Enterprise 2.0 Is Not A Fad
by George Dearing
KPMG just released a paper titled, Enterprise 2.0: Fad or Future? Nice title, you almost had me. It’s really comical to think a big consulting firm would even hint at the notion of a new set of technologies being a fad. New technologies mean re-engineering, lots of heavy lifting, and lots of human resources, right? Not necessarily. This enterprise is different than your father’s enterprise. This one is lightweight, it’s flexible, and it ignores long implementations. So why all the fuss over enterprise 2.0 and its older sibling Web 2.0? Most analysts (like Gartner) will tell you it’s because this stuff is gonna be big business — and soon.
The dollars set to pour into the so-called ”Enterprise Social Software” market is projected in 2011 to grow from US$ 226 million in 2007 to more than US$ 707 million.
It’s interesting to see the big integrators putting on their best Gen X and Y impressions, all of sudden scrambling to be perceived as thought leaders. The reality is most big consulting firms will ride the enterprise coattails of the major software vendors, comfortably sitting back and cherry-picking the opportunities already seeded by vendors who’ve sprinkled bits and pieces of Web 2.0 throughout their platform.
And for the record, I actually thought the paper was informative, especially the case studies from some of the big brands. What I couldn’t figure out was why the social software categories were so light on content and were mainly geared towards the B2C side. Download the full publication here.
Listen to the podcast (MP3, 7m48secs, 7.21MB)
