Hot Vendors in Social Business, 2013

Author: Jim Lundy                                                                          Date: July 23, 2013

Topics: Social, Workplace                                                     Research Note Number: 2013-24

Issue: Who are the social software providers and how will they navigate a crowded market?
Issue: What are the technologies and architectures that enterprises should leverage in the workplace?

Summary: Socially enabling applications is an important new step in the evolution of social software. Aragon Research identifies five hot vendors that participate in various parts of the social business market.

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Current approaches to collaborating and managing information are built on an aging, relatively inflexible foundation of email and content management. At the same time, however, social computing tools have penetrated the enterprise on a large scale, although often in isolated pockets or single projects in individual business units. The path to success is to understand how to use social in the enterprise. This research note identifies five hot vendors who are actively moving the enterprise toward a social business paradigm (see Note 1).

Today, social software has evolved to the point where business applications are being socialized. Some applications are adding a social layer, while others are remaking their application as a plug-in to a social platform.

The perception remains that enterprises lag behind consumers in the use of social computing, particularly in the view of IT organizations. We believe that reality presents a different view, and that even today most enterprises are already leveraging social computing capabilities.

Being able to share content and activity updates with others is central to a socially enabled workplace. There are significant benefits to changing the way people work. These approaches are still being understood, but by allowing people to engage each other faster and share what they’re doing more effectively, better collaboration can lead to better problem solving.

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