Web 2.0 is moving to the enterprise with increasing speed. There is particular interest in content generation tools like blogs and wikis. Big traditional vendors like IBM Lotus and Microsoft are reacting with offerings that leverage their existing strengths in the enterprise space, but while they react, a host of small vendors are actively providing value to the very customers that have been so loyal to the traditional vendors. Why such strong traction for the small upstarts?

The answer is simple: They have strong offerings available today, and the time and cost to implement them is very attractive. And importantly, they also know what it takes to serve the enterprise market.

Read more at Forrester Research…

Information and knowledge managers are constantly bombarded by new technologies - like RIAs, wikis, blogs, and virtual worlds - or new market trends, such as the recent consolidation in business intelligence (BI). Plus there’s the ever-changing organizational dynamics - like a new CIO, an acquisition, or a new strategic direction for the enterprise - that drive constant change and raise your stress level. To prepare you for some specific issues before they become nagging problems, focus on these five top challenges in 2008: retention management, Enterprise Web 2.0, data governance, and data quality. And to prepare for the next longer-term big thing, keep your eye on business optimization - powered by BI, business process management (BPM), and business rules. By keeping these challenges within your sights and proactively taking steps to address them, you will not only look smart but also be prepared when these issues hit.

Read more at Forrester Research…

This is become more and more of an obvious trend to look out for: A twitter clone in the Enterprise. Some early tools are now sprouting up to enable cheap low-risk deployments of the necessary tools.

Read more at The FASTForward Blog…

Over the past seven years, Procter & Gamble employees have used Web logs and wikis, where users can share and create information collectively, and thousands have created profiles to connect professionally on Facebook and LinkedIn. In January, the Cincinnati-based company began a pilot program that gives employees a single Web-based entry to specialized company content, including news feeds and team rooms, browser-based applications that let groups collaborate on documents. The portal might one day lead to the nascent internal social networking platform Joe Schueller [in charge of deploying the new program] demoed, he says. P&G is also building a company “yellow pages” so workers can find one another by topic area. While Schueller has moments of doubt about the effectiveness of these technologies, he is unequivocal about their role at P&G. “I’m confident that some of these tools will have a permanent place here,” Schueller says. “We have 10,000 people in Facebook and 16,000 in LinkedIn. You can’t deny it.”

Read more at Baseline…

Via Bertrand Duperrin.

“I want to share something with you I’ve learned over the last decade of my life that I believe can be as helpful to you as it has been to me. In a nutshell, one of the most powerful and least understood aspects of business is how an emotional connection between management, employees and customers provides a competitive advantage. Unless the people who are part of a business feel a sense of connection — an emotional bond that promotes trust, cooperation and esprit de corps — they will never reach their potential as individuals, nor will the organization.”

Via The Entrepreneurial Mind.

Back in 2002, Ross Mayfield co-founded Socialtext, a company that sells enterprise wikis to companies looking to collaborate on key projects, improve products and customer service.

CIO’s C.G. Lynch chatted with Mayfield to see what the Socialtext wiki is all about, and what it might mean to companies with traditional IT systems.

Read more at CIO…

Research published this week by the Gartner recommends that organisations should not block access to social networking sites like Facebook, Bebo and others, but rather embrace these consumer tools to encourage creativity and collaboration on the job.

The research relies on a Gartner Executive Programs survey of 1,500 CIOs worldwide, in which half of the respondents said they plan to invest in Web 2.0 technologies for the first time in 2008.

Read more on PublicTechnology.net…

One of the trends these days is getting into an online active dialogue with stakeholders. The corporate communication professional has several online tools at hand. The most important tool is the corporate website, but E-mail, RSS, podcasts and corporate blogs are frequently used as well. A relatively new addition to this toolbox is microblogging. What is it and should companies consider using microblogging services?

Read more at CorporateWebsite.com…