The number two seems to be dominating the headlines and vendors’ marketing strategies at present. Nearly every major IT technology suddenly has a 2.0 tagged on the end of its name. This, in turn, has led to conferences, books and seminars touting the latest 2.0 technologies and architectures. Is this all marketing hype, or is there some value in understanding what’s special about these technology advances?

It all started with Web 2.0, which has its origins in a series of Web development conferences started in 2004 by O’Reilly Media and MediaLive International (now owned by CMP Media). The objective in creating the concept of Web 2.0 was to identify and bring together a set of technologies that represent a new way of deploying Web applications that are not only more powerful, but also easier to develop and use.

Another key aspect of Web 2.0 is that it represents a disruptive set of technologies that shift the b ...