Microsoft: We're Investing In Enterprise SocialMicrosoft: We're Investing In Enterprise Social

Enterprise Social Networks: A Guided Tour

Microsoft says it is getting ready to make big moves on enterprise social software, citing survey results that show a rising tide of enterprise adoption.

"The enterprise social space is hot," Jared Spataro, Microsoft's senior director of SharePoint product marketing, said in an interview. With Forrester Research forecasting that enterprise social software will grow into a $6.4 billion market by 2016, Microsoft is paying attention. At the same time, Spataro cited a Gartner prediction (which appears to be a couple of years old) that 70% of IT-led social media projects will fail. Microsoft wants to help its customers "avoid that trap" and provide them with a blueprint for success, he said.

"Our vision of social is that it should really put people at the center of business. It's not social for social's sake, it's really task completion--how to get specific tasks done and how to interact with the organization," Sparato said.

Although Microsoft previously has not jumped in with both feet, apparently it has been watching and waiting. The pace of innovation and turmoil in the social software market is starting to slow, "so now the focus moves from just being on features to business value," Sparato said. "I think the timing is actually quite good for us to think hard about investing." In a survey Microsoft commissioned from Harris Interactive, more than 50% of the organizations venturing into social software said they were just getting started, he said.

"Our point of view is that social is incredibly important--it's not just a fad; it really will change where work gets done," he said. However, it's now time to "stop focusing so much on features as on the entire experience as presented to a customer, partner, or employee." The total experience Microsoft delivers will be "more than just SharePoint," also including elements from Microsoft Lync unified communications and Microsoft Office.

To date, the software companies making the most noise about social software have been specialized ones such as Jive Software, which enjoyed a public stock offering in December, or Yammer, with its cloud-hosted, freemium alternative. The best-respected product from an established enterprise vendor probably is IBM Connections.

SharePoint is so broadly deployed as an enterprise collaboration and file-sharing technology that every social collaboration platform needs some sort of plugin of connectivity widget for it. Vendors such as Neudesic and Telligent make that one of their primary selling points, while NewsGator Social Sites is the best-known social networking application that runs as an application atop SharePoint. However, by itself SharePoint is often characterized as an inadequate social platform, even though it provides the basics of activity stream updates and personal profile pages.

Social software is "a very big investment area" for Microsoft right now, "We're working on our next product now, but we're not ready to talk about it yet," Sparato said. The next big step with be a public beta covering multiple products in the Microsoft collaboration and productivity product line over the summer, he said. He did not directly answer the question of whether Microsoft would acquire a company such as NewsGator or replicate its software, although he spoke about a likely wave of consolidation in the market.

"We've tried really hard not to just be a follower of the fad," Spataro said. "Social is certainly a very frothy area right now--whether consumer or enterprise--and part of our job is to take these great technologies and sift the wheat from the chaff," producing "solid technologies and excellent products for our customers," he said.

In the Harris Interactive survey, 90% of respondents cited security as a top concern with social software, followed by integration with existing systems (66%) and compliance (53%). "That's very consistent with the way we think about the platform," Sparato said. Survey findings also reflect an interest in integration with, and taking advantage of, existing IT infrastructure that might tend to favor SharePoint-based solutions. The survey shows many leaders think that elements such as instant messaging, email, and videoconferencing should be part of a social collaboration system--with those elements ranking far higher than more purely social ones such as microblogging or the ability to "like" people or content. That would seem to favor a vendor such as Microsoft that offers a broader range of collaboration products, as opposed to a social software pure-play such as Jive.

Sparato also found it interesting that 36% cited "because employees are asking for it" as a reason they are implementing social software. "That's real, tangible evidence of the consumerization of IT," he said. On the other hand, some of the generalized goals for improved collaboration suggest that "some of the investments being made out there are not quite as focused on a specific business need as they will become over time."

The findings below are condensed from the Harris Interactive survey's executive summary.

Deployment: Starting with a nationwide sample of 354 IT and business leaders at organizations with at least 1,000 employees, Harris found that 47% of respondents report that their organization currently has an enterprise social network in place, with another 28% reporting that one is in development. Only 25% report that their organization does not have an enterprise social network in place and there are no plans to develop one.

The following numbers all are based on interviews with the 202 decision makers (100 in roles vice president or higher, and 102 IT decision makers) at organizations that either have implemented (61%) or are in the process of developing (39%) an enterprise social network.

Involvement of IT: Sixty-five percent of decision makers believe that it is absolutely essential or extremely important to involve an organization's IT department in the creation of an enterprise social network, while 35% consider it somewhat or not important.

A significantly higher percentage of business decision makers (75%) than IT decision makers (55%) believe that it is absolutely essential or extremely important to involve the IT department in enterprise social network creation.

Existing investments: A majority (57%) of decision makers report that their organization is inclined to employ a mixture of new social software and leverage existing investments/infrastructure for their IT solutions. A quarter (25%) report that their organization is more inclined to leverage existing investments, while 18% report that their organization would adopt new social software.

Integration with existing infrastructure: Fifty-nine percent of decision makers believe that it is absolutely essential or extremely important to have social networking integrated with an organization's existing infrastructure, while 41% consider it somewhat or not important.

A significantly higher percentage of business decision makers (68%) than IT decision makers (50%) believe that it is absolutely essential or extremely important to have social networking integrated with an organization's existing infrastructure. Concerns: Security (90%) is the top IT concern for a vast majority of decision makers when implementing a social network in an organization. After security, they are most concerned with integrating the network with existing systems (66%), compliance (53%), governance (44%), their ability to build custom applications for social networking (27%), and other (1%). (Responses were limited to the top three concerns.)

Critical success factors: Sixty-six percent of decision makers cite collaboration--more people are talking to each other and getting work done--as a critical success factor for their social networking solution. After collaboration, it is important to have productivity (they can measure actual efficiency gains) at 64%, adoption (people in the organization actually use it) and value added to business processes (both at 51%), cost savings (42%), and other (1%).

Reasons to implement: Increased information sharing in the organization (71%) is the top factor decision makers cited as making them decide to implement a social networking solution. Other reasons are to drive greater collaboration and productivity in the organization (64%), improve business process efficiencies (56%), satisfy employees who asked for it (36%), create greater transparency between the company business and employees (26%), and other (6%).

Top benefits: Seventy-two percent of decision makers report that social networking has provided or they expect it to provide their organization with greater employee collaboration. Other expected benefits are greater employee productivity (45%), creating a stronger affinity between the business and employees (42%), providing new information about the ways in which people in their organization work (41%), ease of use so people use it (38%), connecting a disparate workforce (34%), and other (3%).

Importance of a pilot program: Just over half (51%) of decision makers believe that it is absolutely essential or extremely important for a company to start a social networking deployment with a pilot program, while 49% consider it somewhat or not important.

Types of communications: Sixty-seven percent of decision makers cite instant messaging as a kind of communication that enterprise social networking should enable. Other types of communications were email (64%), videoconferencing (62%), the ability to "follow" people, documents or sites (51%), audio conferencing (47%), activity streams (34%), video sharing (33%), the ability to "like" content or people (28%), microblogging (26%), and other (2%).

Deployment phase: When asked what phase of deployment of an enterprise social network their organization is in, 48% of decision makers said they are at an initial roll out or pilot phase with a limited number of users. Thirty percent say they have deployed social software broadly across the organization, and 12% have deployed broadly and are now building additional capabilities on top of the social software or are building the social software into business processes. Ten percent report they are at another stage.

Follow David F. Carr on Twitter @davidfcarr. The BrainYard is @thebyard and facebook.com/thebyard

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