Why E2.0 hasn't tipped - Part 1: Technology

Enterprise2.0 will not go mainstream until Microsoft, IBM, Sun and Google come together. Fat chance? They already seem to skirting around the edges of late. As Steve Larsen said to Shel Israel @Demo; "Constraint spawns creativity."

The E2.0 constraint is  the fear, uncertainty and doubt that the agents of calcification are using to delay the inevitable. Meanwhile, the behemoths sense an all-out land grab may not be a zero-sum game. Enter open source.

Gartner says that open source is impossible to avoid. That will bring the behemoths together and that will deliver Enterprise2.0 solutions that the vast majority of companies will see as the future of choice. For now, as uplifting as the E2.0 success stories collated by Bill Ives are, it is only the start of the beginning, as all these examples are despite what happening with the big guns.

Microsoft may finally have woken up, although it might be ganged up on by the others (and copying them) while tryng to deal with an operating system that is, says Hamish Newlands, a "late, bloated and unpopular failure".

Meanwhile IBM is giving away Symphony to rival Office, Google is some way off from a PowerPoint alternative, though it shows it's social creds with Shared Stuff, and there's excitement about the Flock social browser from Firefox.

If open source can get them main players to come together, maybe we can soon look back at some point in the future and say that that was the tipping point for E2.0.