Wiki++ in 2009: Moving Toward Suites With Wiki at the Core

ReadWriteWeb’s picks for the Top 10 Enterprise Web Products of 2008 include both Atlassian Confluence and MindTouch Deki in a tie for best wiki. In the article, Bernard Lunn describes the wiki market as wiki++:

We added “++” to “wiki” because the leading vendors are rapidly incorporating micro-blogging, social networking, forums, and other collaboration tools. Integration is key, so we see this market moving towards suites, but with wiki at the core.

Moving towards suites…with wiki at the core. We’re already seeing this trend with the new Widget Connector in Confluence and the Widgets and Feeds capability in MindTouch Deki, and it will continue to grow in importance in 2009. Inside organizations, people are already using wikis at a growing place, so a tool that has the wiki at its core, but also lets people blog, share documents, embed YouTube video, share presentation slides, and embed Flickr photos becomes even more useful.

This isn’t the oft-promised “portal” of the ’90s – it’s something different, and better, because people have a much easier time with a tool that’s centered on one major capability, but can do other things as needed. Think of email: you can send a simple message to one person, but you can also attach a file, send to multiple people, etc. That flexibilityis why email has become so popular, and its why wikis are poised to keep growing dramatically as well.