Technavio recently published a new report on the global enterprise social software (ESS) market, which provides detailed industry analysis and market growth forecasts for the next four years.
Overall, the report finds that the market is expected to grow at a healthy CAGR of 14.66% from 2014-2019.
What is ESS and why is it useful?
ESS integrates software platforms and applications with social networking platforms, which helps improve productivity and communication, reduces costs, manages time, and encourages collaboration across the enterprise.
Organizations are increasingly employing social software to enhance workforce productivity and foster innovation through knowledge sharing and idea generation.
Overall, the big benefits of ESS can be grouped into four categories:
- Connections: Users can establish links with others and create a social graph
- Content: Users can create and share content that can be accessed by other users
- Conversations: Users can communicate with other users in real time by means of chat or instant messenger (IM)
- Collaboration: Users can work together to complete a specific task
ESS top trends
There are a few key trends that Technavio expects to significantly impact market growth over the forecast period.
Steady shift to comprehensive suites and platforms
The ESS market is made up of vendors that provide customization facilities and point-to-point solutions for different types of organizational requirement. But increasing demand for a single comprehensive platform addressing all requirements such as e-mail, messaging, blogs, online communities, and wikis might force vendors to move toward multi-level support over the next few years.
Integration of social and collaboration software
Previously, organizations used to employ collaboration software to perform various business tasks such as file sharing, e-mailing, and messaging. With the emergence of social software, these tasks can be accomplished without the use of traditional tools such as e-mail clients and IM. Therefore, the market is likely to witness a convergence of social and collaboration software into a single key offering.
Emergence of social media analytics
One of the biggest opportunities for ESS vendors to capitalize on the boom in big data and analytics is to supply solutions that can be used to collect huge volumes of data and extract useful information to help organizations make better decisions. Social software should be powered by analytics engines capable of analyzing huge volumes of structured and unstructured data.
Increased adoption in APAC and Western Europe
Although the ESS market is still in its infancy in the APAC region and (to a lesser degree) in Europe, a growing number of successful ESS deployments will help boost market growth over the forecast period. In addition, a higher number of young employees who are always familiar with social networks will lead to higher adoption of social software in APAC and Western Europe in the next four years.
Top ESS vendors
While this is hardly a comprehensive list, Technavio analysts have pinpointed a few key companies that are expected to make big contributions to the enterprise social software market through 2019.
Communispace
Communispace is a top vendor in the social enterprise space. The company offers a full suite of professional services, and helps organizations gain customer insights, identify trends, and recruit employees.
IBM
IBM is considered the market leader in enterprise social solutions by many industry experts. The company offers collaboration software, which includes file sharing, blogs, wikis, bookmarks, content management, IM, online meetings, chat (audio and video), e-mail, and more in various deployment models, including cloud, on-premises and hybrid models.
Jive
Jive software provides communication and collaboration solutions to businesses. The company offers Jive-n (a complete social intranet), Jive-x (for external partners and communities), and Jive-w (a suite of new mobile workstyles, connected in real time across devices to exchange information).
Microsoft
In 2012, Microsoft acquired Yammer, a specialist in enterprise social solution that helps employees collaborate across various locations and business applications. The company helps employees access the company network through Internet-enabled or mobile devices.
Zimbra
Telligent, a market leader in ESS, acquired Zimbra to form an enterprise software company offering a unified social collaboration suite for businesses.
For more information on the global enterprise social software market, check out Technavio’s new report.
