I like a report that encourages KM people to embrace Enterprise Web 2.0 (their term), “Information and knowledge management managers must move Web 2.0 policies and usage guidelines to the top of their priorities. It’s critical to address Web 2.0 now, before usage explodes within your organization.” This is one of the conclusions of Forrester’s Web 2.0 Social Computing Dresses Up For Business.

The report includes some research on the question, “using your best estimate, how much business value has been derived from your deployment of each of the following technologies?” They include IM, RSS, podcasting, wikis, social networking, and blogs. The report discusses the positive answers which are significant but I also found it interesting that for every technology except social networking (13%) the “no value” answers were 7% or less. In each of these cases there were more than twice as many “substantial value” answers (the highest rating) as “no value” answers.

Their research also found substantial usage of these enterprise 2.0 technologies in firms that have invested in the technologies. Even with firms that have no plans to use the technologies, the tools are already being used but to a much lesser extent. The report warns CIOs against allowing unsanctioned usage and offers some good suggestions for mitigating any risks. The writers also offer some excellent best practices to make Enterprise 2.0 adoption successful, beginning with an audit of current use. It is nice to see the analysts firms continue to pick up on Enterprise 2.0 and endorse it.

A related report, Passionate Employees: The Gateway to Enterprise Web 2.0 Sales, remarks, “Forrester user-clients regularly tell us that vocal employees have been hounding then to get blogs, social networking, and wikis into the enterprise.” It adds that employee requests were a driver in web 2.0 related investments nearly 40% of the time. These are the stories we need to help take Enterprise 2.0 mainstream.

There is more on how web 2.0 impacts the enterprise in the Forrester blog post, Web 2.0 Changes The Information Workplace, referenced in the report. Three of the changes include the evolution of role-based technologies into more individualized tools, as well as the increased social nature of the workplace and the increased speed. As they wrote, “Web 2.0 makes Information Workplaces easier to deploy, modify, and use than ever before.” These are all points made on this blog but it good to see them nicely articulated in another forum.