A survey of Asia Pacific enterprises has found that Web 2.0 tools are becoming increasingly commonplace, with business people rather than technology leaders driving demand, and only one in ten enterprises reporting no plans to travel the Web 2.0 route.

Conducted last month by research firm Hydrasight, the study found that 46 % of respondents had developed wikis and 36 % were using blogs. Twitter was also identified as potentially valuable given its marketing potential, with about a quarter of respondent organisations already using the system.

Research director John Brand told iTWire that the survey canvassed the opinions of a wide range of different sectors, and “ironically Government is adopting Web 2.0 and cloud computing faster than most other sectors. Although they are behind, they are leading in Australia.”

Brand stressed that the impetus was not coming from IT shops in enterprises which were more reluctant to embrace and disseminate Web 2.0 tools than were business users. “Demand appears to be coming from business users based on what they are experiencing on the public internet.  The technical roles were more reluctant than the business oriented role,” said Brand.

That’s not the case in all organisations however. At a technology conference held by the Sydney Diocese of the Anglican Church last week the head of information systems and technology, George Lymbers, indicated that he believed Web 2.0 style communications both within the church administration, and outside with the broader community and congregations would be important for the church to remain connected and relevant.

“It’s horses for courses, some of our school organisations are already using Web 2.0 tools,” said Lymbers, although he acknowledged that other parts of the organisation such as aged care providers were moving more slowly.

Overall however he remained very enthusiastic about the roll-out of Web 2.0 tools which could underpin community engagement.

According to the Hydrasight report, Enterprise Web 2.0 in Asia Pacific (Australia 2009), to date most Web 2.0 applications hinge around publishing and information management with fewer examples of more sophisticated implementations featuring collaborative tagging or social analytics, where enterprises might trawl social networks to identify issues which might impact their brand or reputation. Although some organisations are beginning to engage in sentiment mining (Telstra for example is trialing a tool to monitor commentary about the company on Twitter) this remains in its infancy according to the study.

The report follows an earlier survey in 2007 which also explored enterprise attitudes about Web 2.0 tools. According to Brand; “While interest and adoption in web 2.0 has grown in Asia Pacific over the past two years, organisations remain challenged by the difficulties in determining the appropriate application of web 2.0 technologies and suitable use cases.  The most likely scenario is that enterprise web 2.0 will evolve in a similar manner to the adoption of email within business. It will continue to flower in spite of any attempts to contain or control it. “