Boris Slavin – Head of Center for IT expertise of The Union of CIOs of Russia, IT Company.
Address: 19, build. 6, Leninskaya Sloboda str., Moscow, 115280, Russian Federation. 
E-mail: bbslavin@gmail.com

Modern Information and Communication Technologies form an environment for information exchange between people. Moreover, those information environments established for improving business efficiency and those designed for personal use differ quite noticeably. However, recently these technologies have tended to converge. Thus, this very convergence is the subject of the research described in the article.

In the course of the research, information environments were compared according to the tasks they accomplish. The first task is to increase self-service, resulting in reduction of costs and time spent on service due to simplification of  procedures and their transfer in electronic form. The second task is to improve the access to information, which includes sharing more up-to-date analytic data, information clarity and completeness. The third task is to establish cooperative work for finding solutions and taking decisions and to form an individual's social space. Furthermore, the principles of organizing the information environment were also taken into account: independence from the information processing devices, users rating and access privileges, one-time data input, contextual prompts, intelligent navigation, etc.

The research displays that Information Environment Architecture in Business gradually accepts the functionality of social networks. Social networks on their side obtain advanced features for organization of their users' business activities. Cloud technologies play a special role in the convergence of business and social information environments, as they allow for the information services to “get rid” of limitations of office buildings, as does automatization of routine work, making it more communication-directed. Expert networks will also contribute to the convergence of business and social information environments as they are likely to become the basic means of data storage and the source of expert evaluation. The convergence of the tasks and the principles in the information environments becomes the trend for developing not only corporations' computerization but also social networks platforms.