Collaboration, Web 2.0 and Social Computing: how the business enterprise communications landscape has changed.

There was a time when “social computing” referred to the consumer platforms Facebook, Twitter, or Linked-in. However, a recent announcement by IDC states that that with the majority of business workers use the social Web at least once a week the social enterprise media genie has finally been set free from the corporate bubble.

According to IDC, says Bertram Collins, Head of Business and Technology Services, Gijima, social computing and the cloud are becoming equally integrated in the enterprise. IDC makes the point that if social computing represents the new business process then cloud computing is the delivery mechanism.

"I think it’s true to say that the business enterprise communications landscape has now truly been changed. While 1.0 social media apps such as MSN Messenger and Lotus Notes were making small inroads into the enterprise space, the advent of consumer 2.0 level applications such as Facebook and Twitter have finally tipped the corporate world over the edge and into an exciting new paradigm.'

Vendors are now bringing to market a wide range of social computing and collaboration solutions that make use of the connectivity and interactivity of Web 2.0, applying it for business use. The trend includes enhancements in areas such as social networking, mass collaboration, and interactive bi-directional web technologies – all designed for enterprise applications.

In fact, many users may not even know that one such example is already well-entrenched in the business 2.0 space - Salesforce.com is a good example of the new generation of systems that have become prevalent in the enterprise market that are designed to bring together communication, applications and content all together in real-time; enabling what can only be called internal business social network platforms.

What has been done for Salesforce, can in fact, and will, be done for a new generation of social media platforms making real-time, secure collaboration environments possible.
What does this mean to the corporate user?

Typical applications within a business environment will include:

• Giving employees the ability to update their own real-time feeds
• A business social media tool would also integrate information from third-party service providers receiving updates from applications, departments and even the sales team in the field, not to mention customer feedback.

It’s important to note, however, that it isn’t Facebook and Twitter, or Blogspot, or other consumer platforms that provide the technology to support social computing for the enterprise. Rather, it’s the existing infrastructure and application providers, as well as a number of new entrants to the social computing and collaboration marketplace, which will bring about the operating infrastructure to enable an organisation with enterprise 2.0 concepts and capabilities.

Another paradigm that is on the verge of being enabled by the social media phenomenon is that of Cloud Computing. In fact it's probably fair to say that the Cloud will also serve as the medium for enterprise level social media. Taken from today’s traditional desktop applications environment we know that for a user to communicate or to share documents they have to jump through several technology and administrative hoops, where, for instance, a document is created in an application like Sharepoint and business applications are separate from the communication process.

A Cloud-based service brings these services together into one environment. In a cloud-based environment, API's can be used to integrate third-party applications such as Twitter.

What does this new landscape look like? Where do you draw the line between consumer and enterprise functionality? The point I would like to make here is that we do not draw the line. The entire 2.0 and social media space encourages us to erase the lines once and for all. From corporate hierarchies to the customer-company interaction.

Now where's the benefit in this you may ask? On a corporate management level social media allows us to adopt new asymmetrical forms of management that are dynamic, intelligent and responsive to demands from the marketplace - be it competitors or on a customer level. It is at this juncture that we can now begin to delve into the realm of interactive marketing.

It is here that enterprises will be able to truly leverage their investment in consumer-focused social computing tools to more effectively reach its customers (and prospective customers). Typically we are beginning to see these types of interaction taking place at the customer care level, where call centre operators interact daily with individuals in the outside world. While these operators seldom diverge from the scripts they use to communicate with customers the door has been opened for more interactive communication.

Typical applications (which may even be enabled via consumer platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and even a Wordpress blog) allow enterprises to make use of e-marketing, personalised communications management, online advertising, and many more 2.0 technologies to connect with, and interact with their customer base. You may be forgiven for thinking “Didn’t I use to have a relationship like that with the corner café owner 25 years ago”. The answer is, you did. Only now it’s taken technology 25 years to remind us that the most important relationships we have with our customers are the ones we have “face-to face”. It’s these interactive marketing applications that will now come to the fore.

It’s easy to see why. Interactive marketing is a natural progression, as businesses make use of the tools their consumers already use in order to connect with those same consumers.
Even on a legal front businesses are beginning to gain rights. A recent ruling by the American court now allows corporations to make campaign contributions as if they were real-life entities. At this point is easy to see how these self-same entities interact with us on a more social level.

All this of course is to some extent, wishful thinking. For many enterprise decision makers, the business model for social computing is not that clear. Many companies have adopted a “wait-and-see” approach regarding the deployment, or even considering the planning phase for the widespread use of social computing applications within the enterprise.

That said I think the time has definitely come for this technology to be adopted. Today’s businesses cannot afford to take the risk. As they were forced to change thanks to the advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web, enterprises need to be aware that the expectations for interactivity have changed. The global culture has undergone a shift toward greater connectivity and transparency, in line with these innovations. People now interact in a far more transparent manner across social networks that include not just close friends, but acquaintances and others with common interests. These individuals now expect to engage in similar interactions within the business environment on the same level.

Whether they make the change today or not, the truth is a significant percentage of the baby boomer management generation is fast approaching retirement age. And they will be replaced by a younger workforce that is already well-versed with social media tools and they will drive the adoption within the future enterprise, opening these organisations to the greater world, and finally enabling the productive, agile, enterprise Knowledge Worker.