The introduction of Web 2.0 technologies into the enterprise greatly increases the value of your company?s most important asset: employees? knowledge, relationships and initiative. Increased collaboration accelerates productivity. Making knowledge more visible increases innovation and shortens turnaround times. Your company transforms into a more socially connected organization that reacts faster and more effectively to the market.

The Consumer Web has shown us the power of the Internet as a social, collaborative platform, particularly when compared to existing rigid corporate environments. Wikis, blogs, RSS feeds, social networks, tagging and mashups are flexible, user-driven tools that have the potential to bring many benefits to the enterprise. Leading companies are harnessing Web 2.0 and applying it to build their next-generation workplaces. The new, Enterprise 2.0 workplace becomes an Internet-powered, user-focused and community-centric social fabric. This social Web ties together people, ideas, content, processes, systems and other enterprise artifacts. Importantly, these connections are both explicit (e.g. let?s have a meeting) and implicit (e.g. tracking user activities to rank the relative value of documents).

In addition to connections, another key aspect of the social Web is its participative or do-it-yourself (DIY) nature. Employees are empowered to create and publish content that is easily consumable throughout the company and externally by customers and partners. The social Web captures and makes accessible previously invisible knowledge, an ignites new conversations among employees that lead to new innovations that would not have previously occurred.

However, Web 2.0 in the enterprise has significant differences from the Consumer Web. Enterprises have many mission critical processes and must often adhere to regulatory requirements. Thus, there is a need for these new tools to provide high availability, security and integration with existing systems and applications to support data confidentiality, system reliability, audit-ability and other IT requirements. Inside the enterprise, these Web 2.0 solutions must be deployable in an integrated fashion by IT to provide employees with secure access to DIY features and integration with relevant legacy systems such as CRM and email. Other considerations such as liability, reputation and validated information must also be considered, especially when Web 2.0 technologies are used for external-facing initiatives.

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