experience one gets with pure play Web 2.0 vendors.

The scary thing is, Oracle and SAP - thanks to their enterprise install base - are reasonably well insulated against new contenders, but Peer 1 and its traditional web hosting competitors enjoy no such luxury. Amazon's increasingly comprehensive suite of web services will become an ever greater threat to standalone dedicated servers. Microsoft, too, with its triple-layered utility computing cloud...

Not that the changing landscape won't present interesting opportunities (a la Navisite's S3/EC2 monitoring service) along with unexpected challenges. Web 2.0 adoption, I think, will be one important factor that separates vendors who thrive in the brave new world from those who don't survive the tempest.

Last week I put forth some suggestions for a customer social network. Peer 1's Ning community got me thinking about how a vendor's employees fit into the picture. I like the sounds of Oracle's Connect, where each staff member maintains a profile. In addition, maybe people should have the ability to broadcast their expertise (be it accounts payable or MySQL performance tuning) via "how I can help" tags?

Imagine if "how I can help" tags from employee profiles could be matched up with "what technologies I'm using" tags from customer profiles. How cool would it be if a newly hired FreeBSD expert could immediately engage with an easily definable community that shares his interest? He'd feel like such a rock star!! And how much time could be saved if customers could see whether/when/how many Windows techs are available before clogging the level 1 support queue with requests for updates?

Most importantly, corporate tag gardeners could gain invaluable insights from monitoring tag trends. They'd be able to forecast sales, plan marketing campaigns, identify training requirements... using real time data! Just think - what could be better?

Comments

[vinnie mirchandani]

my POV is where is healthy vendor choice in a market, it actually expands much faster than when there is a concentration in top 2-3 vendors. Hosting, indeed outsourcing in general is pretty fragmented (unlike the enterprise sw market) and that keeps bigger players from over pricing and limiting demand...

[Jake]

Isabel: Your "how can I help" tags suggestion is already high on our list. Employees are constantly connecting to each to get work done, so we want to make that easier. I love the cynicism of Vinnie and Dennis; they keep us honest and grounded as we forge ahead.
Anyone with I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER? in her blogroll is fine by me.

[Isabel Wang]

Vinnie - Unfortunately healthy vendor choice doesn't necessarily lead to innovation. Instead of larger players over-pricing and limiting demand, in hosting you've got smaller players who struggle to generate interest through price competition. In recent months the industry has actually seen a whole lot of consolidation, but no group is likely to achieve Amazon's or Microsoft's scale. And none, sadly, comes close to matching Amazon's agility.

Jake - That's awesome! BTW, so cool that you guys are working with Anne Zelenka!! I'm a fan of any initiative that has her on board :)

[Jake]

Actually, we're not working with Anne, although we listen when she talks. She just noticed our little project and blogged about it. Oddly, her upcoming book and our project share the same name, Connect.
Jake

[Isabel Wang]

Oops - sorry about the confusion. Not surprising that you both picked Connect. Isn't it what this Web 2.0 thing is about?