a. The article spends little time discussing what Enterprise 2.0 is and how these technologies (barring their more hip names) differ from previous ones. I believe that Enterprise 2.0 is as much about the values as it is about specific technologies, and would have hoped that they'd spend more time on this. Read my Boxes & Arrows article for what I mean by values.

b. The article cites Forrester Research as predicting, " that identity services--directories that know who an individual is, what access he has, and even where he is--will be a unifying factor across all Enterprise 2.0 technologies, letting employees connect when and how they want to." I couldn't disagree more. Enterprise 2.0 is about conversations, informal ones where recorded words cannot be used against you in the future. If my online existence is being observed continously, I will be far less likely to participate online. I'd rather have five different usernames and passwords, than let my organization watch every step I take and every word I utter. Enterprise 2.0 is about letting go - not tracking employees more closely.

c. The article's authors encourage IT managers to carve Enterprise 2.0 into two main areas one being web-based information sharing and the other voice and messaging. Frankly speaking, I find this division flawed. It is perfect if you're building the technology and need separate project teams. But your users will not be looking at them separately. If you want these technologies to succeed pay more attention to how different audiences will use them and then choose the applications. Better still, let them tell you how to carve up Enterprise 2.0.

d. Talking of which, I believe an article that spends a lot of time discussing a survey of IT professionals and their views on the adoption of Enterprise 2.0 maybe actually missing the point. These are user driven tools coming in from the consumer space. If you want to really understand how they are being used or why they're failing, talk to the end users. They're the ones who have been using these tools in their personal lives and know their business context and they way they'd be happiest collaborating better than anyone else.

e. An article like this should recognize the hype surrounding Enterprise 2.0. It certainly has a lot of potential, I am a fan personally but one can argue that these aren't fundamentally different from technologies that have come before. The critical question is how mainstream these will ever become. And whether they need to become mainstream at all. Large organizations will continue to function with or without these technologies, the tougher question is whether these technologies will make the organizations more competitive.

f. And finally, the article as do a lot of consultants (myself included) discusses the need for more communication and collaboration within organizations. Companies say collaboration and information sharing is important and as we saw in the 1980s and 1990s they have been willing to invest a lot of money in those ideas. But the article does not discuss why specifically collaboration is important and why employees will be motivated to collaborate. In my experience, the reality in most organizations is that employees don't believe that they benefit much when they go out of their way to collaborate and communicate. Organizations need to make the case for collaboration more strongly before looking at Enterprise 2.0 solutions.