Comments on: Enterprise 2.0 May be Fine for the Business, But What About the IT Department?

By: patricia1

patricia1 — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 01:17:50 +0000

I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

Patricia

http://dataentryjob-s.com

By: Edmund Ng

Edmund Ng — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 08:00:44 +0000

Great insight. Don’t be discouraged, web 2.0 has not developed into it’s full potential yet.

By: Jessie Paul

Jessie Paul — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 03:34:38 +0000

I think consumerization of Enterprise IT – which is what web2.0 will lead to – is going to change the way IT departments are structured. For example, if marketing wants a wiki there are enough opensource tools that can allow a techsavvy marketer to build one himself. Ditto with blogs. So because of customer or internal customer demand, web2.0 will be entrenched in business. this is a change from the past when business or defense originated new technologies and then they got adopted by general consumers.

By: Kelly Shaw

Kelly Shaw — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 20:57:33 +0000

Dear Dr. McAfee,

Good post. Thank you very much for sharing your insights.

I notice you talk about wikis, blogs and SNS, but not about mashups. In my blog (http://businessmashup.blogspot.com) I’ve applied your comments to mashups and found that they are equally relevant. Mashups have the potential to disrupt applications development organizations in the same way that wikis, blogs and SNS disrupt IT Operations.

Regards,

Kelly A. Shaw, Ph.D.
Analyst
Serena Software

By: Sayan

Sayan — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 18:40:52 +0000

I think Adrian says it all. W2.0 or E2.0 might be resisted, but it would penetrate the boundary sometime sooner or later, and would make incremental changes. I am bit skeptic about whether it would “revolutionize” “the business” (it sounds good only in presentations! ) but it would make an impact over a period of time, once the collected wisdom takes a definite shape and the more non-savvy users would start to see the benefits of the E2.0 tools.

By: Chris Bowering

Chris Bowering — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 17:41:51 +0000

These discussions about E2.0 and Web2.0 always remind me of a quote from a newsgroup I’ve had pinned on my wall for almost 15 years. I think it applies quite well:

“You cannot impose a new technology on an existing organization and expect all other aspects of that organization not to be affected.
You must engineer not only the software and hardware, but also a new social structure. If you do not, your system will be doomed to failure despite any technical merit it might have.”
-G2, Human Factors, Univ. of Toronto

(That’s the only attribution I’ve ever had for the quote.)

By: Adrian Moss

Adrian Moss — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 09:02:46 +0000

Hi,

History repeats itself. In 1984 we (Lotus Europe) undertook a survey with IT people on the importance and use of PCs and personal productivity software. Result – not needed/not wanted/not important. Less than 10% thought it worth watching! So all our marketing was directed to end users. Working often with fellow travelers HP and Compaq we never had problems filling our European seminar programmes with end users unhappy with poor IT service and support.

By: Web Design & SEO

Web Design & SEO — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 18:34:05 +0000

Hi, I’m a new reader of your blog, I just subscribed to your RSS feed. Great post.

By: Anne Pauker-Kreitzberg

Anne Pauker-Kreitzberg — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 19:44:13 +0000

I recently commented about the same InformationWeek article in my blog http://www.leadersintheknow.info. Web 2.0 is more about people than it is about technology which, perhaps, explains why the IT folks surveyed in InformationWeek dismissed the value.

Web 2.0 represents nothing less than a sea change in the modern workplace; organizations large and small are not ready.

The web world demands better talent at all levels of the organization. It requires people who can: form meaningful relationships from a distance; work across organizational and cultural boundaries; discern good information from bad; focus on the important rather than the extraneous; synthesize enormous amounts of information; and work collaboratively rather than hierarchically.

The web world throws the spotlight on how poorly organizations handle exceptions. The web is designed to handle routine processes and order fulfillment, disintermediating human intervention. It doesn’t do a good job of handling nonroutine questions or resolving problems. “Customer service” and “technology” have become oxymorons.

Today’s management cadre isn’t prepared for dealing with any of this. IT, HR, Legal and other staff divisions need to get with it and start to tackle the underlying issues their organizations face in implementing these technologies rather than to create roadblocks.

IT and HR departments have tried for decades to be viewed as strategic business partners, often without success. Rather than leading the charge, they are seriously underestimating the significance of Web 2.0 in transforming the business world and the workplace. As Millenials join them, this gap will become even more glaring.

By: Kishor

Kishor — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 13:02:20 +0000

It is important to clearly articulate that E2.0 indeed provides benefit to business. Some benefits may be more direct (revenue, profit etc.,) than others (employee productivity, knowledge management etc.,). The need is to devise different metric (than the traditional methods like ROI or CBA) to highlight such benefits in a language that business understands. One other way (to influence) is to show potential ‘loss of benefits’ in the absense of E2.0.