Enterprise social software market shows steady growth

Sales of enterprise social networking applications are set to hit the billion-dollar mark in the next few years, according to Gartner.

The analyst reports worldwide sales of the software, such as blogs, communities, discussion forums, wikis and integrated platforms/suites reached $664m (£425m) this year and will rise 15 per cent in 2011. Companies were recognising the usefulness of such technology, although uptake is sometimes difficult, the company said.

"The social software market is evolving in response to the demand for flexible environments in which participants can connect, create, share and find people and information relevant to their work," said Tom Eid, research vice president at Gartner.

“Specific business value can be derived through customer intimacy, product/service excellence, operational effectiveness and creating innovation."

The enterprise sector has traditionally been a slow mover on utilising social networking software to improve communications, but moves by Microsoft and others are starting, aided by existing social networking sites opening up their APIs and offering enterprise tools.

Anther factor in the growth of the market has been the ability to deploy over the cloud, Gartner found. SaaS vendors such as Salesforce.com and Netsuite are increasingly adding social networking features and response from customers is largely positive. However, Eid warned, deployment is only part of the solution.

"Success is to be found in managing the information and relationships in support of business initiatives and not the simple deployment of technology," he said.

"One of the major goals is to capitalise on community involvement to drive higher leverage and productivity."