By Dennis D. McDonald

Well, it's official: according to a special report in Ziff Davis' "CIO  Insight" magazine, Web 2.0 is coming to an enterprise near you!

While the date on the main page of the report is October 2, 2006, though, the articles in this collection actually stretch back a couple of years.

That's not necessarily bad, since among the topics addressed are important ones like security, governance, IT leadership, and (my favorite) integration with existing resources and businesses. But the lack of discussion of key issues like generational differences in adoption and the role of relationship management and knowledge sharing suggests a rather shallow perspective. Anyone who has been following the "enterprise web 2.0" space will therefore find little that's new here.

Still, I did like Edward Cone's Web 2.0 Reality Check article. Even though it dates from February 2006 (!) it does discuss the critical and challenging issue of integration of Web 2.0 tools purchased as a service (Salesforce.com is one that is mentioned prominently) with existing systems and infrastructure.

In fact, as general purpose (and somewhat dated) as this grab bag of articles is, it does place the Web 2.0 phenomenon into the context of overall IT-business relationships without focusing too heavily on the gee-whiz aspects of YouTube and MySpace general public adoption curves. One is left with some key issues to ponder:

1. How do we manage this new stuff?
2. How do we get it to work with the stuff we already have? 
3. What role should IT play?

So even though the concept of a "magazine" may seem somewhat archaic and "old media" in our brave new world of blogs and podcasts, it does pay from time to time to bring together a variety of viewpoints to address important topics, as is done here. Perhaps next time it will do a better job of combining "insight" with "what's hot."