may not be able to physically interact.

In other words, Web 2.0 software has the potential to make companies more productive, thereby creating a new growth market for office productivity software. However, before that can happen, corporations are going to need to go through some wrenching cultural changes in order to use Web 2.0 software correctly, says Nikos Drakos, a research director at the market research and consulting firm Gartner.

In order to use Web 2.0 software, organizations will first need to open themselves to a wider collection of business and social networks in order to create a more collaborative and innovative workplace. Seamlessly incorporating supplier, partner, and customer personnel in social networks will require companies to move away from the traditional, closed, inward-looking organizations and toward a more open, collaborative, and innovative environment.

As an example, Drakos cites a recent announcement by the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer providing details of a collaboration project with Sermo, the fast-growing U.S. social networking site for doctors. Under the agreement, Sermo and Pfizer will work together to establish how drug companies can best communicate with physicians online, and provide drug and disease information to them on-demand. Implementing such a social network, however, has required Pfizer to decentralize decision making, collaborate across the ecosystem, and make a certain amount of the company's proprietary information available publicly.

Drakos observes that innovation depends increasingly on expanding businesses including a wider community. This is, by itself, nothing new. "Businesses have long understood the value of growing and supporting the business environment in which they operate," he explains. "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."

However, Drakos believes that companies will need to take an active, managed approach to open innovation in order to take collaboration to the next level and compete fully on a global level. For those industries and organizations still contemplating being more open, the biggest issue is likely to be changing the culture inside the organization to look favorably on collaboration and supporting social interaction – rather than simply bringing the software into production.

Before they get deeply involved in Web 2.0 technology, many companies will busily assess the social culture and processes in the current workplace, before using social software, and redirecting IT to give priority to openness, usability, people-centricity, and flexibility.

Therefore, if you're involved in selling software that falls under the Web 2.0 bailiwick, your specific challenge will be to identify companies ready to make this transition and help them through the culture knotholes.

For software vendors that successfully manage this feat, the rewards are likely to be substantial. Gartner estimates that the enterprise social software revenue market will reach $226.9 million in 2007 and will increase to more than $707.7 million by 2011, reaching a 41.1 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2006 to 2011. Gartner further predicts that by 2012, the primary role of business networks will be to support social interactions rather than routine business transactions.