Inside the Briefcase
Enterprise Social Networking Roundup: Part 3
December 13, 2011 No CommentsBy David A. Kelly and Heather Ashton, Upside Research
In two recent blogs, we introduced both some of the trailblazers to enterprise social networking as well as enterprise entrants. This final installment of our Enterprise Social Networking Roundup includes some additional enterprise providers that have created some intriguing social networking solutions.
Oracle WebCenter is a portal-based approach to social networking. The latest release builds on Web Center’s capabilities as an enterprise portal for access to ERP and other enterprise applications. It blends traditional web applications with social capabilities. Among the features of WebCenter are enterprise mashups, user profiles, content management, collaboration, activity streams, blogs, wikis, forums, and analytics and management. It is designed to support internal- and external-facing audiences.
Upside Take: The enterprise background of Oracle shows in the secure capture and storage of all social content in much the same way that database and application information is collected and stored within Oracle systems. Similarly, WebCenter reflects the deep analytic and business intelligence background of Oracle, providing tools for analyzing all the data that flows through the corporate portal.
IBM Connections is the evolution of IBM Lotus’ Groupware, one of the founding technologies for collaboration software. Connections was launched in 2007 and introduced as a business-grade social computing platform. In addition to reflecting the enterprise-strength collaboration backbone that Lotus initially brought to market, Connections includes many of the features of the newer social networking entrants, including blogs, bookmarks, community forums and support for multimedia content including video.
Upside Take: IBM is maintaining its relevance in the collaboration market with Connections. The filtering and recommendation capabilities of Connection reflect the deeper roots in content management of the solution.
TIBCO’s tibbr combines an enterprise-strength messaging platform (LDAP based, which will please IT) with a Facebook-like interface for supporting real-time employee interactions around their existing business. While tibbr contains the features of other enterprise social network products, like microblogging, user profiles, and the ability to follow people as well as events, its most important feature is its neutrality. Tibbr is device, application, and system agnostic. It supports bi-directional feeds in and out of common enterprise applications such as SAP CRM, Salesforce.com, and Oracle Expense Management. This allows events triggered by business processes to surface inside tibbr for action, supporting user productivity. Tibbr leverages TIBCO’s policy management tools, enabling IT to audit and archive tibbr.
Upside Take: TIBCO may have created the killer app with tibbr, combining the messaging platform to connect the silos of information in the enterprise with the user-friendly social networking interface that engages users. Tibbr’s policy management capabilities give enterprises the control they want.
