A survey conducted by Open Text has found almost one third of Australian organisations have an enterprise web 2.0 or departmental web 2.0 deployment.

A further 9% were in the process of deploying, while 13% are considering how best to implement. Only 7% have decided, for the foreseeable future, not to deploy the technology. Its popularity is rising, with 44% considering it a must have and 29% a ‘nice to have’, 1% feel web 2.0 is more hype than reality.

The major benefit most organisations are seeking from the technology is an improvement in knowledge sharing and the creation of communities between employees, suppliers, customers and/or business partners – 80% of respondents listed these reasons. Secondary reasons include improved decision making, employee productivity, employee record keeping, compliance and social benefits of connectedness.

Regarding deployment, 67% of organisations believe employee productivity and decision making are important or very important factors. Other factors include cost, value for money, ease of integration with other tools, applications or environments and compliance with existing technology architecture.

The biggest barriers to adoption are organisational culture change (52%), the need for executive sponsorship (35%) and lack of a business case (30%).

“Its clear that organisations understand there are benefits to be obtained from enterprise web 2.0 and that a great many are now pursuing such solutions at both enterprise and departmental levels.   As these deployments mature the benefits of their applications will become more tangible, delivering quantifiable results that resolve the business case.  Once this occurs you can expect to see greater executive sponsorship starting to flow,” said Graham Pullen, VP Asia Pacific, Open Text.

The results seem to support Hydrasight’s recent report.