Computerworld writes about how blogs are making their way into business:
Using blogs, companies can easily and quickly communicate information such as project updates, research, and product and industry news both inside and outside the business. Security issues are the same as with any Internet-based application.
Even though blogging technology has the potential to become important to their companies, most CIOs haven’t paid much attention to blogging, and it’s not one of the tools they’re considering to solve their myriad IT problems, according to John Patrick, president of Attitude LLC in Ridgefield, Conn., and former vice president of Internet technology at IBM.
“I believe it is important to the CIO and the enterprise, because blogging introduces a new way to create, share and leverage knowledge in the enterprise,” Patrick says.
“You can do things like start one weblog for each project and have it run its course,” says Anil Dash, vice president of business development at Six Apart. “As the project continues along, everybody can do status updates and be able to link to every other relevant resource, whether it’s on the Web or in a Word document or in a proprietary company database. So for internal use, you have a lot of flexibility, and it respects the firewalls and the other boundaries you’ve already put in place.”
Michael Masnick, president of Techdirt Inc. in Foster City, Calif., says that while most corporations have knowledge management tools and corporate portals to organize internal data, they don’t have an effective way to deal with external information. A blog allows users to integrate internal and external information.
Enterprise blogs provide companies with easy-to-use tools to manage external information, which is extremely critical because it affects relationships with customers, partners and investors, as well as internal decision-makers.
“Having an enterprise blog provides a strategic advantage over the competition and helps companies gain market share and respond faster to their rapidly changing business environments,” Masnick says.
