$275 Million Enterprise Social Software Market to Disrupt Traditional Enterprise Software Markets, According to Research from GigaOM Pro

Business Wire, June 23, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO -- While most people associate social web features with consumer web sites such as Facebook and Twitter, the enterprise world is rapidly embracing many of the same social features, according to a new report from GigaOM Pro and The Community Roundtable. Still in its infancy, the $275 million enterprise social software market is expected to grow quickly in 2009 and beyond as large companies look for ways to integrate social functionality with legacy systems to publish, share and collaborate in real-time.

“While the enterprise social software market is evolving out of traditional content authoring, management and CRM solutions, it has significant potential to disrupt these markets,” said Rachel Happe, founder of The Community Roundtable. “This is because established application technologies — and the companies that create them — will have trouble keeping up since they are architected around content or process, and not the end-user.”

The enterprise social software market today is made up of many players, from point solution players like Wordpress in the blog space, to larger social suite players like IBM with Lotus Connections. Cisco, a new entrant to the social software suite market, is looking to disrupt the disrupters, taking market share from early players in this space as they elbow their way into the market.

“By collapsing authoring, publishing and distributing into one action, social software vastly increases productivity and the speed of communications,” said Happe. “While the largest of the pure social software companies have yet to reach $50 million in revenue, we expect this fragmented market to grow and potentially consolidate quickly as established players move to integrate social features into the enterprise.”

“Social Media in the Enterprise,” which can be found at the GigaOM Pro web site, examines how social software and related functionality is poised to disrupt existing enterprise application markets.

About GigaOM Pro

GigaOM Pro delivers actionable insights on emerging markets by providing big-picture analysis, in-depth original research and interactive engagement with technology insiders. Visit GigaOM Pro today

About The Community Roundtable

The Community Roundtable is a peer network for community managers and social media parishioners. Its mission is to provide programming and peer networking opportunities for practitioners while furthering the discipline of community management as a profession. Find out more