Forrester Research predicts that by 2013, the global Enterprise 2.0 will be $4.6 Billion. The biggest growth and share will be in social networking.
One example of an enterprise social network is NewsGator’s SocialSites. It built on top of Microsoft SharePoint and provides a dynamic space for communities, expertise location and “work streaming”. Two screenshots from NewsGator Profile Page and Community Site.
A few of the key messages from the report are:
- that consumer Web 2.0 products are not long-term solutions for enterprises, especially free or ad-supported services
- IT continues to be the gatekeeper preventing Web 2.0 applications from being leveraged in the enterprise
- business areas are asking for these tools and bypassing IT if they find a service that will help them in some area
- IT is worried about scalability of these applications
- IT budgets are primarily focused on maintaining legacy applications with little capacity to look at these new tools
- younger employees growing up with these tools will want something similar when they arrive at your doorstep to work
- IT is concerned about the security of Web 2.0 applications
- major enterprise players (IBM, Microsoft, etc) will make Enterprise 2.0 a feature of their monolithic solutions
- major growth in the enterprise will not happen until the baby boomers retire from the executive ranks
- social networking tools that allow customer interaction, profiles and participation in discussions and blogs will receive significant investment
Read a good review of the Forrester report.
Via ReadWriteWeb.com