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According to an Oracle whitepaper, collaborative Web 2.0 technologies enable enterprises to foster employees critical thinking and creativity while providing a platform to capitalize on their innovations for product and process improvement.

But what goes into the process? Web-based end-user content management, user-driven applications, blogs, wikis, aggregation, user participation, collaboration, etc… most features that would complement unified communications technology. And yet are the enterprises adopting Web 2.0?
Dhruv Singhal, Director, Sales Consulting Fusion Middleware, Oracle India admitted that non-enterprise segments are easily adopting the technology. People coming to Facebook or LinkedIn are comfortable using it. he agreed that security continues to remain a concern, but that vendors are introducing tools to address it.

So how mature is the Indian enterprise? Well, they are using Web 2.0 for internal communication. It is used to share information with internal customers, or with partners and dealers. The information is largely regarding a new marketing campaign or a new product launch. Enterprises want to make their people more productive and use Web 2.0 as one more tool.

Oracle has sold its Web 2.0 products to some large enterprises in India, but did not disclose names because of NDAs. Singhal however gave examples of how the automotive, manufacturing and telecom segments could use this technology. The auto giants can direct interact with customers. Blogs can be dry. They are not interactive. Moderated forums can be much more alive. The manufacturer can talk about features and other things, and the users can give live feedback. Similarly, telecom companies can use information to sell products, study user behaviour to form marketing strategies.
Right now our focus is on expanding the customer base and penetration Web 2.0. What will be Oracle s USP when competition such as IBM, Microsoft, SAP, and even Intel has products which offer enterprise and SMB customers with Web experience which enables the management to communicate with workers and external customers on the same lines of Oracle s UC offering?

Singhal said that on the collaboration side, Oracle can integrate the front-end with the backend applications. We support SAP, IBM, Lotus Notes, email, and any other middleware. Java and .Net make interoperability easier. This is a great value proposition. We also have ability to offer rich client interface (also through browser based applications.). This is besides Web 2.0 feature staples like tagging, ranking, and commenting.

And Oracle is also utilizing its business intelligence (BI) expertise to further ease communication and collaboration tools, back-end integration efforts.

Not to be left behind, SAP too lay focus on this technology. None other than Leo Apothekar, CEO SAP at the Sapphire 2009 event said, The digital generation are joining the workforce, and they expect enterprise software to be easy to use, to be rich, and to be collaborative. They even want enterprise software to be fun.

Microsoft too explained its Web 2.0 strategy in terms of its Microsoft Office 2007 and enhancements in products released thereafter.

With the economy reeling and layoffs piling up , business-networking site LinkedIn has been not-so-surprisingly hopping.

Market researcher ComScore reported that LinkedIn’s unique visitors rose to 7.7 million, a 22 percent increase over December, TechCrunch reported Saturday . And not only are more people visiting LinkedIn, but they’re hanging around longer as well. Total minutes spent on the site last month more than doubled from December to 96.8 million, according to TechCrunch.

More people are helping out friends looking for jobs as well. Recommendations were up 65 percent last month over December, TechCrunch said.

LinkedIn puts its current user base at about 33 million, and as such, it’s easy to believe that the odds of finding professionals with even remotely common names are beyond slim. The site’s trying to keep this from happening, though, with some interesting new search upgrades.

The first offering is something that more casual users should like. On the LinkedIn Blog, Adam Nash explains, “[O]ur old search interface had a limitation: you had to use the actual Advanced Search form to target specific fields for your queries. The new LinkedIn Search allows users to easily target specific fields directly from the search results page.”

It takes just a few clicks or pushes of the “tab” key to search for an imaginary Bob Smith who’s a product manager at Microsoft and attended Cornell, then. Or who used to work at Google and for some reason is known to have the word “windsurfing” in his profile.

The second search upgrade may suit a smaller audience. Nash writes, “The new LinkedIn search platform allows any query that can be executed from the user interface to also be executed straight from the query box using the new advanced search operators.”

We’ve pictured a list of them that LinkedIn provided, and not everyone will want to memorize the things (more are on the way). Still, since the economy has probably forced unemployed individuals to spend more time looking for jobs, they could catch on. HR people and perhaps some search pros will become comfortable with the advanced search operators, too.

LinkedIn is the social network of choice for many business professionals. It is not alone by any means, and for some peoples this is not the best, but figures show that it is the favorite network for business owners.

Mike Sachoff recently reported on a study that also found a direct correlation between the use LinkedIn and personal wealth. He wrote:

The study found a direct relationship between the number of connections and high personal income. Those members with personal incomes between $200K-$350K were seven times more likely than others to have over 150 connections.

align=”justify”The investigation revealed that senior managers who has 8.4 million members, has the highest average income of people with 104,000 U.S. dollars. Knowledge networks, is also described as consultants have the second highest with an average income of 93,500 U.S. dollars and composed of 9 million members of LinkedIn.

I wrote about this and other LinkedIn information, all pointing to a network that business owners can turn to networking. Today I found a video of aid to small businesses shows that the trends of how you go to LinkedIn to help benefit your business.

Experience with people social networking probably not make a lot watching the video, but for those of you who have not really reached his feet wet, the video should be a good quarter. Comments on small business trends indicate that a number of people who have found it very useful.

align=”justify”LinkedIn is all about relationships, which is a key element in business growth. Although there are a number of other networks that can be used to establish relationships, LinkedIn tended to answer most of the professional societies that some of the others. If you like the creation of networks of other companies to better use, please let us know in comments.