The Enterprise 2.0 "Edge Matrix" - 2009

In January of 2008, I created what I called the "Enterprise Edge Matrix" that mapped players who were targeting emerging opportunities at the edge of the enterprise.   

My hypothesis at the time was that enterprise core vendors, emerging start-ups and enterprise edge visionaries were racing to create new value for enterprise users at the Enterprise Edge.   To capture these new revenue growth opportunities at the "edge of the enterprise" , players need to develop new viral adoption strategies and networked business models that create and monetize value from data found in networks, markets and communities of enterprise end users.

At the time, I thought one interesting question was:

Who will be able to drive and monetize a viral enterprise application first?  Today's enterprise "core" leaders or the emerging enterprise "edge" visionaries?

Since early 2008, I've also outlined my vision of the Future State of the Enterprise Applications that can be summarized as:

- Applications delivered by Hybrid Cloud delivery models, 

- Business User driven with a focus on user experience 

- Social enabling transactions, conversations and relationship

- Device Agnostic applications running across devices, web and premise platforms

- Flow-ready by aggregating, filtering and visualizing user information and activity

- Sensing-based by acting on user's ambient and declarative data

So, based on the above, and reflecting industry evolution, investments, acquisitions and product announcements, I spent some time updating my Enterprise Edge Matrix for 2009.  

While I realize it needs some refinement, I believe the updated edge map highlights at least 3 significant trends from the past 12 months.

• Enterprise Core Vendors ( e.g. IBM, Cisco, Microsoft and Nokia) have aggressively moved to capture edge opportunities by introducing and/or acquiring new social, collaborative and mobile applications that directly target and are adopted by enterprise end users.  These solutions are branded and packaged as extensions to existing products and revenue streams.       

• Enterprise Edge Visionaries continue to add users but have not moved to monetize. 

• Emerging players are moving to leapfrog competitors with applications representative of Future State characteristics.  

Even with current economic conditions in mind,  applications that target and deliver directly to enterprise business users will see increased viral adoption and monetization.   

It would be interesting to hear how you'd refine this year's Edge Matrix... and what you think it will look like in early 2010.

Comments

[Stuart]

Bruce do you have some measurement algorithm behind the shifts or is this just an illustration?

Perhaps it becomes more interesting when customer communities are enabled to handle their own problems.

Edge to me suggests a 1 to 1 handling - eg customer service... no tree, no redirecting etc.

People will pay for priority access and provide context to enable that priority.