Enterprises Get Boost By Integrating Social Tools

Are you prepared for SharePoint 2010?

A recent article by CIO highlights two NewsGator customers, Accenture and Edelman, who currently use NewsGator Social Sites on Microsoft SharePoint 2007 to improve the communications, efficiency, and productivity of their organizations -- and are preparing for the change to SharePoint 2010.

CIO's Shane O'Neill explains that "social networking software are marching into enterprise at a rapid clip," and microblogging, discussion forums, social bookmarking, online groups and communities, among other social tools, are spilling into the enterprise -- in part due to the demand from younger workers who are used to using many of these tools outside of the workplace.

Kevin Dana, Accenture's director of enterprise social computing and collaboration, mentions a recent thawing in senior management's resistance to social networking tools, saying, "the best line from a senior executive I've heard is, 'I don't get it, but we need to do it.'" Accenture pilot tested NewsGator Social Sites from March to August of 2009 and pushed the platform live last September; they are using Social Sites for both Group pages and its People profile pages (MySites), which the article mentions resembles Facebook's News Feed page in appearance.

More importantly, Dana notes that "the NewsGator suite outshines SharePoint's marginal social tools, with features including microblogging, status updates, social bookmarking, tagging, activity feeds" and more. Why did Accenture go with NewsGator, Dana says that the fact that Social Sites integrates directly into SharePoint was a big factor, saying that "what makes enterprise social networking valuable is when it lets you integrate with business processes, and NewsGator is architected to do that."

The other NewsGator customer mentioned in the article is Edelman, one of the world's largest PR firms, with over three thousand employees in 51 offices worldwide.  Edelman launched NewsGator Social Sites about a year and a half ago. David Rosenberg, VP and development lead for Internet Services/Corporate MIS at Edelman points to Social Sites enlivening MySites profile pages in SharePoint by adding more social features that allow users to connect through microblogging, tagging, and social bookmarking. As Rosenberg explains, "this is a big win for us because as a PR and communications firm, we like to keep things as open and social as possible."

Accenture and Edelman will continue to rely on NewsGator Social Sites to add value to SharePoint, including its upcoming 2010 iteration. Both companies admit that while "social tools in SharePoint 2010 are improving, they still don't match the social bookmarking and microblogging features of NewsGator."