Social Enterprise Apps Redefine Collaboration

November 30th, 2011

Henry Dewing

With contributors:

Ted Schadler , John McCarthy , Christopher Mines , Michael Yamnitsky

Summary

Businesses need better productivity tools to equip information workers to be successful. To date, firms have invested in a menagerie of tools — email, instant messaging (IM), voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), unified communications and collaboration (UC&C), videoconferencing, and collaboration software platforms — hoping to improve productivity. By and large, these offerings have not delivered. Forrester believes that a new generation of social enterprise apps will finally deliver the productivity businesses desire by systematically grouping and rating people, information, and processes required to answer business needs. By creating a social layer between information workers and the applications and communications infrastructure, social enterprise apps will overcome the adoption malaise that has affected UC&C. We forecast that standalone UC&C sales will begin declining in 2014 while the market for social enterprise apps and related services will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 61% to become a $6.4 billion market in 2016.

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