Enterprise 2.0 Conference - more thoughts

Had a few more thoughts on the Enterprise 2.o Conference last week in Boston. I attended the Enterprise Mash-Ups session. As is my style, this is neither complete nor in any particular order

• Ajay Gandhi (i think this was his name, but I don't see it on the program) made a seldom heard, but I thought very important point around using Web 2.0 technologies in your company: "You can't ignore your enterprise apps or your IT governance." It seems very popular in many Web 2.0 circles to think of enterprise application software and the IT org as soooo yesterday. However, most people still work in organizations that use enterprise apps and, while they may be able to circumvent IT in the short term, need to work with the CIO's office.
  
• First mash up I saw in the Enterprise 2.0 Mash Ups session showed Google Maps. Uhhh! Please just one demo of a mash up that does NOT involve Google Maps.
• Didn't see the value in the ShareMethods demo. There was an on-demand word processing tool, a presentation tool and a spreadsheet. All from separate vendors, but integrated. "All documents can be shared across all apps." Ok, I can do that now with Microsoft Office, or if I don't want to shell out the money with OpenOffice Why repeat something that already exists? And the fact that they're "on demand" is just not an interesting enough (or sustainable) differentiator to me. If anyone doesn't think that Microsoft will offer essentially the same capabilities, I'd would respectfully disagree.
• Rod Smith of IBM talked about "how do I get to the data?" Fair enough and very important. However, I asked the question "what about process-orientated mash ups?" Most of us work in organizations with processes and use various products to complete tasks. I would have loved to have seen what someone is doing to mash-up a CRM tool with an SME accounting tool (Peachtree, QuickBooks). That may be a bad example, but I could imagine that process mash ups would be very useful. (When I mentioned this to Jeff a few days ago, he made the point to me that you don't realize how important data mash ups are until you really need one).
  

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