Gartner on Enterprise Social Software

Nikos Drakos, analyst at Gartner has a recently published report titled - Enterprise Social Software to Boost Efficacy of Non-Routine Work [to access subscription to Gartner required].

There are many reports coming out that point toward the trend of developing social software applications, as seen in the consumer space, for businesses in helping them to support and strenghten collaboration; and information and knowledge discovery.

Nikos puts special emphasis on social bookmarking and folksonomies as key tools for extracting value out of non-routine interactions.

Social bookmarking pulls together individual lists of bookmarks, making it easy to compile global popularity reports, which, in turn, can drive recommendations or relevancy. This process can reveal patterns, identify the interest or expertise of different individuals, or simply to act as a repository of trusted pointers to other sources of information. Examples [in consumer realm] are del.icio.us, digg,connotea.org, BlinkList and Outfoxed

I think while the benefits of social bookmarking are well on their way of being understood (inside the enterprise), I refer back to the comment that Brian Stephens of Hitachi Data System (HDS) made, from his vantage point from inside the enterprise, that for Web 2.0 to flourish inside enterprise we need a passable bridge from Web 1.0.

I think Brian hits the nail on the head. I like to think of it this way - while disruptive technology is good (as evident by the productivity gains from new Web 2.0 technologies like blogs, wikis, social bookmarking), the implementation (or deployment inside the enterprise) cannot be disruptive.

If you would like to know more about our Social Bookmarking and Networking appliance that integrates with companies existing Intranets and Search, and provides a passable bridge to Web 1.0, please let us know.