I just read an interesting post on The state of Enterprise 2.0 and it seems like the various technologies that make up Enterprise 2.0 (RSS, Blogs, Wikis, Mashups, Communities) seem to be gaining acceptance and some traction in the enterprise.  Not surprising - I think the big losers will be the traditional enterprise portals. At the moment you can’t really find a complete Enterprise 2.0 stack, but it is clear that the writing is on the wall - and the Enterprise\Web 2.0 versions of the stack are much more useful, entertaining and engaging then the standard enterprise portal solution.

As I stated in an earlier post the Web 2.0 world is starting to penetrate into the enterprise, defining new ways to collaborate and raising ease of use expectations - things that are not usually at the forefront of existing enterprise portal technology.There was one specific quote in the article that intrigued me “The biggest impact of this lesson is that these new tools are so different and generally support such different types of knowledge than usually captured, that impact to existing systems seems to be minimal. Interestingly, you might see a decrease in the use of e-mail or ECM when the conversations that formerly happened on those platforms make a more natural home in Enterprise 2.0 platforms” (the emphasis is mine).  This got me thinking, since one of the main selling points of Web 2.0 technologies is that they will eliminate (or at least substantially decrease) email usage.  I have never seen any numbers to bear out this claim. My gut tells me that the number of emails in enterprises is growing, not shrinking (see “Intel flirts with No Email Fridays” for at least anecdotal corroboration), and I just don’t see why these technologies will change that substantially. Enterprise 2.0 technologies  may end up slowing the growth of email a bit, but are certainly not turning the tide.

My guess is that email is too pervasive, too general, too useful and too simple a tool to ever be replaced. I only wonder if as with the “paperless office” - where computers and technology were going to replace the need for paper, but instead only seemed to increase its usage - enterprise 2.0 technologies won’t actually generate additional uses for email…

Stumble it!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 24th, 2007 at 6:47 am and is filed under VC, enterprise 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.