The needs of large enterprises for efficient internal and external social collaboration and communication have not changed in this market environment…in fact in the current market environment the ability to create efficiency in the channels that you use to communicate with partners, clients and employees and to share ideas and data critical to running the business is more important than ever. It is fascinating that at a time when the market is in such a massive state of flux that enterprises are also being faced with arguably the most disruptive change they have ever experience on the technology landscape, i.e. the change from an enterprise application environment where standardization on tools and applications is designed to drive adoption and efficiency vs. the shift to the cloud. it is not only a technological shift but also a cultural shift.

The reality is that this shift is inevitable and that ultimately every Fortune 500 company will succomb to it. The tipping point is being accelerated by this incredible statistic that was shared in a recent conversation:

“The number of NetGen (those born between 1977 – 1997) will equal the number of Boomers in the US Workforce by 2010” – nGenera Insight Research

In the midst of this shift that is slowly occurring is great news. Because of the massive boom time that we have been through and the considerable wave of venture investing fueling companies focused on innovation of collaboration for the consumer, an unprecendented layer of tools, technologies and infrastructures have been establish in the “cloud” to facilitate efficient interaction across large connected groups. While these applications, i.e. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and so many more struggle to monetize they are freely and readily available to to the large enterprise and have the potential to enable incredible productivity increases and cost savings:

“Companies recognize that the growing capabilities now offered by Enterprise 2.0 and cloud applications offer a huge competitive advantage, not only because they are low cost, but also because they are flexible, and even more important, open up the information flow between teams, departments, partners, and customers.” – Recession 2.0, Meet Enterprise 2.0, Joe McKendrick

The use cases of these applications are many and include new channels or customer service, partner management, sales and project management, change management in the face of the recent wave of industry consolidation and associate communication. This quote sums it up very nicely:

“The promise of bringing social tools into organizations has never been about complicating worker productivity. It centers on allowing individuals to act more independently and to make smarter decisions more easily.” said Susan Scrupski, an ‘Enterprise 2.0 Evangelist’ with nGenera, an Austin-based Enterprise 2.0 developer and consulting company, “The end result really is in reducing the costs of creating and delivering products and services.”

As Seth Godin points out in his latest work “Tribes“, the Tribes within the enterprise are waiting for leadership and organization. The infrastructure is there and ready to be leveraged and will usher in amazing change. The current market conditions have created an environment in which putting together a business case justification for the use of existing public social applications that employees know, use and love is not difficult.

To be clear, this change will not mean displacement of existing internal collaboration solutions, i.e. Wikis, Blogs, Sharepoint, nor rendering existing legacy investments no longer valuable. In fact the only way that this change will be embraced is if this new layer of public applications that offers such as huge ROI and radically new thinking in terms of the economics of software investment, can all seamlessly interoperate for the good of the enterprise.

So leverage this current market downturn to build traction, excitement and momentum around embracing external social collaboration applications and technology. Doing so today will position your enterprise in a uniquely competitive way when the inevitable recovery begins.