Enterprise 2.0 Roll-up: Beware of Social Monstrosities, Long Live E-mail

This week we reviewed a handful of different platforms for enterprise collaboration, saw big names like IBM crawl out of less-than-social caves, and once again celebrated the awesomeness of e-mail. Meanwhile, experts admonished us to beware of getting too carried away, lest social Frankensteins rise from our laboratories.  

Don’t Create a Social Frankenstein 

The Sr. Director of Product Marketing for Jive Software (news, site), Nathan Rawlins, made a cameo this week in order to communicate one very important message: Don't get too social.

Straight from the horse's mouth:

Chances are you’ve experimented with all sorts of social technologies. You’ve got wikis, blogs and team collaboration sites. You may even have a public customer community. And now every legacy tool vendor under the sun is adding social bling to their software.

It might be tempting to try to stitch all of these things together to create a Social Business platform.

Don't.

You’ll end up with a monster. A Social Frankenstein.

According to Rawlins, the problem is that while social monsters have all the tools, they lack souls. That's interesting, especially considering the fact that a large chunk of Jive's fan base pledges allegiance to the Jive SBS platform, which features a ton of social perks. Check out how Rawlins and Jive find a balance here. 

Is Social Email the Enterprise 2.0 Enabler?

Is e-mail dead? "Hardly," said Yaacov Cohen, Co-Founder and CEO of Mainsoft (news, site), buttressing his claim with the death of Google Wave and the extension of Google Voice to support calling phones directly from your inbox. 

Nay, our favorite classic communication tool is like Madonna— it changes with the times. Today's big thing is social e-mail, and Cohen believes it's the best approach for four distinct reasons:

1. Business users spend the majority of their work day within the e-mail client.
2. The “Enterprise Social Graph” is stored in your email client. .
3. The vast majority of the enterprise documents are shared using email.
4. Modern email clients such as Gmail, Outlook, and Lotus Notes have embraced an extensible architecture enabling third-parties to develop and distribute their own add-ons.

Still unsure? That's fair. Read more details about Cohen's claim here. 

7+ Social Software Platforms for Enterprise Collaboration

Hopefully you've garnered enough information from our enterprise collaboration month to make an informed decision about which platform is right for you. If you haven't, we threw together a list of just under ten platforms that may interest you here, and it's quickly turning into a cool place to submit the ones we missed. (Check the comments! So far our readers have added WordFrame Integra, LiquidPlanner, Vedalis, OnePlace, WORKetc, Discover Technologies, IGLOO Software and Cubeless.)

IBM's Business Partners Finally Check Out Social Media

Evidently, IBM (news, site) is trying very hard to believe in social media. Forty-five percent of the company's Business Partners are experimenting with a social media business strategy to generate new revenue, even though most of them (three quarters) are still unsure of how to apply it as an effective sales tool.

Read more. 

Saba Delivers All-in-One Enterprise Collaboration Tool

While you may not have heard of Saba, the enterprise-level networking company has been a powerhouse for big names like Hewlett Packard, IBM, and Cisco. This week they released Saba Live, a real-time tool jam-packed with just about every aspect of enterprise collaboration ever. Check it.

Real-Time Meeting Collaboration with Agreedo.com 

A new-ish collaboration tool called Agreedo enables users to make plans available to online colleagues in order to better prepare, run and manage meetings and teams.

It's kind of a barebone project, but perfect for companies looking for just the essentials. Get more info here.  

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Tags: agreedo, enterprise 2.0, enterprise 2.0 rollup, enterprise collaboration, ibm, jive, saba, social business software

This week we reviewed a handful of different platforms for enterprise collaboration, saw big names like IBM crawl out of less-than-social caves, and once again celebrated the awesomeness of e-mail. Meanwhile, experts admonished us to beware of getting too carried away, lest social Frankensteins rise from our laboratories.