"Distributed Web" takes center stage at DEMO

DEMO executive producer Chris Shipley isn't sure what to call the evolution of Web 2.0 software and applications, but she is sure of one thing: It shouldn’t be called Web 3.0.

"If anything, I think I'd call it the 'distributed web,'" says Shipley, whose DEMOfall '08 convention, a Network World event, kicks off in San Diego this week. "It's different from the traditional Web, because it's really not about attracting people to individual Web sites, but about distributing information and applications to Web sites and devices where people are accessing and consuming information."

As Shipley tells it, the distributed Web will be a game-changer for content creators, advertisers and consumers, as it will primarily work to push content out to users whether on their personal computers, their cell phones or their consumer electronics gadgets. The result, she says, will be an increase in more collaborative computing that will allow more users to make direct decisions in corporate projects, and not have to rely on typical top-down approaches where only project managers get to call the shots.

So with an eye on new distributed Web technologies, here's a look at some of the new enterprise products that will be on display.

Lanxoma: In response to the well-established reality of the inside threat, Unity Solutions has developed Lanxoma, a surveillance system that monitors and records every action done by an employee on the IT system. According to the company, management has the ability to review IT workers' every move in real time. DEMO says Lanxoma is supposed to provide incentive against IT workers defrauding their own companies, and says it provides corporate managers with the tools to "stop fraud before it happens."

SkyData: This application lets companies send corporate data to employee mobile devices on demand. The application's key feature is that it keeps data within the cloud to be pushed out to devices, rather than requiring employees to log on to a Web browser to extract it. In other words, SkyData is a distributed Web application that brings data to the user, rather than having the user get the data themselves.

"We've seen a lot of attempts for data integration out to mobile devices, and this is the first one that starts to really get it right," Shipley says. "It's outside the Web browser, which means data can be moved more directly into the application space."

SkyData integrates several sources of information, including CRM, social networks, and back office and business profiles.

PlanDone: The idea behind project planning software PlanDone is to better distribute decision-making capabilities to a wide group of users and to give them more visibility into how projects are being executed. To promote transparency, the software has a built-in open-source "wiki"-style system to document progress, changes in project goals, and even a priority task-ranking system that ranks tasks according to their deadlines.

"PlanDone creates a collaborative system that lets all members of a work team define, manage and complete tasks in a way that has a lot of accountability to the work group," Shipley says. "It's an opportunity for every part of the business to understand how project plans develop, and also to communicate changes."