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Companies are about to embark on a new frontier that, thanks to Web 2.0 technologies, will allow their employees to tap into each other's knowledge, flatten corporate structures and allow them to engage with customers through new avenues. At least, that's what vendors who are hawking Enterprise 2.0 would have everyone believe.

Companies such as IBM, Sun Microsystems, Microsoft and Google are pushing the value of wikis, blogs, RSS feeds, social networking sites and folksonomies not just as consumer toys but as business tools. These tools, they say, will empower employees and revolutionize the way they exchange information, allowing workers to gain access to unstructured knowledge.

Wikis, for example, could replace emails in certain cases, such as on projects. Instead of sending out emails to everyone in a group, and starting an email firestorm in which ideas are debated back and forth, a project team could start a wiki. All of the information on a project would be accessible to stakeholders (as well as non-stakeholders who want to contribute) who could exchange ideas and edit entries in order to reach a consensus.

Corporate-wide wikis could be used to exchange information about everything from the latest sales figures and market trends to client leads to the state of the company kitchen. As the number of wiki entries increase, folksonomies ¯ taxonomies created from the ground up based on how users tag and link to information ¯ could be used to navigate through pages.

But such an approach to communication requires a different type of corporate culture ¯ one that is flat rather than hierarchical, flexible instead of rigid and open ended as opposed to closed. Companies that live by the Web 2.0 creed are willing to hear what Joe from accounting has to say about streamlining manufacturing methods, ready to be ravaged by both employee and customer blogs and prepared to rethink who gets access to what information. It remains to be seen whether corporations can ¯ or even want to ¯ affect such a change.

It's hard to imagine many companies fostering a culture in which a lowly clerk would be given or take advantage of the power to change his boss's wiki entry, let alone the company CEO's. Are workers going to be willing to change entries made by higher ups or even by fellow co-workers? And how will they react to having their own entries edited?

The Web 2.0 approach assumes there are a lot of untapped ideas out there, and no doubt there are many a bright individual who never meet their potential, but how often does Joe from accounting really have something salient to say about streamlining manufacturing methods? And if he does, will the VP of manufacturing be any more willing to take his wiki entry seriously than she would have been willing to read an email from him on the same point? Equipping workers and managers with Web 2.0 tools won't necessarily mean they'll gain all of the benefits that the technology has to offer ¯ especially if the tools aren't accompanied by a profound cultural shift.

The Web 2.0 world as envisioned by the likes of Harvard Business School associate professor Andrew McAfee, who coined the term Enterprise 2.0, is one in which office politics can be transcended.

And even if wikis, blogs and podcasts do take hold, will they make life in the corporate world any easier, or will they add another layer of complexity to the already overloaded worker who has to deal with 300 emails a day. Email isn't likely to disappear as the new technologies are adopted. It might diminish some, but will the number of wikis, blogs and podcasts that workers have to keep up with on a daily basis grow exponentially, as emails did? Will a great deal of the entries ¯ like a great deal of email ¯ really be worth the time?

Web 2.0 has made some inroads into the corporate world ¯ especially as a marketing tool. Second Life has certainly captured the imagination of marketing departments who are increasingly making announcements and releasing virtual versions of their products "in-world." YouTube has also demonstrated its potential as a marketing tool ¯ sometimes in unscrupulous ways as with loneleygirl15. Many companies have also embraced blogging ¯ even accepting negative blogs, such as Robert Scoble's sometimes-critical blog of Redmond, Wash., giant Microsoft. The company's willingness to turn the other cheek has earned it good will.

But there aren't many companies trading in their stale intranets for dynamic wikis or encouraging employees to put up Facebook-type entries about themselves. Many companies seem to be taking a wait-and-see tack, and given the IT industry's tendency to overhype technologies, it's probably a sound approach. Web 2.0 technologies may eventually change the way employees interact with each other, partners and customers, but such change isn't likely to happen as quickly or as dramatically as vendors would like.

Poonam Khanna is a Toronto-based freelance writer who focuses on technology.