If you have not had the chance to read some of the information to come out of Gartner's recent Symposium/ITxpo, it's definitely worth the read (here, for example).  This, along with some other recent blogosphere posts by Nick Carr, Michael Platt (also here) and Dion Hinchcliffe as well as a recent article in the MITSloan Management Review here by Andrew McAfee have begun to take the discussion of what Web 2.0 technologies can do for an enterprise to the next level.  While a rehasing of everything presented in these posts and articles is outside the scope of this post, they are all well thought out and make some very good points related to the next generation of Enterprise software.  (By the way, not only are the posts themselves very good, but the comments are a must read as well).

User Adoption 

One point of debate seems to center around the fact that the vast majority of workers are not content producers.  They don't contribute to blogs, they don't maintain pages or sections of a wiki and they don't contribute to social tagging paradigms, thus training them to use internal blog or wiki software would be pointless as the adoption rate would be terrible.

What if these "new" tools (wikis, blogs, social tagging, etc.) were not used to primarily share knowledge?  What if, instead, they were used by a workgroup/department/company primarily to work more efficiently?  Then the knowledge capture would end up being a side effect of the work process.  (A hugely beneficial side effect).  These tools cannot be measured with the same yardstick that "consumer" wikis and blogs are measured with, since they are going to be used for different purposes (sometimes very different, sometimes slightly different).  Instead, if these tools are going to succeed in a corporate environment, they must be looked at not only based on how the company can benefit from them, but also based on how individuals can benefit.

For example, if a software development department uses a wiki to produce and publicize documentation, who benefits more?  Individual developers or the company as a whole? (Assuming the wiki is set up and maintained "properly") 

The developer gets a living, breathing set of documentation that makes it easier to know what's going on within the application under development.  This has to cut down on development time.  Additionally, since the entire development team is maintaining this documentation in one "place", communication about changes ends up being automated by the nature of viewing recent changes in the wiki.

The company, as a whole, gets several benefits out of this as well.  Increased productivity from its employees and the open sharing of "knowledge" about the application being developed (just to name a couple). 

In the end, the combination of all of these benefits together is not something that is easily measured.  However, you cannot deny that they are there, ready to be taken advantage of.  The issue will not be if these tools are adopted, it will be how they are adopted and how great a benefit comes out of implementing them.

The InnovationCreators Blog has a good video blog post making the business case for Corporate Blogging, definitely worth a watch.

If you are at all interested in the development of the next generation of applications for the Enterprise space, we would highly recommend you take a look over at Dion's blog Enterprise Web 2.0. He certainly has had several excellent posts lately, this one in particular makes some excellent points: Adding enterprise context to blogs, specifically:

"In truth, complexity has always been an enemy of user adoption and is something enterprise software doesn't emphasize enough. Enterprise content management (ECM), an enterprise big brother of wikis, is famous for its blizzard of complex features, which helps justifies the price tag but all too often doesn't help the content producer or consumer very much.

Balancing true ease of use with rich capability does appear to be vital for maximizing and sustaining user adoption and even cutting support costs. My experience tells me that enterprise software is often optimized for early adopters or getting through the acquisition evaluation process, and frequently focuses too little on the average user or the most common daily uses. "

We couldn't agree more. When thinking about where the next generation of software is going, you have to believe that at some point, users will realize that more features isn't always better. In fact, there have been a number of online software companies lately that are producing systems with the minimum of essential features in order to get the job done.

While we're not sure the extreme bare-bones approach is the best way to go for enterprise software, we do believe that the days of massive multi-million dollar software implementation and integrations will start becomming a thing of the past for the vast majority of companies.

More and more we are hearing from users that they just need to get the job done. They don't care if your software can do x, y and z if they only need to get x done- they only care about how well the features they need are implemented. This is one of the concepts we keep in mind when developing our software.

Software shouldn't get in the way of the process....it should make the process easier, more efficient, and more useful.

Recently, it seems there has been quite a surge in blogosphere conversations surrounding the meaning and importance of early adopters of new Web 2.0 software. The main message is that the initial logins for the first xxx-thousand users simply do not mean all that much in terms of the viability of the software.

If you have yet to read Josh Kopelman's 53,651 post, we highly recommend it. His argument is that new companies shouldn't be identifying those who regularly read TechCrunch as their typical user. This makes a great deal of sense from our perspective- even if your product is a utopia of technology, you need to focus on those in corporate america who have never heard of TechCrunch.

Among others, Om Malik follows this up very well in his post The Myth, Reality & Future of Web 2.0. While his entire post is well worth the read, the Web 2.0 Enterprise section is of particular interest to us. Some great quotes:

I think the Web 2.0 Web 2.0 philosophies (and related technologies) are
going to have the maximum impact in the enterprise.

The nimbleness of some of the Web 2.0 applications is a perfect match for
software on demand or SOA or whatever they are calling it this week.

And frankly, most enterprise applications could use a serious makeover.

Think about it: with the new interface techniques and quick responding ajax-based UI components you use on sites like Flickr, del.icio.us, Gmail and Yahoo! Mail BETA, how much faster could you get your job done if the same amount of intuitive "helping" elements were added to the Enterprise software you use on a daily basis?

We believe it can not only make employees much more productive, but also drastically reduce a company's software and overhead costs...more to come on that later.

Many people think that the Enterprise software space is in the midst of a transformation. We are seeing a move away from heavy, complex and costly enterprise-class software to light weight, easy to use, and (much) cheaper online-delivered software. This shift has been building steam for quite some time now. You only need to look as far as the success of sites/products like SalesForce.com and NetSuite to see how beneficial this approach can be.

Some of the more tangible benefits:

• No IT infrastructure / maintenance / dependence / additional resources
• Access from anywhere / anytime
• The possibility of (cheaper) integration between systems through open industry standard protocols (RSS, SOAP, REST, etc.)

However, there are also some drawbacks that need to be addressed by each of these software providers as they come online and/or continue to develop their products:

• Security - If a company does not believe their data is secure, even the best sales person will never get them to sign-up.
• 24/7 Access - As witnessed by SalesForce.com's downtime back in January, when a widely used site like that goes down, users get really angry- and they aren't quiet about it.
• Customers - not technology - come first. We have seen advertisements that tout increased AJAX functionality, when much of the target market doesn't understand or care about this.

While these tangible benefits can certainly be compelling and the drawbacks will be addressed, we feel it is the intangible benefits of the new wave of online software that will prove to be the most interesting.

Currently taking the lead in developing new, more user friendly ways to get things done is the Consumer online software space. Witness how easy it is to add a link to Delicious, share a digital photo in Flickr, contact someone on MySpace or get a personal blog created at Blogger.com.

What do these online applications have in common?

1. They are ridiculously easy to use. Some even sacrifice functionality in order to make the usability better.
2. More and more, they provide open API's which allow other software to extend and compliment their features. Flickr users can include their photos on their Blog with very little effort.
3. The software incorporates 'smart' user interface elements which allow users to do more within the context of a single 'page'.

These commonalities among the new generation of online applications give us great hope when looking towards the future of software. When taken in the context of the Enterprise, you can already see the evolution taking place. SalesForce users are, in general, diehard fans- making it nearly impossible for companies to switch to a SalesForce competitor. Why? Because the SalesForce software has a simple learning curve (quick user adoption) and allows users to do what they need to do with relative ease.

So why does all of this matter?

Because as we noted in our previous post, Web 2.0 and the Enterprise, software should not get in the way, it should help. Chances are if you're using enterprise software on a daily basis on the job, it took you way too long to learn how to use it and too much time to complete even simple tasks. As the focus of software developers continues to shift towards the end user, we can expect the tools we use on a daily basis to become much more friendly. No longer will it take you 10 minutes to add a contact into your billing system or 5 minutes to give a co-worker access to internal reports.

Many of those reading this post understand the potential benefits of creating repositories of knowledge that can be updated by anyone with an opinion, objective thought, or other contribution. Technologies such as BLOGs and WIKIs fill a void in corporate knowledge management in a unique way- by giving everyone in a company the ability to contribute to the common good.

And despite the obvious value that is evident by the use of these tools, research shows that they are not yet ready for widespread implementation. For every article such as this one, outlining several success stories having to do with social networking, there is a research firm publishing data about how few decision makers use BLOGs, understand Web 2.0, or subscribe to RSS feeds.

So, how then do you make your case for instituting some social networking software in your company? As is mentioned in the article included above: create a demo. Find the worst project you suffered through and show how pitfalls and mistakes could have been avoided had the software been in place. You could even get one started, and get some buy-in from others to see how effective it really is for you.

Another key ingredient to distributed content management is the idea that whatever is entered into your system will be more relevant to your company. Executives for government contracting firms will keep tabs on the opinions of media analysts to try to understand implications of new legislation- but imagine if there was a knowledgable person in the company who could provide the same insight, but relevant to your business.

For example: budget is increased to aid in border security. The media analysts identify all of the areas that could potentially benefit from the extra available contracts. Meanwhile, because you have a BLOG that employees are encouraged to contribute to, someone has the idea that a project done for the Navy can be repurposed for the CoastGuard.

A bit idealistic, perhaps, but there does exist the possibility to reap some significant rewards from these technologies. But it is up to you to sell them in your own company.