Most technologies these days are spawned in the consumer world and laboriously swim upstream into the heavily dammed networks of corporations. But widgets–tiny, downloadable applications that display data from the Internet on websites or your PC’s desktop–could make that leap in record time.
Widgets are designed for a single purpose–entering a new contact into your company’s customer database, say, or tracking your team’s sales quota–and strip away unneeded complexity. Enter your password once, and the widget stores it.
The software runs on your PC’s centrally administered desktop, not some third-party website, and transfers data over a secure network connection. No data is stored locally, so if your laptop gets stolen, IT administrators can just turn off the widget’s network access, as they do with lost BlackBerrys today.
For all the promise, there aren’t a lot of corporate widgets on the market yet. SAP is just dabbling in the field, Salesforce.com has a mere baker’s dozen of such widgets for pulling data out of its systems.
The caution is understandable, a company’s financial data is highly sensitive stuff. But for an entrepreneur who’s ready to take on the business side of widgets, there’s money just waiting to be reeled in.
Photo by Yahoo Widgets.
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