Consumer technologies will be widely adopted by businesses over the next five years to improve communication and personal productivity, says analyst Gartner.

Research from the firm predicts consumer web technologies such as social networking, virtual worlds such as Second Life, and portable personalities will soon become mainstream business tools.

Report author Jackie Fenn says firms need to regard adoption of consumer web technologies as an ongoing activity.

‘MySpace and FaceBook are the most successful community environments on the planet because they have pulled people away from email, which is the one thing that nothing else has managed to do so far,’ said Fenn.

‘That is not yet true in most corporations where email prevails, although some repository and sharing is done in other collaboration environments, such as wikis, on an emerging basis,’ she said.

Dan Marovitz, chief operating officer of global technology at Deutsche Bank, says unscheduled and unstructured communication has a value in the workplace.

‘Banks have a hard time installing Web 2.0 tools because we have to log and record everything for security compliance,’ he said.

Marovitz says businesses are still figuring out how to use collaborative environments and technologies, although instant messaging is already widely used.

‘Wikis can be useful especially in investment banking, where it is so jargon-based and understanding all the different products that come out is not always easy,’ he said.

Ollie Ross, head of research at blue chip user group The Corporate IT Forum, believes further adoption of collaborative technologies by businesses is likely.

‘Corporates looking to make use of diversely located skills and experience have used proprietary collaborative technologies as internal communication and knowledge transfer tools for the past three years,’ said Ross.

‘What is interesting now, is the upsurge of interest in using informal solutions such as wikis and blogs to support enterprise community development and enhance team productivity.’