A new Enterprise 2.0 tool hit the market recently from Tibco. The tool called Tibbr has gotten a lot of love from analysts because it's designed for IT folks and some people believe that will make it more palatable for the enterprise market. But I'm thinking that this type of software tends to come from the bottom up and not the top down as in the past.

Enterprise 2.0 takes open web social networking concepts and places them behind the firewall. Some refer to it as Facebook and Twitter for the enterprise.

It's not new. Companies such as Jive, Socialtext, Socialcast, Yammer and many others have been at it for a long time. I've covered the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston for several years (and this year in Santa Clara, Calif., as well).

Tibbr and the Salesforce Chatter are the latest attempts by larger companies to get in the game. Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) has SharePoint. IBM has Lotus Connections. SAP has StreamWork and even Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) has gotten into the act.

As I wrote after the Enterprise 2.0 Conference last June, in "Attack of the huge Enterprise 2.0 vendors," "All of a sudden larger vendors have discovered this space in a big way and it's changed the complexion of the conference and of the market."

So the fact that Tibco, an enterprise middleware company has entered the fray is not that surprising, although the reaction might be.

There are two arguments at play here. The first says, that Enterprise 2.0 can only succeed if the vendors can sell to IT. The opposite view says the way that enterprise software is chosen these days is changing and this is, in large part, due to a phenomenon known as the "consumerization of IT."

In fact, it's one of the ideas touted by author Geoffrey Moore in a recent AIIM whitepaper, Systems of Engagement and the Future of Enterprise IT: A Sea Change in the Enterprise; which states we are in a shift from systems of record to systems of engagement. Those interactions or that engagement is happening precisely because of these Enterprise 2.0 tools. And it's Moore's belief that employees are driving this shift because they want the tools they use at work to be as easy to use as the ones they use at home.

Tools like Yammer, which end users can download and use for free without IT intervention are changing the way enterprise users choose, interact and use software. They are using the software, then going to IT instead of IT coming to them and dictating the enterprise tool choice.

But I'm willing to concede that there are many who don't buy into that argument. Just recently, for instance Socialtext introduced a service that would let IT import Yammer content. IT wants control and Enterprise 2.0 tools sometimes remove that control. Socialtext is hoping to cast itself as the IT-friendly tool.

But I'm not so sure that Socialtext or Tibco is on the right track. Sure, IT has a say, but as we move forward, I see a world where IT gets direction from the users, rather than vice versa, and if that's the case, Tibbr, might not be the Enterprise 2.0 tool we've been waiting for. It could be just another piece of software marketed to the wrong audience. - Ron