{"id":2671,"date":"2012-01-03T07:00:07","date_gmt":"2012-01-03T15:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.formtek.com\/blog\/?p=2671"},"modified":"2012-01-03T07:00:07","modified_gmt":"2012-01-03T15:00:07","slug":"social-media-forrester-predicts-explosive-growth-for-enterprise-social-software","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/social-media-forrester-predicts-explosive-growth-for-enterprise-social-software\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Media: Forrester Predicts Explosive Growth for Enterprise Social Software"},"content":{"rendered":"

Enterprise Social Software (ESS) is collaboration software that incorporates the kind of social-media capabilities typically found in consumer web apps like Facebook and Twitter. \u00a0ESS tools are increasingly being deployed in organizations with a current market size of about $600 million in annual sales, but Forrester Research predicts that this is just the beginning of a much bigger trend. \u00a0Forrester expects that ESS products will grow at an annual compound rate of 61 percent over the next five years, with the market exceeding $6.4 billion by 2016.<\/p>\n

In August 2011, Forrester reported<\/a> that top vendors in the ESS market were IBM, Jive, Telligent and Newsgator, but the market is moving very quickly and many new vendors are entering this space.<\/p>\n

Henry Dewing<\/a>, Forrester analyst and author of the report on ESS, \u00a0said <\/a>that \u00a0“Forrester believes that a new generation of social enterprise apps will finally deliver the productivity businesses desire by systematically grouping and rating people, information, and processes required to answer business needs.”<\/p>\n

ESS differs from the types of collaboration software that have been prevalent in the previous decade. \u00a0Dewing tried to draw a distinction between ESS and the previous generation of collaboration apps called unified communications and collaboration (UC&C)\u00a0by saying that the creation of “a social layer between information workers and the applications and communications infrastructure, social enterprise apps will overcome the adoption malaise that has affected UC&C.” \u00a0Prior to ESS, many organization have made sizable investments in UC&C products like email, IM, VoIP, and videoconferencing, but often the ROI was disappointing. \u00a0But Forrester thinks that ESS products will be different.<\/p>\n

Who is the typically user of social media apps in the enterprise now? \u00a0In another Forrester report<\/a> made available in November, TJ Keitt<\/a> created a profile of the typical ESS user. \u00a0He found that ESS users shared the following characteristics:<\/p>\n