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Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, along with blogs, wikis, RSS feeds and other messaging and collaboration tools, are finding their way into the workplace as enterprise applications. Analysts from Nielsen Norman, IDC and Gilbane say front-line workers are leading the charge, forcing senior management to go with the flow or stem the tide. The Facebook Generation wants to network with colleagues to communicate and collaborate.

Can an enterprise leverage collaborative software like blogs, wikis and microblogging platforms and retain compliance? It can, if collaboration platforms are built in-house from selected technologies, as opposed to an all-in-one suite from an Enterprise 2.0 (E20) vendor. Enterprise 2.0 compliance, in other words, is something best baked in from day one. What lies beneath that reality? Mike Gotta, a senior analyst at Burton Group Inc., believes that "compliance isn't a first-order design point for more enterprise 2.0 vendors," he said at the recent Enterprise 2.0 Conference 2009 in Boston. "How many vendors have permission models around their activity streams?"

Intel IT has deployed an enterprise-wide social computing platform that combines professional networking tools with social media such as wikis and blogs, and integrates with existing enterprise software. Read how Intel IT transformed collaboration across Intel while addressing top business challenges such as helping employees to find relevant information and expertise more quickly, breaking down silos; attracting and retaining new employees; and capturing the tacit knowledge of mature employees.

Community management is becoming a lot more common at all sorts of organizations - driven by adoption of people doing more and more online and the social media tools that allow for easy conversation and collaboration. As that happens, however, there is a lot of friction due to lack of standards - not just technical standards but also standard expectations and understanding of what community management is and what should be expected of it.

After spending a few hours using an early version of Google Wave today, it's clear that in its initial incarnation it won't be ejecting existing enterprise collaboration tools from the workplace any time soon. It's not that it isn't impressive, far from it, however Wave's complex interface and open-ended feature set provides an unexpectedly steep learning curve, particularly from a company that is famous for simple, powerful user experiences.

"'Socialytic' sounds buzzworthy, for sure. But in 2010, IDC says the combination of business, social and collaborative apps will transform the enterprise software market and alter ERP and BI vendors' products."

I agree with part of this one: "Vendors' growing emphasis on specific solutions in lieu of feature creep." Yes, solutions are clearly a trend, but a big differentiator here is the partner ecosystem. If you ask most vendors for specific solutions, most of the time you'll get partial pieces of the solution. It's very difficult for most pure-plays to have the horsepower to deliver end-to-end. Make sure you understand your vendor's alliance model.