Computerworld recently commented on a study by CMS Watch that found a “general lack of system and administrative services threatens to undermine the benefits of improved collaboration and networking from social software technologies.” Tom Byrne, CMS Watch founder’s comments are based on a recent CMS Watch study’s findings that evaluated 20 major social software suppliers through extensive technology research and customer interviews.
Tom commented that while enterprise customers are showing increasing interest in extending internal social tools outside the firewall, vendors are having difficulty supporting customers’ internal and external environments at the same time. CMS Watch attributes this difficulty to significantly different functional, performance, and security profiles of both environments. CMS Watch commented that while the large players like “Microsoft, Oracle and IBM have actively promoted their social software products, each arrived relatively late in this market segment. Consequently, such vendors still rely on established portal services for key functionalities.”
I am pleased that they found a silver lining in the study, “Despite the gloomy study results, CMS Watch notes some exceptions such as wiki vendor Atlassian that provides comparatively strong security and access control. The analyst firm says that hosted community vendor Awareness has good multi-site management; while Connectbeam’s social networking solution provides highly functional back-up and restoration services.”
The Computerworld article concludes, “"Customers should not automatically assume that social software modules from their incumbent vendors are somehow more mature or better integrated than some of the smaller players in this space," says CMS Watch research analyst, Jarrod Gingras.” I am very pleased to see Connectbeam included in this group of respected smaller players. We have focused on the needs of the enterprise, and internal deployment from the start with increased security and other features. We are also working to integrate with and enhance the offering of the large players with our Microsoft Sharepoint and Google Enterprise Search integration.
Hi Puneet, I'm afraid I couldn't find a more direct way to contact you but wanted to let you know of an event on Enterprise 2.0 next week (July 17th) in association with BT in London. We're looking for a couple of Demo companies -if you or others would be interested please email team@mashupevent.com or myself - emma@mashupevent.com for further info.
Thank you.
Posted by: Emma Jell | July 09, 2008 at 12:46 PM