Social Software News & Articles

Inmagic has come out with a new version of Presto, a social knowledge network solution, that integrates tightly with SharePoint. Just another way to share all the information stored in one of the most popular collaboration platforms.

IBM (news, site) is making news at MacWorld, announcing a slew of new business tools optimized for the Mac and the iPhone. What's on the list? Let's have a look.

IDC (news, site) has a new research report available on growth of worldwide IT spending and while it's improving, it's not by much.

Kaltura (news, site) is making a number of moves lately with its open source video platform. After being listed as one of 10 Innovative Application Companies Under $100M to Watch by IDC you probably expected to start seeing things happening. And happening they are.

Like the beginning of any other year there’s been a lot of crystal ball gazing about what will and will not happen in the year ahead. Gartner (news, site) is no exception with their latest report on business process management highlighting what they see as the five major trends in business process management for 2010 and beyond.

Kaltura's online video platform is going more places as of today. Mzinga (news, site) has integrated Kaltura's enterprise video solution into their OmniSocialTM social software platform.
 

We've told you before that Jive Software (news, site) is on a mission, a mission to become the critical, go-to platform for enterprises. To achieve that goal, they spent some time in 2009 making some improvements to their Social Business Software platform including:

• Adding social media monitoring via the Filtrbox acquisition
• Adding support for both mobile devices and Microsoft Office
• Integrating with the Infamous SharePoint
• Integrating with SAP for Business Intelligence

An in addition to new services and integrations, they also picked up US$ 12 million in funding to do all that and more.

So has it paid off for the social software company? Apparantely it has.

Jive Software is reporting a record year for 2009 -- their best ever -- with full year revenue 85% over revenues in 2008. Their fourth quarter was their best with a number of new clients coming on board and a number of renewals. Add to that an increase in employees to 200 and a marketing focus that reached out across the pond and into government.

We entered 2009 against a strong economic headwind that impacted virtually every industry and saw technology investments pared or eliminated altogether,” said Dave Hersh, CEO of Jive Software. “In the face of uncertainty, Social Business Software emerged as a "must have" for enterprises looking to not only survive, but to thrive. As a result, by virtually any measure 2009 was a record year for Jive.

Their success is also demonstrated by industry recognition from the likes of Gartner, Forrester and IDC. IDC called them one of 10 Innovative Application Companies Under $100M to Watch. So that's what we will do -- watch.

Yes, we all know web content management (WCM) 1.0 is dead. But we still seem to be having a hard time defining exactly what 2.0 is about. We will continue to grapple with the emerging definition. In the mean time there are emerging trends shaping web content management and the vendors that provide it. Here's a look at what's on our radar.

Web CMS vendor (and the latest J. Boye Web Idol winner) Sitecore (news, site) integrated its content management system with Telligent Community -- a platform for social content, interactive communities, collaboration and social analytics.

In the name of online engagement, community collaboration and traffic increase, Sitecore integrated with Telligent’s (news, site) functionality to allow for web content to be leveraged in online communities and to “…enhance the way Telligent Community enables organizations to interact with their customers,” according to Patrick Brandt, Telligent CEO.

On the Sitecore side, the integration package aims to provide centralized security (using single sign-on) and a way to manage content in both Sitecore and Telligent. Let’s note that both are technologically compatible, Microsoft .NET products.

The security integration allows for central user management: i.e. users only need to be created in Sitecore CMS and are automatically transferred to Telligent Community after their first login.

“Creating more channels for customer engagement is the natural evolution of CMS software,” said Darren Guarnaccia, VP product marketing, Sitecore.

The content management side of the integration allows users to mix and match social media applications and web content, while being able to repurpose content for Telligent Community’s online social networking, forums, blogs and multimedia galleries in Sitecore sites. Social content can be used as is, or filtered based on a user’s rights and group memberships.

While they may seem quiet lately considering the rush of social computing announcements coming out almost daily, Telligent (news, site) does not appear to be sitting on their laurels.

As a provider of a newly revamped social software platform, Telligent is in one of the most competitive markets today. So they need to be on their game.

To help them reach their goals they have appointed Kelly Brashear as director of services, reporting directly to the VP of Operations. His responsibilities? To oversee Telligent's professional services team.

Brashear has a sales and service background, working for companies like CDC Software, Skywire Software and Electronic Data Systems. Interesting to note that Patrick Brandt, Telligent's new (since May) CEO was the founder and CEO of Skywire Software.

Telligent's professional services team specializes in strategy and online communications, helping clients understand their needs and requirements for community software.

The lovely Tony Byrne from over at CMS Watch hung around the Enterprise 2.0 conference this year to talk about the viability of social software in the Enterprise. The verdict? We're still. Not. Sure.

Research firm IDC has a new list you might want to pay attention to: 10 Innovative Application Companies Under $100M to Watch.

"IDC has projected 2009 as a year of accelerated adoption of new business models for applications, including software as a service and open source, as well as Web 2.0 capabilities and functionality," says Michael Fauscette, group vice president, Software Business Solutions, IDC.

To pull this list together, they solicited entries from vendors who make enterprise software. Vendors had to meet the financial criteria and demonstrate one or more aspects of three key trends, including Web 2.0 capabilities in the Enterprise, SaaS, BPO or open source solutions, and new business models for software use by service providers. The selection critiria came from the  IDC's Worldwide Applications 2008 Top 10 Predictions.

So who made the list? There are more than a couple of names we recognize, with a particular focus on social computing: Jive Software, Telligent, Atlassian, Kaltura and Trampoline Systems Ltd., among others. There's no specific order to the list, in case you are wondering.

IDC profiles each of the 10 companies in this 9 page report -- that'll run you US$ 3500.

Interesting to note that Atlassian, Jive and Telligent also made Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Social Software in the Workplace.

This is just further evidence of the growing strength of social software in the enterprise and its potential to displace content management as a key technology.

What does your Q4 conference schedule look like? If you’re in the content management industry, one of the events you should consider attending is, of course, the 6th annual Gilbane Boston Conference, organized by Gilbane Group (news, site) and Lighthouse Seminars.

The event will feature the traditional industry analyst keynote panel. This time around, the discussions will revolve around the following topics:

• SharePoint 2010’s impact on content management
• Deploying enterprise social software
• Managing user-generated and mobile content
• Engaging customers with multi-lingual web content

Debating on “What’s Real, What’s Hype, and What’s Coming” in content management and collaboration, analysts from firms like 451 Group, Forrester, IDC, and Burton and Gilbane Groups will share their opinions with conference attendees. Doesn’t hurt to get a second (or even a third and fifth) opinion, if it helps you make the right decision, does it?

Essential Gilbane Boston details:

• When: December 1- 3, 2009
• Where: The Westin Copley Place in Boston, MA
• Twitter: @GilbaneBoston and #GilbaneBoston
• Conference program
• Registration information

It's a day for news on the Enterprise 2.0 front and Telligent (news, site) wants you to hear what they've been hard at work on. It's about that time of the year when Telligent offers up a new version of their community solutions. This time, instead of simply a new version number with some new functionality, we get major products upgrades and new branding to boot.

Say goodbye to Community Server, Community Server Evolution and Harvest Reporting Server. Say hello to Telligent Community 5.0, Telligent Enterprise 2.0 and Telligent Analytics 3.0.

Oh, and for those of you interested in Telligent Graffiti, we have a little update, but don't get too excited.

There are a lot of solutions on the market today that you could implement to provide social software to your employees and customers. And they all offer very similar functionality. So there is a need to differentiate and offer specific point solutions based on that technology.

This is what MindTouch (news, site) is doing. Today they announce the first of three collaborative network solutions based on their open source collaboration platform: MindTouch Collaborative Intranet.