Businesses need to open up their networks and
applications to improve the return on investment of business
automation by taking advantage ofWeb 2.0 collaboration, Gartner has
advised.
The analyst firm has predicted that by 2009, six out of 10 new
collaboration-related IT projects will seamlessly incorporate
supplier, partner, and customer personnel, heralding a move away
from the traditional, closed, inward-looking organisation to a more
open, collaborative and innovative environment.
"Businesses have long understood the value of growing and
supporting the business environment in which they operate," said
Nikos Drakos, research director at Gartner. "Collaboration can be
supported in new ways, among customers, partners and teams, and IT
has a fundamental role in embedding these practices in the
business."
E-mail is the most widely used tool for collaboration, but its
use is so prolific that, at times, it has the opposite effect as
users cannot recognise important messages from "noise",
according to Gartner. Dakos believes other
social software applications, such as wikis, discussion forums
and blogs have the advantage of providing user-friendly and
flexible ways to aggregate, organise, share and amplify the value
of personal knowledge and experiences. "Improving
intra-organisational and inter-organisational communications with
people and groups that may not be able to physically interact is
the ultimate goal and organisations need to look at new and
innovative ways of making this happen," said Drakos.