Is AJAX a 'cool' technology or something far deeper that is capable of spawning or facilitating 'new disruptive models'? Is it a key definer or component of WEB 2.0? Does it offer sustainable value, particularly to the enterprise community?
These questions were raised and addressed this week at the VLAB (Stanford-MIT Venture Lab) monthly event. The topic was engaging enough to compel me to offer my own perspectives on these questions with a focus towards the 'Enterprise'.
The most compelling pitch for the propositions above came from Scott Dietzen's demo of the Zimbra product. I could hear oohs and aahs from all corners of the auditorium. Zimbra has done something quite spectacular to the email application by providing a very collaborative and rich user-interface using AJAX. This is definitely a 'next-gen' email client.
But. (here it comes).
While people saw cool AJAX-driven UI 'stuff', I believe that it is the back-end integration (via Zimlets) that ultimately delivered the functionality that 'wowed' people. So this wasn't totally about AJAX, although its potential for a rich UI is not being debated.
On the same thought, discussions through the evening also made me wonder whether this (i.e. AJAX) is yet another 'fad' or something with sustaining value, particularly as it relates to the Enterprise. The evening brought back memories of other technologies of the past (as Om says--'a bubble ago), that were also equally exciting and promising in their day but somehow failed to make 'satisfactory' inroads into the corporate community. Portals, in particular, come to mind right away but there is a long list of others.
I have come to believe that these failures of the past (and possibly near-term future) were as a result of our inability to provide:
- A semantic substrate that is shared across applications, processes and business communities to leverage them effectively in various workflows and collaborations,
- A pre-instantiated (out-of-the-box) offering of functionality from vendors rather than the 'toolkits' that they have continued to pitch
- The lack of (or relatively immature) standards related to integration of applications, processes and data in the Enterprise.
So, I believe that until we resolve these challenges, we need to exercise cautious optimism in claiming technologies that are 'ready' to revolutionize the 'Enterprise'.
BTW: This event was clearly VLAB's most exciting, entertaining and engaging one that I have attended thus far. Scott's presentation was highly charged, passionate and very exuberant. I hope they really succeed with their vision and the business. The panelists had great chemistry and obviously Om Malik (first time I have heard of him) brought a brash sense of humor to the forum--so overall a great evening for technophiles (at least for me).
http://www.vlab.org/Htdocs/001.cfm
-Sanjiva, Orinda, 2/22/06
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