NEWS: Enterprise 2.0 To Become a $4.6 Billion Industry

Enterprise 2.0 To Become a $4.6 Billion Industry By 2013

from ReadWriteWeb by Sarah Perez

A new report released today by Forrester Research is predicting that enterprise spending on Web 2.0 technologies is going to increase dramatically over the next five years. This increase will include more spending on social networking tools, mashups, and RSS, with the end result being a global enterprise market of $4.6 billion by the year 2013.

Enterprise Web 2.0 to reach $4.6B — but who’s making the money?

from VentureBeat by Anthony Ha

Enterprise spending on Web 2.0 technologies like blogs, wikis and mashups will grow at a healthy rate of 43 percent annually, reaching $4.6 billion in 2013, according to a new report from Forrester analyst G. Oliver Young. There’s been some uncertainty about the best way to make money in this field, so Young also offers some tips to ensure that your software company gets a piece of that billion-dollar pie.

While consumer-focused companies like Facebook have been hogging a lot of the media glare, there’s been increasing heat on the enterprise side too. In the startup arena, we’ve covered quite a few announcements in this market — most recently collaboration startup Central Desktop’s $7 million first round of funding. Google has been taking an interest too and is looking to increase enterprise adoption of Google Docs through deals like its partnership with Salesforce. While we can’t vouch for Forrester’s exact numbers, Young makes a compelling case that the technology has matured, and that it will eventually become just another enterprise tool.

Not surprisingly, Young predicts that social networks will be the biggest chunk of the market, earning around $2.0 billion in 2013, followed by mashups and RSS (see chart below).

But software firms looking to sustain themselves in this market will face some serious obstacles too, Young says: Corporations are depending on resource-strapped IT departments to lead adoption, some customers expect enterprise Web 2.0 technology to be ad-supported and free like consumer products and new tools need to be compatible with existing software.

Ed: Slow conversation.