It appears that many enterprise 2.0 collaboration tools are struggling to be adopted. According to recent research by Forrester, social networks, blogs, wikis and virtual worlds are being shunned by workers as they continue to communicate by phone or email. The survey of 3,000 European knowledge workers found that, while 99% of workers collaborate with others and 81% work with two or more people in different time zones or regions, current tools do not meet their needs.
Much of the problem centres around security and respondents cited issues with control of information once it has been distributed as a key barrier. In addition, collaborative working may simply not be engaging enough. Forty-four percent of respondents are looking for more engaging ways to collaborate.
Worse still, half of information security professional recently polled by Webroot, intend to shelve plans for collaboration as a result of security concerns. The Webroot survey found just 25% of security professionals are prepared to move ahead in spite of security concerns and only 15% have already resolved their security issues. The remaining 10% have no plans for collaborative working.
So it seems that if workers are still anchored to their phones and email, it would be better to securely collaboration enable these (e.g. unified communications) rather than ask them to adopt alien landscapes (e.g. virtual worlds) which require completely different working practices.
I've been writing about technology for nearly 20 years, including editing industry magazines Connect and Communications International. In 2002 I co-founded Futurity Media with Anthony Plewes. My focus in Futurity Media is in emerging technologies, social media and future gazing. As a graduate of philosophy & science, I have studied futurology & foresight to the post-grad level.