Enterprise 2.0

Nortel and IDC have just put out a new piece of research looking at the relative connectivity of 2,400 people in 17 countries. They asked questions about both device and application usage to determine four distinct cluster of ‘connectedness’:

• Hyperconnected: “Those who have fully embraced the brave new world, with more devices per capita than the other clusters and more intense use of new communications applications. They liberally use technology devices and applications for both personal and business use.”
• Increasingly Connected: “Those who are using multiple devices and applications but fewer than the hyperconnected. They use blogs and wikis, but they are half as likely as the hyperconnected to be involved with social networks, a third as likely to use voice over IP (VoIP).”
• Passive Online: “Those who use even fewer devices but are beginning to experiment with some applications, like instant messaging, but aren’t ready for more advanced Web 2.0 applications, like social networking or video conferencing over the Web.”
• Barebones Users: “Those who are online but pretty much stick to email, desktop access to the Internet, and cell phone use for voice calls.”

The analysis clearly shows a bias towards the number of devices as the key indicator of connectedness. Whilst this is not surprising given who commissioned the research, I’m not sure it’s the best or only indicator, as it doesn’t take an IDC researcher to tell you that the more devices someone has, the more applications they are likely to use. This bias is shown most clearly in the geographic breakdown of results. Of all the regions, North America had fewer ‘hyperconnected’ or ‘increasingly connected’ respondents. I can understand completely why that would be true for devices as the region was quite late to the mobile internet party, but are they really telling us that use of connected applications is higher in every other region? I personally find that hard to believe.

But what of the impact on the enterprise. Well, they identify six key challenges of which only three are worth repeating (the other three are predictably designed to support Nortel’s market position):

1. The lines between business use and personal use for devices and applications are blurring, making usage harder to monitor or police.
2. These new technologies and applications will affect the work/life balance, which employers may need to support.
3. The hyperconnected will expect to work in a rich communication environment, so employers will need to provide solutions in order to attract and retain the most connected people.

You can grab the report from Nortel’s website (name and email registration required).