from Sameer A Pateel

ZDNet Blogger and eternal pragmatist, Dennis Howlett is at it again. As a follow up to his original “Enterprise 2.0: What a Crock” post and an attempt by a panel at the Enterprise 2.0 conference to respond to his contention, he validates his original argument, saying:

What I find staggering is that despite the panel’s general acknowledgment that ‘it is early days’ they have no clear answers for solving the problems that Enterprise 2.0 evokes. If this is the best that industry can put forward then forget it. There are far bigger problems to solve like correctly managing the workforce in times of economic crisis, smoothing out lumpy supply chains, beating down on data center costs or just getting ERP to deliver the benefits that were intended and which have consumed billions of IT spend dollars.

Given how the discussion on Enterprise 2.0 plays out on the blogosphere as well as at conferences, you really can’t objectively argue with this statement. In fact, Ill go further: The ‘Its the early days’ argument just doesn’t stand up. No different from the plethora of consumer services that we all use (Twitter et al), first impressions are lasting impressions in the enterprise setting as well. As participants, we make up our minds very early about the usefulness of a program, technology or service. And so if intent, incentive, context and usability are not hard coded into the effort from the get go, its never going to have the required street credibility, no matter how much time and money you throw at adoption.

And if you can’t shake fact that Dennis often sports an ERP-colored lens, a fresh eye provided by Venturebeat reporter Anthony Ha also results in a similar conclusion.