A promising and flourishing jungle

It is evolving in response to the demand for a coherent way to support information creation and sharing, team communication and coordination, and communities and informal social interaction. Buyers are looking for flexible environments where participants can find and interact with one another, and create, organize and share information. The promise is one of improved "connectedness" as well as the capture and dissemination of informal knowledge by capitalizing on community involvement.

Nikos Drakos, Anthony Bradley, Jeffrey Mann (Gartner RAS Core Research Note G00162146, 0ct. 2008)

Sample Tools & Software

Although it is difficult to define what exactly a Social Software vendor is, here is an experimental shortlist of products that put the Social aspect central in their platforms. 'Social' in our booklet means that the software has created ways in making people communicate, share, store and organize information in new or improved ways and where the act of 'collaborating' can truly lead to improved business processes. Despite the fact that it is still an emerging market, certain products are well on their way to become more than just a speck in the history of the online speedway. And here are some.

blueKiwi (blueKiwi Software)

BlueKiwi has truly understood how information needs to be shared within an organization and its focus on employee collaboration make it a very interesting Enterprise 2.0 platform. With the 2009 version they haven’t only strongly improved on usability but also the functional set has increased. BlueKiwi’s strength lies in its focus on people and their activities within the platform. Therefore it also has strong social analytics tools. BlueKiwi is one of those tools that complements nicely with Sharepoint for example

Knowledge Plaza (Whatever)

Knowledge Plaza is a Web-based platform for the enterprise encompassing search, social bookmarking, knowledge management, information brokerage and expert identification. The platform was developed by the Belgium based firm, Whatever. There are three main components, the Dashboard (your overview), the Plaza (share your information) and the Web (search). The main advantage of such a tool is the way it combines knowledge management and search with powerful social features. Knowledge Plaza is available in two versions, software as a service or as an appliance.

Community Server Evolution (Telligent)

Community Server Evolution from Telligent is 100% build on Microsoft Technology that is packaged as a Shared Source software (you have to buy a license but you can access the source code that is build in ASP.NET). It contains all the classic features such as Blogs, Forums, Media libraries and Wiki’s and element we really like is the Harvest Server that comes with the Enterprise Edition and that offers specific social analytics reports. The software should mainly be seen as a very good community-software that offers all the tools you need to setup communities within your organisation.

Socialtext (Socialtext)

With its web Oriented architecture and full REST API’s this platform is very open and offers a lot of flexibility when it comes to integrating it with your own legacy systems. It also follows the Google OpenSocial Gadget standard which enables the possibility to integrate other tools that are developed by the OpenSocial community. Socialtext has evolved from a commercial Wiki-platform to a rather complete social platform for your organization where features such as a micro-blog functionality (called Social Messaging), distributed spreadsheats and blogs are well integrated.

Clearspace (Jive Software)

Clearspace is very complete software that next to the classic social tools such as wiki’s, blogs and fora also contains a project management tool where tasks can be assigned and where real social collaboration on project-level becomes possible. This full Java-written platform has also an altered version that is called Clearspace Community that is oriented towards your customers.

Sharepoint (Microsoft)

SharePoint has the advantage to offer a very complete suite especially when you already have a Microsoft infrastructure on the work floor. Together with the SharePoint Services included with Windows Server it truly is a platform with huge potential. It offers structured collaboration with core social computing capabilities, including blogs, wikis, podcasting, persistent group chat, discussion groups, "people search" that uses social network analysis, and related rich content but also portal and workflow capabilities and all that in one platform. Sharepoint Server is also often used with other platforms on this page to offer even better social networking and collaboration tools.

Bluehouse (IBM)

(See the video presentation on this page.) Bluehouse from IBM-Lotus is still in beta-phase but we will keep an eye on it because the launch is foreseen in January 2009. It is the perfect complement to Lotus Connections that offers functionalities such as social bookmarking, tagging, activity-centered collaboration, blogs, people profiles and expertise location. BlueHouse enriches this environment with web-based productivity tools, meetings and social networking.

Mindtouch Deki (Mindtouch)

Mindtouch Deki is mostly know from it’s very good Wiki-engine with very user-friendly interface and collaboration features. Recently their product offering has been enlarged with Deki CRM (SaaS only) and Deki Mobile (iPhone skin for the Wiki engine). The advantage of Mindtouch is that it has a completely free version you can download from their website and that offers a good start to explore the advantages of enterprise Wiki’s. There are also commercial versions available with Deki Enterprise as the most complete version. To conclude : Mindtouch Deki is an enterprise Wiki that is worth to take a look at.

Confluence (Altassian)

Confluence from Atlassian is an enterprise Wiki-system with a nice set of social capabilities such as discussion possibilities, blogging functionality and extensive organization capacities. The framework is build on open-source components and it is completely Java based. There is also a set of plugins that really enrich the Confluence environment such as the Tasklist, the office connector, the Sharepoint connector and the widget connector.

Leverage Software (Leverage Software)

Leverage Software is the package in the list that mainly focuses on external communities. This software is very suited for companies who want total control on their brand and who want to set up large client communities where each member has specific social networking functionalities at his disposal. The whole platform is build on a .NET infrastructure that is offered as a SaaS-service. The communities however can be accessed from the outside through the REST-API and webservices.