Nick Carr has just posted the results of two new studies on Web 2.0 adoption within the enterprise, which appear to demonstrate that the Enterprise 2.0 trend is growing legs within enterprise settings. However, at this stage in the Enterprise 2.0 evolution, it may be time to start taking a closer look at the business benefits being leveraged by Enterprise 2.0 technologies, rather than obsessing about how many are adopting which types of tools.

Forrester, for example, found that almost nine out of ten of the 119 CIOs surveyed said they had adopted at least one of six prominent Web 2.0 tools - blogs, wikis, podcasts, RSS, social networking, and content tagging. More than a third said they were already using all six of the tools.

Another survey of 2,800 executives (not just CIOs) from McKinsey & Company also found strong interest in many Web 2.0 technologies but much less widespread adoption. McKinsey looked at six tools, including mashups (not covered by Forrester), blogs, wikis, podcasts, RSS, and social networking. Investment in or planned adoption included the following: social networking (37%), RSS (35%), podcasts (35%), wikis (33%), blogs (32%), and mashups (21%). Interestingly, McKinsey found Indian companies leading North America in embracing these tools.

Nick’s report was pretty straightforward, without the spicy anti-IT opinions that usually color his commentary. But Dana Gardner, a leading industry analyst, did step in with a response, questioning whether such surveys should be directed at line-of-business executives, rather than CIOs — who tend to look at the technologies as tools, rather than their usefulness to business. Plus, there needs to be more questions asked about business benefits, not mere adoption. We’re well beyond the tools “adoption” stage in the evolution of Enterprise 2.0.

Such business benefits may include “inexpensive global/long tail communication, marketing, search ranking benefits, and community development and involvement,” Dana said. “The same survey should be given to the marketing executives — who may get this more than the CIOs at this juncture. The better question to ask is, how do the marketing and knowledge management leaders in the enterprise want to best avail themselves of these tools?”

In fact Hadley Reynolds just provided some insights on the business benefits from a recent survey of 400 executives now being put together by FAST and Economist Intelligence Unit. As Hadley relates, more than 80% of respondents reported that they view the 2.0 technologies as “an opportunity to increase my company’s revenues and/or margins.”

In addition, the EIU survey finds that more than 75% of executives report that the greatest impact from Enterprise 2.0 will come in “the way my company interacts with customers.” Approximately 40% report that they see strong impacts coming in the way their company is viewed by customers and in the way employees interact with each other and the enterprise. And 40% also report that they see 2.0 impacting their business models.

“All of these survey results point to a strong sense of connection between 2.0 and future business benefits - particularly in offering the customer web-centric channels for interacting with the firm,” Hadley concluded.

In his own blog response to Nick Carr’s news, Ross Mayfield also urges that we focus on the business applications, and supporting grassroots introduction of new technologies.