More than 70% of IT-led social media initiatives in the enterprise will end in failure, according to a new report from analyst company Gartner.

The report predicts that between now and 2012, the majority of IT departments will struggle to make the switch from delivering traditional technology platforms, such as email, web conferencing and instant messaging, to implementing socially-oriented communications systems.

Those organisations that allow business, rather than IT, to lead the way in social media implementations will have a significantly higher success rate of around 50%, Gartner predicts.

Beyond 2012, positive results from social media in the workplace will become more commonplace as IT departments take on a “calculated approach” to the technology.

Gartner also predicted that internal social networking utilities will replace email as the primary form of communication in 20% of enterprises within the next five years, as enterprises realise the potential of functionalities such as employee status updates and expertise location.

Information Age’s Effective IT Report 2010, published last month, found that a fifth of organisations deployed Web 2.0 tools for the first time during 2009. However, that strategy ranked among the least likely to deliver the expected return on investment.