RE: social business "players"

As an IT architect, this thread brings up an interesting observation. Last year, Gartner noted that the social business software market was, at the enterprise level, somewhat steady with the same players as the previous year. They also noted that the predominant market was in the horizontal/platform arena.

This year we saw an explosion of domain/vertical specific applications. For example, Vuuch is very project management, Product Development focused. ITinvolve is focused solely on IT service desk types of use cases.

The social business strategists and architects I talk to in many companies will struggle with this, and it’s going to take years for the market to settle out. Complicating this is a race by some companies to add a social component into their existing product. As an example, IBM’s new BPM software version has a social discussion widget. It does NOT even integrate with their own IBM Connections product, much less consider how you would substitute and integrate  your company’s current solution.

In my opinion, it won’t make sense for a company to buy 20 different social business technologies – it will be hard to be “social” and do it in silos! On the other hand, as I mentioned during my cascade of our social business framework, there can’t be one solution either.

This suggests that beyond the corporate (user) side of the equation, having robust discussion with providers that offer vertical and those offering horizontal platforms involved may get to insight on how these disparate systems ought to play together.

To contribute to the original question, I’ve had this interoperability conversation with IBM, Yammer/Microsoft, Jive, Tibbr, SocialCast, Cisco and have it on my list to talk with SalesForce since our financial company uses them. Most are on board, several are involved in the W3C standards work. Yammer is/was not, we’re pushing Microsoft to change their mind. Interestingly, in the two vertical cases of ITinvolve and Vuuch that I talked to, neither were interested in how they’ll play in an overall corporate social business architecture and strategy (although a funny ITinvolve salesperson tried to tell me their platform could/should be our corporate solution!) . To me this suggests we need to get more visibility/discussion with and around these domain specific type providers around the business need and opportunities for standards-driven architectures.

Regards,
Edward C. Krebs
Enterprise Architect, Advanced IT and Research
Enterprise Technologies
Ford Motor Company Information Technology
Quote of the day:
"The best way to predict the future is to invent it." -- Alan Kay

From: sfermigier@gmail.com [mailto:sfermigier@gmail.com] On Behalf Of Stéfane Fermigier
Sent: Wednesday, December 05, 2012 2:44 AM
To: Bassetti, Ann
Cc: public-socbizcg@w3.org
Subject: Re: social business "players"


On Wed, Dec 5, 2012 at 8:18 AM, Bassetti, Ann <ann.bassetti@boeing.com<mailto:ann.bassetti@boeing.com>> wrote:
Hey, Stéfane – that's really excellent!  Sorry to say, I have never heard of any of them.

That's the main issue most french software vendors have, unfortunately.

Just goes to show how much variation there is in the world.  I feel strongly, if we hold a workshop, we need to figure out how to pull many of these threads together.

Indeed.

What's your view on the W3C holding a workshop in this subject area?  If you think we should, what do you think the 'theme' or focus should be?

I'm don't have a wide enough view of the issues at hand, at least one of them that is of interest to me is the question around standards (and the fact that there are so many of them to choose from...).

As one of the organisers (and program vice-chairs) of the Open World Forum 2013 (see http://www.openworldforum.org/en for the 2012 edition) I guess that a workshop on "Open standards for the social business web" would be perfectly appropriate in this context, but maybe it's a bit too far in the future (OWF2013 will take place in October 2013).

  S.


  -- Ann

From: Stéfane Fermigier [mailto:sfermigier@gmail.com<mailto:sfermigier@gmail.com>] On Behalf Of Stefane Fermigier
Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2012 11:02 PM
To: Bassetti, Ann
Cc: public-socbizcg@w3.org<mailto:public-socbizcg@w3.org>
Subject: Re: social business "players"

Ann,

 FYI, here's a list of French companies creating soclal business applications:

- Abilian (my company)
- Azendoo
- Jalios
- Jamespot
- Knowings
- Knowledge­‐Plaza
- SeeMy
-TalkSpirit
- XWiki
- Yoolink

Here's a list of french consultancies around social business:

- Lecko
- NextModernity

These are the people we regularly hear from in France.

Here's also a list of professional events happening in Paris around social business:

- E2.0 Summit Paris (http://www.e20summit.de/)

(OK it's a bit short at this point, I may be missing some information).

Regards,

  S.

On Dec 5, 2012, at 2:32 AM, Bassetti, Ann wrote:

Hi All –

Thinking about the kinds of companies or people we might want to attract to a Soc Biz Workshop, I searched on "social business" (duh!).  Very quick searches; by no means comprehensive nor representative, turns up examples such as:

•         An event held in Europe last summer:  http://www.socialbusinessforum.com/category/speakers/ (Just to give a broad list of people who have apparently stood up in public and promoted these ideas.)  Appears that event was probably sponsored by an org called OpenKnowledge, who says they are an international company specialized in Social Business Design:  http://www.open-knowledge.it/en


•         Another similar event – "Social Business Summit" http://www.socialbusinesssummit.com/ sponsored by the Dachis Group, a self-described "social marketing optimization software solutions leader" http://www.dachisgroup.com/about-us/ .  I note that IBM is a big sponsor of both of those events.

Companies we regularly hear from are: IBM, Microsoft, Cisco, Salesforce, Jive, Yammer (now owned by Microsoft).  Sorry, Mark, I probably wouldn't be in a position to hear if SAP is ringing our bells... likely they are!  Look also at the list of sponsors for the first event to get ideas of others.

My main point is, there is a LOT of activity going on regarding "social business".  Who are the key participants, opinion makers and users we want to attract? How will we snag them?  What do they need, from a standards point-of-view? Those examples represent some European and American situations.  What's going on elsewhere?  etc...

There's so much more to know and consider than the teeny bits we've talked about.  Part of feeling more comfortable with promoting a workshop is to do some of that research.

  -- Ann





--
Stefane Fermigier, tech entrepreneur
http://fermigier.com/ - http://twitter.com/sfermigier - http://www.linkedin.com/in/sfermigier

"Well done is better than well said." - Benjamin Franklin
"There's no such thing as can't. You always have a choice." - Ken Gor




--
--
Stefane Fermigier, tech entrepreneur
http://fermigier.com/ - http://twitter.com/sfermigier - http://www.linkedin.com/in/sfermigier

"Well done is better than well said." - Benjamin Franklin
"There's no such thing as can't. You always have a choice." - Ken Gor