What is Enterprise Collaboration and Social Software?
The terms “Web 2.0,” “Social Networking,” “Enterprise 2.0,” “Social Media,” and even “Collaboration” get thrown around freely without clear definitions, and as such, risk losing all meaning, whatsoever.
If agreement around the core concepts of “Social Software” has been quite elusive, certainly the underlying phenomenon is quite real. Looking for greater flexibility and support for more ad hoc processes, employees have responded with a more bottom-up approach, in some cases circumventing official information systems, and in other cases collaborating outside existing enterprise systems. Increasingly, enterprises are recognizing this fact and consequently adopt social software tools for internal use. Looking at the success of YouTube, Facebook, and the like, some enterprises also see potential for opening up collaboration and networking beyond the firewall.
To date, industry analysts have quite properly focused on the social and organizational aspects of social software technologies. Yet, social software tools differ quite substantially in functionality, maturity, approach, and support. Social software applications have also raised concerns in the enterprise regarding privacy, security, IP protection, and compliance. Finally, IT managers face more prosaic — but equally important — considerations of reliability, scalability, and sustainability of the software and vendors alike.
