The problem with Enterprise 2.0...

...is that it hasn't solved Enterprise 1.0's issue, i.e. a lopsided sales model. That anyway is the contention of Jeff Nolan, in a post in Sandhill.com (link from Tom Foremski)

Enterprise software suffers from a self-inflicted wound: an inherently unscalable sales model (if you aren’t one of the big bracket companies.)....

...I have often said, and written here, that customers have gotten better at buying software than we have at selling them software. It is only after questioning what to replace the broken software-sales system with that buyers fully understand that the current model benefits them and are thus reluctant to accepting change.

Maybe at the end of the day it’s less about a new sales model and more about wringing costs out of everything else in order to afford the cost of sales and still deliver a decent margin?

That sounds about right - the combination of Vendor Bidding "technology", long sales cycles, high operating costs, onerous terms of service and support, and relentless throat cutting (offshore) competition has made much of Enterprise IT a miserable business to be in for any but the largest players, hence:

(i) The consolidation within the industry (will Oracle and SAP buy it all at some point?)
(ii) The (grudging but widespread) acknowledgement that the bulk of innovation today is coming from the consumer side

And despite Open Source goodness, reduced cost Services-as-a-Service and so on, its still a long, hard - and expensive - sell, with high risks and (too often) low margins - and the High Risk, Low Reward box in the strategic 2x2 is not a sustainable place to be.

As Mr Nolan notes, Enterprise-heads are all waiting for VC's to once again discover that there is money to be made in enterprise software.

After all, if they are capable of funding the Nth me-too Social Network, they must be dum... I mean willing enough to fund the next Enterprise 2.0 SaaS/PaaS/SOA play - surely

However, I think the giveaway is at the end of Mr Foremski's article

I know when the next new thing will emerge…

It will emerge from this coming recession. The next new/big thing has always emerged from the bust cycles in SIlicon Valley.

It is my empirical observation that Enterprise software only really becomes sexy when the bright young consumer things have either exited the dance floor or collapsed.

Update - Nick Carr got to blog a McKinsey Survey before me, it says that the only real way out - apart from being big - is the "aaS" model with its differing economics. If only it were that easy, the Solution-aaS has to be very "point form" to sell easily - guys like Salesforce are struggling with long cycle times like any CRM player.