An active blogger and a thought leader, Anant Jhingran is credited with coining Info 2.0, which he says is aimed at bringing some order to Web 2.0 innovations, so that they can be effective in an enterprise environment. Excerpts from the interview in which he argues that control and creativity, innovation and order, and open and close systems can coexist.

What is Info 2.0? Is it all about mashups?
No, mashups are a significant first-step to be able to show what it is but the vision is broader. In the 80s, database and applications grew separately, which was good for both. In Web 2.0, that separation has not happened. Info 2.0 is our effort to separate themdata logic from application logic. Mashups show what is possible to do, but the idea is to separate them so that there is order while both grow.

But Web 2.0 became what it is today precisely because it allows everyone to innovate, and is growing

You are referring to the network effect. Yes, that is one aspect but not the only. Also, the world of Web and the world of enterprise are very different. It is not just the network effect; there is the issue of information security, compliance and others. What we are trying to do is replicate Web 2.0 in the enterprise with all those essential business systems also in place.

So you believe creativity and control can coexist.

Yes. Many dont believe that, but I strongly believe that you can have both.

What you are looking at is importing innovations from the world of Web to enterprise, without importing the architecture. Do you sincerely think that is possible?
Yes, open and close systems can coexist. Innovation is about ideas. It is not in the coding. Coding in Web 2.0 is closely integrated with architecture. In the enterprise world, we want to separate them and allow these innovations to grow in the enterprise architecture.

We do believe that innovations happen at three placesacademic institutions, industry, and open forums like the Web and they are equally important. We can have innovation and order coexisting.

But what about the many Web applications that people have started to use for business purpose but outside the boundaries of business organizations IT infrastructure?
About 10% of them will grow, become big, but will ultimately go to the enterprise IT managers, to make them compliant and scaleable, so that they can be integrated to core business processes and the core IT architecture. The rest will not go beyond a point. The question is not just about IT architecture and IT practices. You have to ensure that controls of information are not compromised.

Search has become all-pervasive. What is the future of structured information?
Eventually, they will meet. I do not know when and where. Search is very good for finding specific information quickly. But you need to be able to analyze the information, which is not possible in case of search results. In fact, that is a major thrust for our research. This is where the ECM and BI will play an important role.

What is the difference between requirements of Indian users and the requirement of US enterprises?
One, of course, is the Indian comapnies are all looking at aggressive growth and transformation, rather than incremental efficiency. But apart from that and the fact that consumer companies have a much larger base of customers, there is not too much difference between the commercial enterprises in India and the US. But when it comes to government, some Indian organizations are far more progressive. I was talking to the director of INCOIS (Indian National Center for Ocean Information Systems). He told me that for him, forty minutes of processing time is too much in case of a tsunami information system. What they are trying to do is amazing.

Shyamanuja Das
shymanujad@cybermedia.co.in

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