The expectations of a software application may have historically centered around its ability to solve business problems or to enable specific types of transactions or management processes. Today, the software application is expected to let users communicate and interact with each other the way that they can on Facebook. Organic and guided search as found on Google is also expected, as is the intuitive usability of the iPad.
In fact, employees and managers of most any business are already communicating with each other through various Web 2.0 technologies - the problem being that all of this communication is taking place outside the bounds of formal and secure IT systems.
While some business software companies work to integrate their offerings directly with online tools like Twitter or Facebook, the real business benefits will come from enterprise resources planning and other enterprise software that mimics the functionality of these popular online tools. This serves to improve internal communication and pull company business currently taking place outside of ERP systems back into the enterprise.
