Rob Carter, CIO of FedEx led the conference on Tuesday with his presentation, “Connectedness: Changing what’s possible.”

He began his talk discussing what he admittedly said we already know, a history of networks: distribution, electrical, telecommunications, and then offered a little of what we didn’t know, a history of FedEx.

All that history proves that none of these communications could have existed, even FedEx, if there wasn’t a strong network behind it. Carter is looking to expand FedEx’s network because it’s viable and that viable networks always expand.

FedEx’s first step to expansion is the realization that FedEx.com should no longer be confined to being just a destination site. As a result FedEx.com has been exposing all its services to other entry points. Here are some examples:

• QuickShip - a .NET shipping application embedded inside of Microsoft Outlook. Allows you to use all your contacts and stay within your addressing application.
• FedEx Mobile - Track packages through your iPhone or other mobile device.
• FedEx Desktop - Advanced tracking application developed in Adobe Air. Operates outside of the browser. Can see inbound and outbound packages. If an event happens with any of your packages, for example something has cleared customs or gets held up, you’ll get an alert.
• eBay ShipRush - Integrate FedEx into an eBay seller’s site and community.

Carter believes that enterprise 2.0 is about disassembling the walls of the enterprise. And for those of us who work in an enterprise environment, we know how difficult that can be. Think it’s difficult for FedEx? It was even tougher for the CIA. See the next post about “Building the 21st Century Intelligence Community.”

He closed with a George Colony quote that states, “Technology will change your customers. Customers will change your business.”

Make sure you check out the summary of all coverage from the Enterprise 2.0 Conference 2008 in Boston.

Last week I had the opportunity to chat with the folks over at Tungle, a Web 2.0 start-up attacking the problem of scheduling meetings with people outside of your organization.  Today, the typical solution is a whole lot of e-mailing back and forth.  With Tungle, the process is somewhat automated, saving a great deal of time and effort.

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Forrester just released a report predicting enterprise spending on Web 2.0 will reach $4.6 Billion by 2013. The report was led by Analyst Oliver Young who spoke at our Enterprise 2.0 Conference last year. $4.6 billion is a big number and a bit of a surprise. But if you think about it, it actually makes a lot of sense. Enterprise 2.0 is a pretty small market today based on the types of vendors that have comprised it. These are the smaller players making standalone wikis, RSS tools or web-based competitors to Microsoft’s Office. But the software giants are now all vying for a piece of the Enterprise 2.0 market and incorporating much of the same functionality as the purely “2.0″ alternatives. When you start counting big software’s role in Enterprise 2.0 it’s easier to see how we’ll reach such a big number so quickly. We’re a reflection of this trend at our Enterprise 2.0 Conference where this year Microsoft, Oracle and IBM are all signed up as major sponsors. The Forrester report is further proof that while Enterprise 2.0 is something many companies are evaluating today, the concepts and technologies that comprise Enterprise 2.0 today will commonplace to business in the future.

Web-based storage services can be very helpful if you’re looking for ways to easily back up files off-site. But I recently came accross some updates to one such service that is making web-based storage a lot more interesting. The people at Box.net have added collaboration functionality into their product making for a pretty easy and slick way to share files with others while providing version control and web-based access. I experimented a bit with the service and found it very easy to set up group folders, add files and invite others to participate.

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