Social Operating Systems: The rise of social oriented architecture

As the term suggests, a social operating system is a computing platform that supports the formation, management and use of social relationship ties. In my opinion, social operating systems will have a fundamental impact on both society and business - but my interest is how they change the way people work and are empowered in their roles.

My next business book is due out in October 2010 and studies the growing influence of social operating systems in computing and considers their impact on the business world. I'm hoping to add a few early examples of how early adopter organizations are going about developing their social operating systems, the challenges they're encountering and the benefits they're seeing.

(So, to the big question!!!) Do you have a great example of an organization that has implemented (or is in the process of implementing) a social operating system. If you do, then I'd love to hear from you.

The more I get involved in IT modernization, the more I see a close relationship between the new 'social oriented architectures' on the technology horizon and the 'services oriented computing architectures' now in the throws of adoption by many corporations. In fact, social oriented computing and services oriented computing are two ends of the same subject.

Here's what I'm getting at:

There's a great deal written about Services Oriented Architecture (SOA). This term describes an approach to business information management and computing that opens up the 'information fibers' of  tightly matted corporate computing systems so that business people - and cross cutting processes - can serve themselves with applications that access the rich silos of data held within the enterprise (and also from public sites on the Web).

Sounds great doesn't it? Hmmm - but then I'm thinking, for me, when it comes to business value the point of emphasis in this IT architectural vision is on serving data rather than consuming it to bring real value to business people and the organizations they serve.

It is quite easy when working with IT to start with the answer rather than the question. People interested in IT are normallly pro-technology and want to find good reasons to do more with it. Sometimes this means doing 'clever stuff' in advance of any real demand for IT from consumers. But IT projects without strong sponsorship normally topple over at some point. Now, as I understand it, the idea of services-oriented computing is to serve up data from back office systems (and other such sources) in such a way that it can be made useful to lots of people (and processes) for many different reasons. If not properly thought through it's a bit like creating your own library of books without working out who wants to read them and why.

Social operating systems - on the other hand - start with 'what matters most' to the consumers of information, and giving these people the capability to form and support their social relationship ties, develop interest groups, share insights and applications - and one day I'm sure these workspaces will be sufficiently secure and trusted that organizations will run their business processes through them too.

If you're interested in social operating systems or social oriented architecture and have a story to tell, do please get in touch. I'd welcome your perspectives, thoughts, experiences and ideas! I'll even take predictions;-)