In this IT World Canada article – Comanies Apply ROI to Web 2.0, Heather Havenstein refers to the outcome of a Forrester report summarizing a poll of 275 IT managers on the value of Web 2.0. Although positive in that there are benefits from some of the tools of Web 2.0, it still looks like the true value assesment is ‘squishy’. That is, there are no hard, measurable numbers to base your ROI on. At least from the IT manager’s perspective.

An important thing to keep in mind when you read this is the point of view within the enterprise of the folks polled – IT managers. The use of Web 2.0 tools within the IT department’s service offerings has some benefits. such as self service knowledge bases via a wiki. As mentioned in the article, giving your clients self serve access to information, so they can help themselves enables an IT manager to deal with a shortage of human resources within their department.

This is just one perspective from a narrow slice of the enterprise but it shows that there are indeed benefits to be had from implementing Web 2.0 in the enterprise.

Dean Owen