Having joined the Social Media Collective group and Social Media Today site (with a bunch of the Enterprise Irregulars in it), I started reading more and more about the Enterprise 2.0 dimension or bringing web 2.0 principles and tools inside the (big) companies to improve the knowledge management and innovation process.

Enterprise 2.0 has now a central part inside the well known and widely appreciated O’Reilly report and the pioneers are experimenting with it gaining a first mover advantage.

But how many companies are currently into it?

A few days ago, InformationWeek published the results of a study about the Enterprise 2.0 penetration within US companies. The scenario seems mixed:

More than half of business technology pros surveyed by InformationWeek are either skeptical about tools such as blogs, wikis, and online social networks, or they’re willing but wary of adopting them.

Despite the risks and problems, a solid minority of the 250 business technology pros surveyed by InformationWeek are behind this IT strategy push that has come to be known as Enterprise 2.0 (even if the overplayed 2.0 terminology makes some people wince). Nearly a third, 32%, describe their Web 2.0 strategies as fully engaged, our survey finds.

Reticent companies ignore the movement at the peril of their competitiveness. Within a few years, rich, collaborative software platforms that include a slate of technologies like wikis, blogs, integrated search, and unified communications will be the norm. Employees will expect to work that way, and it’ll be up to IT to solve the still significant problems and deliver.

So the path is for sure paved with obstacles and risks but Enterprise 2.0 could be a second (reaction) engine speeding up your strategies for the years to come.

Among the most common issues that companies have to expect:

• Security Comes First. Social apps cannot expose businesses to security leaks or legal actions. 64% of respondents cited security as a challenge
• Content Still King. Driving adoption is challenging even for true believers. Tools are not the point here. Their adoption as part of knowledge workers daily job it is.
• Pick Your Poison. Beyond getting employees the right tools for more effective communication, IT must figure out how to pull it all together. Enterprise 2.0 actually means a number of different tools that can be tough to manage and support, especially when IT doesn’t have much experience with them. Integrating these tools with legacy systems is another big challenge. Having entire suites like Lotus Connections could help with it.
• Nudge 2.0. Adoption is not automatic and illuminated IT departments shouldn’t bet on employees flocking to these tools without a push. They absolutely need support by the top and middle management

These are all reasonable doubts and fear. My advice is of course “put your hands on Enterprise 2.0 with small pilots and tell from yourself”..

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 27th, 2007 at 11:41 am and is filed under Web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.