Chris your point about finding real world applications of this technology resonate with what I am seeing in the marketplace, especially for vendors of E2.0 software.
Customers are looking to tie E2.0 purchases to more concrete benefits. Relying on trends and curves that show everyone is moving up and to the right isn't moving the market. We are at, or close to, the trough of disillusionment.
What I am seeing is that customers do want to hear from vendors around references where others in the same vertical market are deploying technologies to achieve business benefit. They also want these services mapped to their businesses. 'You need AJAX powered, social networked wiki / blog / discussion' is no longer likely to open the purse strings with customers as it did just 6 months ago. Whereas going into a financial services company and demonstrating that facilitating online collaboration between brokers and their customers can lead to improved customer retention and satisfaction is likely to open the door.
This isn't to deny that there can be disruptive value in companies buying in strategically to E2.0 investments - just that more and more customers get the value at a high level, but are rightly skeptical and cautious about just where and how they deploy. Maybe this is a simpler value proposition within organizations for highly generic team project capabilities - but to selectively deploy E2.0 capabilities into the fabric of to-be business processes now requires valid use cases and more measurable value.
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