Enterprise 2.0 is a $4.6bn market - so where does that leave SaaS?

Forrester reports that Enterprise 2.0 will be a $4.6bn market by 2013, as reported in ReadWriteWeb.

We're in the middle of an Enterprise 2.0 / SaaS / PaaS / Add your term here for this emerging arena - and the thing that is most amusing / frustrating / time consuming is that the same rough buckets of money appear in many / all of the different market sizings, so that double / triple / quadruple counting is endemic / systemic / the norm.

Not only that, but as ReadWriteWeb notes, a lot of "Web 2.0" stuff are features, not products in their own right, so are fairly easily absorbed into current Enterprise applications.

The article goes on to talk about the vexing question of getting adoption, the standard issues are raised:

- "Not invented here" - groups outside IT want them, IT doesn't, because...
- IT has no budget for new stuff
- IT has to run a reliable, secure, scalable infrastructure - it needs new unproven stuff like it need a hole in the head
- IT will use the free consumer version rather than pay up
- IT will wait for their current suppliers to integrate the services

Our observation is that these technologies will be adopted faster by:

- Companies in sectors where the tools will impact what they actually do for a living - not everyone needs a Wiki, Blog or Social widget desperately
- Smaller companies, for whom the low cost bang for buck is attractive and the existing infrastructure is less pervasive
- Areas outside IT will drive adoption, as by definition they will have the need

But the path of adoption will be low price, low risk in the early days - who is going to bet the server farm on small companies that couldn't deliver an extensive SLA ........

Update - article by Larry Dignan bringing up similar questions to us is over here

Update 2 - the Beeb swallows it all hook line and sinker. Tsk.