It's a parlor game of sorts, these days, for writers to try to figure out which companies will be hit hardest by the deepening recession, and which ones will ride it out relatively successfully. Jordan Frank, who is the VP of marketing and business development at Traction Software has a very interesting post this week at the Content Connection where he compares and contrasts several writers' viewpoints about which types of companies are in the best position to ride out the economic downturn we are facing.

Frank wonders, "Will it be point applications like wikis and blogs, or enterprise 2.0 suites? Or will it be big-ticket collaboration platforms from vendors like Microsoft, OpenText and Documentum?"

Even though Frank clearly has a stake in the answer, it still makes sense when he writes that customers will be looking for cost-effective bundles. As budgets tighten, decision makers who need to make purchases are going to look very closely at value and price. As Frank points out, you can get his company's TeamPage for $75 per user for 1,000 users running TeamPage with the FAST Module as opposed to Sharepoint at $854 per user for 1,000 user. Companies may begin taking a long look at the lower-cost options.

Of course, Sharepoint offers more than just a blog & wiki platform, but Frank's point is well taken. It's entirely possible that he's right, that companies bundling feature-rich Web 2.0 packages at an affordable price are going to continue to thrive (or at least stay afloat) until we come out of this economic malaise.

For more information:
- see Frank's complete blog entry [1] on Content Connection

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