An IT Manager’s Lament: Enterprise 2.0 a Tough Sell
by Joe McKendrick
The technology consumer market may shift direction on a moment’s notice as new ideas are brought to market, but for enterprises, it’s slower slog to move to new technologies. Pilots need to be conducted, concepts vetted before review boards, ROI estimated, and various constituencies convinced of its value.
One global Internet manager recently blogged about how fired up he was about the new Enterprise 2.0 approaches coming to the forefront. He was skeptical about all the Web 2.0 claims until recently, until the market began to take off.
However, he expects to encounter a lot of resistance, especially from the IT department.
“Large companies are not famous for rapid adoption of new tools. Most of companies are using SAP, Microsoft or IBM. IT managers don’t take the risk to connect applications that could be incompatible.”
Plus, even though the software vendors are starting to offer some Web 2.0-related software, there will be the usual issues with integrating the solutions with the 1.0 versions of software. Best case scenario — enterprises will start to see enterprise 2.0 features at work by 2009.
The bottom line is that to advance in the enterprise, Enterprise 2.0 will needs enthusiastic proponents that can work both within the system and work outside the system when necessary. Ultimately, Enterprise 2.0 is a bottom-up movement that will be driven by empowered end-users — just as PCs worked their way into the enterprise two decades ago.
