The Connectbeam Social Computing Blog: Four Enterprise 2.0 Prognostications for 2009 by Industry Leaders

The new year 2009 is underway, and with that we're enjoying the round of prognostications about what lies ahead the next twelve months. Three particular sites caught our eye:

Susan Scrupski's Hello 2009. Here's lookin' at you, kid.
Mike Gotta's 2009: Planning Considerations for Enterprise 2.0
CMS Watch's Tony Byrne and Alan Pelz-Sharpe in 12 Technology Predictions for 2009

There is some commonality in the areas covered. And what's interesting is to see where these folks agree, and where they diverge. Let's take a look at some of their predictions, and we'll add our two cents.

Microsoft SharePoint

In the enterprise software world, no observations are complete without considering Microsoft SharePoint.

Susan Scrupski:

Just deal with it. Microsoft will continue to play in the starring role of the 800-lb gorilla in the corporate corridors of IT power. And, sadly, IT still has a heavy hand in what technology users can liberate their inner social child with. If Microsoft says it has wikis, blogs, and RSS then guess what...? IT will believe them and make a safe choice.

Mike Gotta:

My position for some time has been that the next release will be a tipping point for Microsoft's social computing efforts. Either Microsoft "gets it right" and delivers a forward-looking release with significant improvements that transforms SharePoint into a market-leading social computing platform, or it delivers a release that has only incremental improvements to existing functionality that reflect a backward-looking competitive landscape (circa 2008 as things get locked-down).

Tony Byrne:

The next release of Microsoft SharePoint will cause customers to reassess. Byrne says that he expects Microsoft to release a Beta version of Office 14 in 2009, which may include some updated SharePoint tools. Even though the 2007 edition of SharePoint is still very new to a lot of users, many have complained that they've been unable to fully comprehend certain functions -- and the new release is expected to address those concerns, Byrne says. This fervent hope, he adds, may lead to a re-evaluation of the product among current and prospective users.

One thing I can say from our perspective is that we continue to get a lot of inquiries about how we integrate with SharePoint. We tend to point out the ability to make content from across the enterprise social software apps available inside SharePoint.

The collaboration market is too big for Microsoft not to get right, even if it means iterative releases. While not perfect, SharePoint will continue to draw interest.

Enterprise Social Software Adoption

This is an area that gets better every year, but still needs to be a top-of-mind issue for vendors.

Susan Scrupski:

The opportunity for vendors is to help show the way, gently introducing concepts and not igniting wholesale culture shock/religious wars about how work should be done. The emphasis for 2009 will be the soft side of the 2.0 (r)evolution: PEOPLE vs. technology. Changing hearts and minds, not dazzling displays of tech grooviness.

Mike Gotta:

The need to focus on non-technology factors rather than the underlying tooling was a consistent theme during client visits and telephone inquiries as well as the field research study I conducted on enterprise social networks. Most IT organizations are not charged with time, money and resources to really focus on adoption issues.

The social nature of these apps makes it tough to force adoption, unlike, say, installing an ERP system. We've actually got a set of starters and guidelines for using Connectbeam, specifically for the project champions and the initial users.

This has always been important, and will continue to be so in 2009.

Trialing Social Software

The enterprise social software industry continues to innovate, and new apps and features are introduced regularly, like microblogging start-up Yammer.

Susan Scrupski:

A-list vendors with easy to use, useful technology will ﬁnd it easier in 2009 to sell into forward-thinking (risk averse) enterprises. There will be budget available to experiment with these technologies as the recession/global crisis will accelerate the “do more with less” mantra.

Mike Gotta:

The trend now is to downplay reliance on point solutions (e.g., blog vendor, wiki vendor) and think more along the lines of a "social platform" (e.g., a consistent platform that offers blog, wiki, and a social network site). This makes the decision more complicated in some ways but the investment becomes less volatile and the investment has the potential to have more staying power in the market.

Alan Pelz-Sharpe:

Social computing will continue to make inroads, while smaller niche players will sneak in with new offerings. "So much hype is cleared away and the reality is starting to come through," Pelz-Sharpe says. The report predicts that standardization is still a ways off -- probably 2010 at the earliest. Movement toward social computing will build, but it remains a young market.

There's some truth in what Mike says, as vendors add more functionality there will be a natural uptake in adoption of suites with higher functionality. But Enterprise 2.0 is nowhere near a maturity level for this to happen on a meaningful basis yet. The innovation will continue from vendors.

Also, once a point solution has become ingrained in the processes of a company, it becomes hard to dislodge.

Social Software Analytics

The thrust of Enterprise 2.0 has been on employee collaboration. But as the originator of the term "Web 2.0" Tim O'Reilly notes in Why Dell.com (was) More Enterprise 2.0 Than Dell IdeaStorm, 2.0 is about more than explicit collaboration, contribution and "the wisdom of crowds".

Mike Gotta:

While this area would include social network analysis (SNA), it would also include all types of social analytics (rankings, ratings, tags/bookmarks, etc). Without social analytics, it's difficult to know how to measure what's going on within social systems and how to value those interactions and activities. I hope 2009 will be the kick-off of this topic becoming more of a priority.

Alan Pelz-Sharpe:

Enterprise search now involves personalization, stickiness, and analytics. Pelz-Sharpe expands upon this notion: "At the end of 2008, buyers were starting to understand the limitations of search engines. Search is a complex area, and buying needs to reflect that." There will be new emphasis placed on application search -- and the idea that "you are what you search for" will become central to enterprise search.

Analytics remains a fairly untapped area inside enterprise social software. Yet the upside for this informaiton is tremendous. Better handle on where the focus of the line employees is, improved understanding of internal employee connectors, netter handle on the enterprise social graph, and toher uses.

Expect more innovation around this in 2009.

And So We're Off to the Races

Fun to see what experienced, smart folks are thinking about the social software market. Now it's time to go make it happen this year.

Photo credit: iMorpheus on Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/sfj/1313709/

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