- “larger enterprises are almost twice as likely to pilot or deploy Web 2.0 technologies in 2008 compared to the small and medium” companies
- “the soft business value of Web 2.0 is clearly a larger deterrent in SMBs than in the enterprise. Most SMBs have neither the brand cachet to sustain customer communities nor the distributed workforce to necessitate a Web 2.0 collaboration deployment.”
For $279 you can buy the report by Forrester’s Oliver Young containing these nuggets of wisdom.
Yikes! This just is not true. Without much poking, I’m sure his survey methodology could be picked apart (which companies were asked? did you ask only the IT deparment head, i.e., the last guy line managers would tell about their excellent inexpensive $99/month wiki? etc). Many, many (especially new) companies use wikis and online collaboration tools to run their businesses. Most of these services are inexpensive (or even free). The majority of businesses using collaborative software are SMEs (small and medium enterprises). They’re part of what 37signals calls the “Fortune 5,000,000″. But my guess is that this Forrester report does not count Basecamp (for project management and collaboration) as a Web 2.0–since it does not neatly fit into one of their Web 2.0 boxes of “wiki”, “blog”, “tagging or metatagging”, “podcast” or “social networking tool”. And there are hundreds of thousands of start-ups and SMEs using other enterprise wikis and colloboration tools, like:Zoho, Google Apps, Clearspace, Traction Teampage, Atlassian Confluence, Onesite, Socialtext, Central Desktop, Brainkeeper, Neartime, Wetpaint, ProjectSpaces, Blogtronix, PlanHQ, Joint Contact, Zimbra, Project360, Mindtouch, Community server.org, Citadel, Airset, Systemone, ProjectForum, Taskbin, Firestoker and 37signals other tools (Highrise, Backpack, Campfire). And even Sharepoint will be installed in a fair number of medium size enterprises (and even some small ones). And I’d guess that that the great majority of SMEs use Skype for long-distance voice/video and messaging–for collaboration.
Some of these expensive expert reports from Forrester that I read are just plain off (I just read a slew on CRM). Non-expert researchers peddle statistics and buzz concepts to executives in big companies who know even less about these topics than they do: in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king…
The irony is that Web 2.0 threatens to disintermediate Forrester and others like them, especially if they publish “findings” of this quality…
Web 2.0 keeps winning over more and more small and mid-sized enterprises, that’s for sure. I watch some of the tools out there and I can say, that some of them are really successful, like this Wrike app for example – http://www.wrike.com. The guys keep delivering new features, which means that they do have money for further development.
Interesting, you’re dead right, I think SME’s are leading the way here, naturally, as most of these web 2 tools are about empowering the end user, and giving a small business a smart global platform for running their business for a small monthly fee, something not every IT department wants to see happen to their corporate IT empires.
We certainly designed PlanHQ with the SME in mind, these are the businesses that have a need to be super smart and lean,
Tim.
Thanks, Tim. My argument would certainly be bolstered if I had more statistics (e.g., raw number and %, over time, of SMEs vs. large corporations using enterprise Web 2.0 tools). Let me know if you’ve seen any good stats in this realm!
[...] by Dan Carew Enterprise 2.0 means the application of Web 2.0 tools in larger businesses. While smaller businesses (SMEs) can use hosted ASP tools for business, a la Backpack, large enterprises need more robust, secure and customized tools with fuller feature [...]