The
use of social software in enterprises will grow primarily
through departmental deployments, says Gartner.
The analyst firm has published its
"Predicts
2009: Social Software and Collaboration" report.
It says social networking sites, instant messaging clients and
hosted e-mail have all had an impact on enterprise operations, but
enterprise-wide implementations in large firms are unlikely for
now.
"While most organisations are already using, piloting or
investigating some social software technologies, there is
reluctance in broadening them out to encompass full technology
suites for all their users," said Gartner.
Although awareness, interest and willingness to deploy social
software will continue to increase, several factors will prevent
large organisations from investing in broad pre-integrated suites
of social software functionality for use by all their employees,
said Gartner.
Obstacles to large social software deployments include:
• More than two-thirds of suppliers with social software
products have less than 50 employees, which limits their ability to
support large enterprise-wide deployments. Larger suppliers tend to
have less mature or complete products, which again will limit their
suitability for large deployments.
• Uncertainties about business benefits and fears over the
negative implications of losing control over people and content
will be given more prominence as the scope and size of potential
investments increases.
• Most organisations are content with piecemeal deployments of
specific capabilities, and it will take time before more appreciate
the complementarity between the components of a social software
suite and in particular that between mechanisms for capturing user
input and mechanisms for organising and filtering this input.
• Despite being successful, some initial deployments will have
difficulties in transitioning to an enterprise-wide capability
touching more people and more activities because of stricter
enterprise requirements for flexibility and integration with
existing systems.