Oliver Marks in a post in the Collaboration 2.0 weblog explores what the IT function and what the top management of companies think that Enterprise 2.0 is. Since most Enterprise 2.0 applications… “include social and networked modifications to company intranets and other platforms”, it is an important question. Not surprisingly, the IT function sees this as a threat to security and an increasing threat to intranet content creation and presentations standards. Many of the these applications use data from existing enterprise apps and re-purpose the content for the E2.0 application, introducing further security risks to the IT platform.
What is interesting from my prospective, however, is that there is not any discussion of removing other collaboration or knowledge management applications from the stack of applications currently supporting the business. Enterprise 2.0 applications should have a clear business purpose, which is not, in fact, orthogonal to the mission of the IT function or other support functions. IT is always introducing new tools and migrating from one application to another. They need to make the business case for doing so, and the Enterprise 2.0 advocates should do the same.
One way to overcome resistance in the IT function is to include them in the requirements definition phase of the work, in the software selection process, and in the implementation phases. In fact, the IT function should understand the costs of the legacy applications, and be able to calculate the cost reduction opportunities.
Enterprise 2.0 applications should be presented as part of the natural progression of applications that make knowledge workers more productive. Knowledge management and the first wave of collaboration applications, improved productivity. Enterprise 2.0 applications will increase it even further.
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