Enterprise Social Networking – Moving at Cloud Speed

By Jim Lundy

Enterprise Social Networking was a hot topic this week as I was out and about in Silicon Valley. The conversation with many users was about picking up the pace of business. Enterprise Social Networks (ESNs), when implemented correctly, can allow people to communicate and collaborate faster, particularly people who are geographically dispersed. The question that is coming up is whether your ESN provider is delivering innovation at the right pace – we call it Cloud Speed.

One of the things that Agile Development has enabled is that software providers can innovate faster and deliver those innovations to their clients, via regular release schedules. Salesforce helped to popularize this and today there are many software vendors that are doing this.

As we are doing the final scoring on our first Aragon Globe, this is one of the findings that has emerged. ESN Cloud providers that have a track record of regular updates with innovative feature sets are attracting more customers at a faster rate. The challenge for end user enterprises is often cultural: How to move the ball forward, do fewer emails and more engagement with people in a community. Of course Aragon Research has the experience here to help you come up with plans to ensure you don’t end up with an ESN Wiki Graveyard (you built it, but no one shows up).

We will be talking about this more at our May 4th Webinar – Building the Social Enterprise. Don’t miss it. Sign-up here.