Fix the Enterprise 2.0 Silo Issue

Came across a nice post by CMS Watch founder Tony Byrne on KM World, Enterprise Social Software Technology. In the post, he articulates the functional underpinnings of social computing software. If you're tracking the Enterprise 2.0 space, it's a good read.

A couple quotes caught our eyes here. First:

Vendors are also "socializing" existing software products. On the main, that is a good thing, but it should not be confused with dedicated social software tools. In the absence of accepted integration standards, adding things like tags, profiles and instant messaging services to longstanding applications can create just another set of siloed communities.

A core principle of social computing is connectedness. Adding social computing features to existing enterprise silos certainly helps, but fails to connect the larger organization.

Here's the other quote from Tony's post:

But it is equally clear that no single vendor in the marketplace excels at all or even most of those services. In fact, many successful social software case studies revolve around the dedicated application of a standalone tool.

We have not yet seen the emergence of a full-suite vendor that addresses the different needs of the market. Expect to see enterprises with multiple social computing apps for the foreseeable future.

Companies' Opportunity in Connecting Enterprise 2.0 Apps

Finding information in the various social computing applications certainly is a function of enterprise search engines. Enterprise search engines are great for what they do:

1. Index content from different applications
2. Apply term frequency algorithms to rank search results

But there is a layer of meta data, of employee judgment in the creation and sharing of knowledge that is not captured in typical enterprise search engines. This data includes:

• Who created or saved the information
• Tags to provide richer meaning (how was this information useful)
• Groups to put the information in context

Capture this information, and you can create a connected layer of social information that opens new possibilities for employees:

• Find useful information faster
• Figure out quickly which colleagues might be able to help with a project
• Create a single go-to repository for the valuable content that is produced and shared throughout the organization
• Build their own social networks based on common projects and interests

Yes, we love enterprise search. We even have connectors ready to go for Google Enterprise Search and FAST. But there's much more to the story when it comes to the content generated in the various social computing silos inside companies.