Winning for the Right Reasons

I’m glad that we aren’t becoming jaded or blasé about all of our industry recognitions, especially with this latest accolade. Frost & Sullivan, a global research firm with a 50 year track record of keen market insight and a unique approach to sorting the players and finding what works for business, has awarded NewsGator its 2011 North American Customer Value Enhancement Award in Enterprise Collaboration Solutions.

Why? Because, social in the enterprise is taking off big time but companies want the least amount of disruption – to their budgets or their employees – and the maximum benefit. After some serious scrutiny, Frost & Sullivan’s analysts determined that that Social Sites 2010 hits that mark dead center.

We know Social Sites 2010 delivers the goods on a technical level. We’re constantly evolving its raft of social collaboration features – from microblogging to expertise discovery and native mobile clients for all the leading platforms – to keep it right in step with the times. What this award underscores, however, is something that makes Social Sites, and our vision for it, unique in the market – unparalleled value.

As the Frost & Sullivan team noted when they evaluated Social Sites, companies today are faced with two realities: on one hand, their workforces are more dispersed and mobile than ever and social enterprise computing and collaboration can power a new way of working that keeps teams cohesive and boosts productivity and innovation; on the other hand, times are tight and budgets are under constant scrutiny. Going social has to be a “no drama” event that takes advantage, to the fullest extent, of existing assets. For a very large number of enterprises, that means the journey to social starts at SharePoint and for a growing number it ends with NewsGator Social Sites 2010.

Why? For the reasons Frost & Sullivan noted: Social Sites 2010 runs as a native service directly on SharePoint. An existing investment in SharePoint and all of its enterprise-spanning capabilities becomes a no fuss, no drama upgrade to leading edge enterprise social with Social Sites. No extraordinary IT heroics, no data duplication or specialized systems. This leaves our customers free to focus on best practices in rolling out just the right approach to social that will return the maximum benefit for their organization.

Maybe that’s the best way Social Sites 2010 delivers customer value in social enterprise computing – by letting them focus on the social and not the technology.