The NYTimes wrote about Gmail and Yahoo Mail being pulled into the office environment from the bottom up by employees (often against employers wishes). Where have we seen this before? How about IM, Linux, Blogs.

It’s no surprise that yet another powerful consumer-oriented technology is entering corporate America from the bottom-up. It’s so much easier to build good software and give it directly to the people who need it than to try to force technology on employees through CTO recommendations and policies. Not to mention the difficulty and long sales cycle involved in getting a CTO to sign off on new software in the first place.

I have been reading a bunch of 2007 predictions lists and one common theme I’m seeing is a surge in Enterprise 2.0. I am neutral on whether or not there will be an increase in adoption of Enterprise 2.0 apps, but I’m absolutely certain it will only happen if the software is pulled into corporations from the bottom-up.