One of the strongest arguments around adopting social software is that you can do so easily and at very low cost when compared with 'traditional' IT solutions. Given today's economic volatility and frozen IT budgets it may make sense to pause the $500,000 intranet roll-out based on Sharepoint that is already behind schedule, and see if investing in lower cost, simpler, more social solutions could achieve the same (or better) results at a fraction of the cost.
And it looks like things are going to get better. Forrester is predicting a price drop of as much as 50%in the cost of enterprise social software platforms. This should reduce the barrier to entry even more allowing organisations to invest in lower cost projects with higher value returns, which is just what the business will be asking for from IT in the months ahead.