At the beginning of this year, I weighed in on the topic of gamification, an emerging area of great interest among vendors and enterprises alike.

Gamification is not yet mainstream -- it may have made it into the Oxford dictionary but my spell-checker does not yet recognize it.

Of course a year is a long time when it comes to such new market segments, and the buzz around gamification has only grown bigger. We know now that the mileage to be derived from gamification varies from enterprise to enterprise, and one way to figure out if it makes sense for your enterprise, is to explore a pilot.

Surprisingly (or maybe not so surprisingly), we found scant information about the practical implementation and technical aspects of gamification software for enterprise buyers. To plug this information gap, we've readied just such a guide for you.

Among others, the paper will contain detailed commentary on:

• Whether you really need specialist tools to get going on gamification
• Different use cases of gamification in the enterprise
• Key Caveats to keep in mind
• Common Technology features of gamification tools
• Vendor Selection Considerations
• Reviews of three leading vendors - Badgeville, BigDoor, Bunchball

While this report will be available to our Enterprise Collaboration & Social Software research subscribers, later this month, we're also hosting a free webinar open to everybody where I'll discuss some key learnings. Look forward to seeing you then.