Enterprise X.0 and ECONOM Workshops Chairs’ Message

Abstract

After the first generation Web which started with manually created HTML pages, the second generation made the step to machine generated and often active HTML pages. Since these first two generations were meant for direct human processing, the third generation Web, the Semantic Web and Web 2.0 provide machine processable information and social collaboration, respectively. Over the last decades, the WWW has rapidly evolved into a vast repository containing huge amounts of decentralized information on all matters of interest. It is now evolving from the medium intended for human utilization into a medium for collaborative knowledge generation and intelligent knowledge exchange achieving the time-to-market demand in a competitive environment. This is why CIOs are starting to acknowledge the technical value of knowledge-based technologies for enterprizes: In the last years, early adopters have been increasingly using the technologies in various application settings ranging from content management to enterprize integration platforms. Core technological building blocks and development platforms are meanwhile available from established vendors. Despite this promising position, it is still difficult to argue in favor of knowledge-based technologies in front of the CFOs because of the lack of convincing measurable benefits or proven-and-tested methods to determine and quantify these.