A Read/WriteWeb piece highlights the continued fear among IT decision-makers about the nicely amorphous 'Web 2.0' genre. Genre? Phenomenon? Plague? 78% of IT bosses at companies of 500 employees or more said they were 'somewhat' or 'very' concerned about unsanctioned use of Web 2.0 technologies among staff (Forrester).

> The solution, says Forrester, is to embrace web 2.0 - but "on your terms". They recommend that companies create "Web 2.0 policies and usage guidelines". Also companies should bring secure and compliant Web 2.0 tools in-house. This is all sound advice, as long as it's not taken to extremes - e.g. banning web apps (unless there is a true security or compliance risk - but Facebook for example wouldn't qualify there), preventing employees from experimenting with new forms of web technologies, or dismissing web 2.0 as having no business value.

Thankfully, though, fear is accompanied by an acknowledgement that this big scary world might actually be useful. 73% of those surveyed were forced to admit that instant messaging had some business value — something with which we at Skype heartily agree.

I've written before about the benefits of Skype's instant messaging features — if you're an IT administrator, maybe now's the time to try them out.