Web-enabled capabilities now seen as geared toward consumers must be introduced to the enterprise, he said. Enterprise software was built for individual use in the 1990s; now it must be geared toward collaboration, with technologies such as wikis, he said.

The Web, meanwhile, is based on modality. Lane cited technologist Bill Joy's concept of six Webs: the near Web, at the desktop; the far Web, for entertainment; the here Web, with devices such as PDAs; the weird Web, with Web-enabling of devices such as cars; device-to-device communication; and business-to-business communication. These modalities will lead to Web-driven capabilities being introduced into the enterprise, Lane said.

Noting the trend toward open source companies such as MySQL, which feature a service model, Lane said he did not see these companies challenging the database giants Oracle, Microsoft, and IBM. These larger vendors still can pour billions into research and development, Lane said.

Earlier on Tuesday, M.R. Rangaswami, founder of The Sand Hill Group, which is producing the conference, said Web 2.0 technologies now used in consumer applications, such as wikis and podcasts, will be introduced to the enterprise. "I think Web 2.0 technologies are really going to get profitable when they're used in the enterprise context," Rangaswami said.

Whereas consumers will not pay for podcasts or wikis, enterprises will if shown value, he said.