ANTenna Blog -- Hardware & Software

A new report by Forrester Research predicts that enterprise spending on Web 2.0 technologies is going to increase dramatically over the next five years. But before you IT guys get all a-"twitter," we're not talking about consumer Web 2.0 here: We're talking Enterprise 2.0, and it's not your teenager's Facebook.

The Forrester report notes that, enterprise spending on Web 2.0 technologies will increase over the next five years, reaching $4.6 billion globally by 2013. At ReadWriteWeb, Sarah Perez explains the difference between consumer Web 2.0 and business Web 2.0, or as it is now being called, Enterprise 2.0.

She writes: "Most technologists segment the Web 2.0 market between "consumer" Web 2.0 technologies and "business" Web 2.0 technologies. So what does Enterprise 2.0 include then? Well, what it doesn't include is consumer services like Blogger, Facebook, Netvibes, and Twitter, says Forrester. These types of services are aimed at consumers and are often supported by ads, so they do not qualify as Enterprise 2.0 tools. Instead, collaboration and productivity tools based on the concepts of web 2.0, but designed for the enterprise worker will count as being Enterprise 2.0. In addition, for-pay services, like those from BEA Systems, IBM, Microsoft, Awareness, NewsGator Technologies, and Six Apart will factor in. Enterprise marketing tools have also expanded to include Web 2.0 technologies. For example, money spent on the creation and syndication of a Facebook app or a web site/social network widget could be considered Enterprise 2.0. However, pure ad spending dollars, including those spent on consumer Web 2.0 sites, will not count as Enterprise 2.0."

As Perez points out, one of the main challenges of getting Web 2.0 into businesses is getting past the IT "gatekeepers" who don't yet trust Web 2.0 tools and who will have to deal with integrating the new tools with the old infrastructure. This time, it's the business guys who are being charmed by these new technologies while the IT guys fuss about all the mess they're causing.

Most significantly to smaller businesses is that the report indicates that it's the larger enterprises that are more quickly embracing Enterprise 2.0 -- even though these new technologies require the flexibility and nimbleness of smaller organizations.

As Larry Dignan, reporting on the Forrester report, writes on ZDNet: "Enterprise 2.0 should appeal more to small to medium sized businesses as it may lower implementation costs and provide other productivity enhancements. Instead more than half of these smaller businesses aren't even considering enterprise 2.0 apps while the giants are diving in head first."

This is surprising.

Enterprise 2.0 is all about enhancing efficiency and productivity, something smaller businesses need to level the playing field against their larger-sized competitors. Dignan provides Forrester's definition of Enterprise 2.0: "In Forrester’s view, the key hallmark of Web 2.0 is efficiency for end users, and the ultimate goal is to use technology like Ajax, rich Internet applications, blogs, wikis, and social networks to foster productive, advantageous behavior among employees, customers, partners, and other networks such as Social Computing, the Information Workplace, and collective intelligence."

Smaller businesses, Enterprise 2.0 is here. Don't be left in the dust.