03/27/2008

The AIIM Market Intelligence group has released its Market IQ study "Enterprise 2.0: Agile, Emergent and Integrated". The study of 441 end users, underwritten by CoreMedia, Day Software, EMC, OpenText, Socialtext, and SpringCM, found that a majority of organizations position Enterprise 2.0 as critical or important to business goals and objectives, but that few organizations have a clear understanding of Enterprise 2.0.

ebizQ received the following:

The single greatest factor impacting attitudes, adoption rates and definitions is corporate culture. To download the FREE AIIM Market IQ go to: www.aiim.org/article-industrywatch.asp?ID=34464

"Enterprise 2.0 is on the minds of most organizations," states AIIM Vice President Carl Frappaolo. "44% of respondents indicated that Enterprise 2.0 is imperative or significant to corporate goals and objectives. Another 27% positioned Enterprise 2.0 as having average impact on business goals and success."

According to Frappaolo, "That's the good news. The bad news is there is still much confusion in the market concerning Enterprise 2.0. Of the organizations polled, 74% stated they have only a vague familiarity or no clear understanding of Enterprise 2.0."

Market confusion further evidenced in the study the failure of respondents to popularly select a common definition of Enterprise 2.0. AIIM defines Enterprise 2.0 as: "A system of Web-based technologies that provide rapid and agile collaboration, information sharing, emergence, and integration capabilities in the extended enterprise." One reason for this chasm between appreciation of impact and a lack of understanding of Enterprise 2.0 stems from the strengths of Enterprise 2.0, low-barrier, low-cost deployment. Many organizations are experimenting with facets of Enterprise 2.0, but few take a holistic strategic view to deployment.

The report, which contains over 50 pages of commentary and 71 distinct data points, includes some surprising insights. According to Dan Keldsen, report co-author and AIIM Market Intelligence Director, "Our research showed that senior management is as much behind the drive for Enterprise 2.0, as end users. This is a far different reality than popular market belief that Enterprise 2.0 is predominately being ushered into organizations through purely bottom-up user-based implementations."

While age had some influence on opinions and attitudes concerning Enterprise 2.0, the study found that corporate culture was a far more influencing factor on organizational adoption and success with Enterprise 2.0. "Using a methodology I employed as a Knowledge Management consultant," said Frappaolo, "we segregated our surveyed organizations based on their affiliation with a Knowledge Management-inclined culture. This, more than any other single factor polarized other survey results. Organizations that exhibited a Knowledge Management-inclined culture were much further ahead in both adoption of Enterprise 2.0 and deriving value from it."