Businesses are finally catching on to the importance of the consumer web – but companies need to embrace Web 2.0 from the inside (Businesses can learn from social web sites).

The Facebook generation expects collaboration and dynamism – not just through social networks, but also in corporate software. And this is something that stagnant, on-premise applications simply aren’t able to provide.

While users of traditional desktop applications are unwrapping boxes of software and waiting for it to install so that they can register it, hosted solutions are allowing other businesses to gain a head start.

Enabling collaboration and online sharing, Software as a Service allows businesses to access vital information wherever they are. And with our workforces becoming increasingly mobile, what use are office-based applications?

Organisations need to stop pigeonholing Web 2.0 as a consumer phenomenon. They must start embracing such common sense benefits as ease of use and greater intuitiveness in the enterprise. Only then will businesses fully reap its benefits.

Lindsey Armstrong,Salesforce.com