IBM is jumping into the Enterprise 2.0 realm, launching an initiative aimed at helping companies bring Web 2.0 technologies into the workplace.

"There are two worlds today," said Anant Jhingran, chief technology officer for IBM's Information Management Software Division. "Either companies can say IT will supply everything or IT can say we will enable you to innovate. Instead of putting their foot down and saying they will not allow it, they can accept it and focus on deliverability, security and manageability."

According to a recent McKinsey survey of nearly 3,000 global business executives, 75% of companies surveyed said they will increase Web 2.0 investments in the next three years

Jhingran said IBM's customers have been pushing the software vendor for assistance in bringing in Web 2.0 technologies, like wikis, blogs and social networking applications. How can they enable workers to use this new technology while managing it and safeguarding the network? And this customer push only grew in force in the past six months, he added.

To that end, Jhingran said in an interview at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston, that IBM is working on a bevy of new products aimed at helping companies adopt Web 2.0. In two to three months, the company will be putting several products into an open beta testing and then they're slated to officially ship by late this year or early next year.

Neither Jhingran nor Mark Heid, IBM's senior strategy advisory, would specify what the upcoming products will be, though they did say that one will focus on cataloguing, tagging and accessing information, while another one will focus on enabling quick and easy mashing of information and applications.

"How do we make it so easy any employee can do it? We want to make it so users don't have to go to IT," said Heid. "In the complex environment where there are security protocols to apply, it all becomes more complicated. With [this initiative], we're adding a layer underneath all the assembly and the mashing up that goes on."

IBM also made three product announcements at the Enterprise 2.0 conference on Tuesday. While Jhingran said these products are not part of the company's Web 2.0 upcoming initiative, they all are focused on helping companies deploy Web 2.0 technologies today.

• Lotus Connections - IBM's social software aimed at the enterprise, Lotus Connections is designed to have a suite of five Web 2.0-based components, including social bookmarking and tagging; the creation of Web dashboards, collaboration among like-minded communities; and blogging;
• Lotus Quickr This is an open, standards-based team collaboration tool geared to help teams inside and outside a company firewall work together across geographies and operating systems. It's designed to feature team collaboration capabilities, including blogs, wikis and team space templates;
• IBM Websphere Commerce IBM said this product is designed to incorporate new Web 2.0 capabilities. The new features include Internet applications geared to enable customers to prioritize and filter specific shopping attributes, like price, brand or product characteristics; mouse-over products for brief descriptions and additional information without requiring a full page refresh, and drag-and-drop navigation to simplify product comparisons.