Consumer Tech's Inevitable Move to The Enterprise

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SAN MATEO, Calif. – Blogs, RSS feeds, cool mashups (define) of disparate applications, Web 2.0 (define). These aren’t just buzzwords for the mainstream consumer Web, but technologies making an inevitable march onto corporate desktops.

So said a panel of computer company executives at the Dow Jones-sponsored Web Ventures conference here this week.

“I would say that most [Web 2.0] application companies underestimate the demand and money that can be made in the enterprise,” said Rob Rueckert, senior investment manager for Intel Capital, the investment arm of the chip giant. “A lot of companies are focused on the advertising model, but enterprise users want these tools because they can make them more productive.”

Rueckert conceded corporations have different requirements than consumers. “You have to work through issues like security,” said Rueckert. “Take blogging. I’ve talked to dozens of companies, and they want to blog, but they want it to be firewalled [for internal use] and that takes a little more work.”

Jeff Nolan, CEO of Teqlo, said his company is focused on the consumer market, “but enterprise IT customers keep calling.” He agreed with Rueckert that making consumer Web apps work for in enterprise requires serious additional tinkering. “IT departments don’t like risk. They have security concerns and compliance issues; stuff consumers don’t think about.”

Nolan said Teqlo is addressing both consumers and the SMB (define) markets and is planning an enterprise push later next year. Teqlo offers what it calls a “mashup platform for everyone else.” Teqlo is designed to let non-technical users create so-called mashups; drag-and-drop components to a Web page and have them automatically communicate with each other. One simple example, a sales leads application is ‘mashed’ to an online map to create a more visual overview of where to make daily sales calls.

Nolan believes as more consumers get comfortable with the technology, it almost functions like a pre-sale for moving it into the enterprise. “I’d like to be in a position that I don’t have to tell a CIO they need to buy us, but that ‘X’ number of users at their company are already using us,” he said.

Kim Polese, CEO of SpikeSource, said there is a tremendous opportunity in the SMB market and at smaller enterprise and department level.

“It’s a huge market that’s been under-served because of the cost of acquiring and maintaining large enterprise applications,” said Polese. “They want to connect better with customers and the supply chain, but they need low cost solutions.” Polese said a lot of these customers want the flexibility of a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) (define), monthly payment model rather than a huge upfront expense. She said many of these companies also want the flexibility of either SaaS or on-premise installation.

This article was first published on InternetNews.com. To read the full article, click here.