“Wikis often grow out of hand very quickly and consequently many employees simply ignore them. Enterprises also face the risk of an explosive information growth far beyond their capacity to manage that information”, said analyst and MD, Janus Boye, author of a report, Wiki in the Enterprise.

“If you don’t create guidelines and processes for managing the wiki, the gap between information and capacity is a risk to the enterprise as it translates into the right information not being found and the potential creation of redundant information.”

The Intranet wiki, WikiEnt, of Prescient Digital Media - © 2008

Most corporations do not have a wiki. And most aren’t planning to have them either (just yet). A recent Forrester study found that only 51% of Global 2000 companies plan to invest in Web 2.0 in the coming year. But only between 20% of small companies, and only about 30% of medium corporations plan on buying Web 2.0 tools (for a summary, see Intranet portal solutions die, evolve & move to Web 2.0).

But almost no one had a wiki three years ago. So in truth, wikis have exploded and are multiplying like rabbits. Boye, an independent analyst focusing on online media and an expert on enterprise portal solutions, has found that wikis are increasingly gaining foothold in the enterprise due to it promises of simplicity. Yet, wikis introduce complex challenges for organisations, on a strategic level as well as on the level of actual content creation.

At Cisco, the first wiki appeared a few years ago, when an engineer installed one on the server under his desk. “He told a PM, who then told other PMs and it spread like wildfire,” says Michael Lenz, Senior Manager, User Experience, at Cisco Corporate Communications. “Literally, day over day, the increase is amazing… any number I gave you today would be useless tomorrow or next week. There are tens-of-thousands of wikis… and the number of wikis about equals the number of employees (65,000).”

Read my complete article Enterprise intranet wikis.