Business software providers IBM Lotus, SAP and Oracle have each announced the adoption of Web 2.0 features through new products and add-ons to their current offerings.

IBM Lotus announced Lotus Connections on Tuesday, which will allow users to share information through a type of social network. The software features what the company calls Activities, Communities, Dogear, Profiles and Blogs. Activities allows users to share and organise email, instant messages, documents and other items related to a specific project into one unit. Dogear is social bookmarking software - akin to del.icio.us for intranet users. The company also announced that the software would work through Blackberry devices.

The company stated:

These components help users save time by making information previously qualified by others easily accessible. The pace of learning increases as users easily find and exchange ideas with experts across their organization. Since they have access to the experience of others, users can avoid making mistakes and duplicating tasks, saving time and improving the quality of their work.

Meanwhile, executives at SAP have told Builder.au that the business software giant will add Web 2.0 functionality to its own applications through the addition of 'widgets' allowing easier collaboration to its applications:

These additions are being designed around Web 2.0 technologies, such as wikis, as well as online forums and mini applications called widgets. Dennis Moore, general manager of emerging solutions and SAP Labs told the magazine: "Building community-oriented tools is just a natural side effect of serving the information worker who works in teams. Customers are demanding it. They have been collecting all this data -- now they need to do something with it."

Also joining the fray is Oracle, which says its Webcenter Suite, designed to "bring Web 2.0-centric applications to your enterprise" and announced in October 2006, will be released before the end of the month. Webcenter is designed to allow Java developers to create enterprise portals onto context-sensitive work environments based on AJAX-based components. The company says the software is built to allow the creation of 'Enterprise Mash-ups' integrating Wikis, Voice-over-IP, RSS feeds, Discussion Forums and Online Web Content Publishing.