Experts: Stuffy insurance firms need infusion of Web 2.0

any insurance companies out there doing that really well.

Also, there hasn't been an instructive business model in the insurance industry that uses these technologies in the same fashion that an Amazon.com or eBay has transformed the retail business.

But, Hartnett believes that's likely to happen quite soon.

"Someone will come along, and that will change the game for everybody," said Hartnett.

If an enterprise doesn't have these tools and capabilities, it's going to be harder to attract and retain modern workers, said Chris Howard, vice-president and service director with the Burton Group.

"For some companies e-mail is about as modern as they've gotten." We're seeing large enterprises tiptoe into the Enterprise 2.0 space, but they're doing it because that's what users expect.

"My daughter going on 15 has never opened a user manual," he said. "She knows how to do every sophisticated thing in combination with her phone and computer, and when she gets into the workforce, that's what she expects to be there."

The 20-somethings already in the workforce have exactly the same expectations. So companies are starting to look at Enterprise 2.0 technologies, such as some kind of community supported by wikis and blogs inside the firewall where people can exchange ideas.

"Those technologies are relatively easy to deploy, but where companies are really struggling with this is more from a control perspective," said Howard.

"How free do they really want their employees to be, and what is safe to share within the walls of a company, versus where do there need to be pockets of exclusivity?"

Howard says one reason Microsoft's SharePoint portal has really taken off is it's relatively easy to install and administer. But in some ways it's growing faster than the enterprise is able to wrap controls around it.

Over the next few years, he said, we'll likely see organizations try to retrofit governance on top of the community that's already emerged.

So organizations need to determine where they're going to put limits on Enterprise 2.0, and how they're going to control it without snuffing it out.

The minute you start watching like Big Brother, he said, and employees are aware of that, they won't communicate with one another and you've completely extinguished the value of the technology.

"There's a lot of power in social computing and it's absolutely a commodity outside of the enterprise and users expect it -- and they will be highly productive if they have access to it," said Howard.

"The enterprise simply needs to modernize itself so it knows how to govern it."