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India leads espousal of Web 2.0 for IT solutions
By siliconindia
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Friday, 29 October 2010, 14:21 IST
Bangalore: India leads the adoption of Web 2.0 for IT solutions at workplace among the top three nations in Web 2.0 Technology Usage, revealed a new report by McAfee in collaboration with Purdue University's CERIAS research group named 'Web 2.0: A Complex Balancing Act'.
The survey which was conducted in more than 1,000 organizational decision-makers in 17 countries highlights the use, benefits and perceived risks of Web 2.0 technologies' adoption at the Indian workplace and presents the corresponding security concerns that organizations face today. The survey which shows high adoption of Web 2.0 in the enterprise also states that the most significant consequences from inappropriate social media usage are loss of reputation, brand, or client confidence.
Web 2.0 adoption rates are high, reaching 90 percent or above in Brazil, Spain and India with India ranked second amongst seventeen counties polled and 78% of respondents from India attributed market drivers such as customers and partners as the primary reason for Web 2.0 adoption. Web 2.0 adoption is lowest in the United States and the Commonwealth countries of the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada. While adoption rates vary across countries, many attribute primary reason for adopting Web 2.0 is to create new revenue streams.
However, Indian firms ranked only in the middle regarding use of social media policies despite ranking first amongst the countries that view Web 2.0 usage as threatening since 11% of organizations surveyed in India did not have a social media policy. The study also found out that new revenue streams emerged as the highest driver of Web 2.0 adoption. Security is the second leading concern for Web 2.0 technologies as one third of the respondents name security risks as their primary concern with Web 2.0 and the reason Web 2.0 technologies are not used more widely in business. Six out of 10 organizations have had at least one type of security incident and countries such as India, with the highest adoption rates were more likely to have multiple incidents and report larger losses.
Indian employers are more likely to trust their employees with Web 2.0 than countries such as UK, Australia, France and Spain. "Indian businesses are finding huge opportunities in the adoption of Web 2.0 technologies, yet concerns about security and employee productivity hinder decisions to embrace it completely," said Ambarish Deshpande, Director - Channel and Alliances & Mid-market, South Asia. Executives and industry experts, who contributed to the research, agreed that flourishing organizational use of Web 2.0 is a complex harmonizing act. Enterprises must evaluate business confrontations and opportunities while extenuating the risks, and ensure that staff training and robust technologies are in place to avoid cyber attacks.