NEW DELHI: Social networking will replace email as the primary vehicle for communications for one in five businesses across the world, IT research major Gartner said on Tuesday. The research firm also said that nearly half of the companies globally will start using microblogging streams like Twitter in two years.
The forecasts were part of a Gartner report that tries to predict the realm of social networking in companies for 2010-2015 . The huge popularity of the consumer-microblogging service Twitter has led many organisations to look for an “enterprise Twitter,” that provides microblogging functionality with more control and security features.
“However, it will be very difficult for microblogging as a stand-alone function to achieve widespread adoption within the enterprise. Twitter’s scale is one of the reasons for its popularity,” said Jeffrey Mann, research vice-president for Gartner.
Enterprise users want to use microblogging for many of the same reasons that consumers do to share quick insights, to keep up with what colleagues are doing, to get quick answers to questions and so on.
Already, Indian companies like Bharti have switched to SMS instead of email. Almost 90% of internal communication in the company happens through an SMS intranet developed by IBM. Gartner also predicts that by 2014, social networking services will replace e-mail as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications. Social networking will prove to be more effective than e-mail for certain business activities such as status updates and location , adds Gartner.
“Rigid distinction between e-mail and social networks will erode. Email will take on many social attributes such as contact brokering while social networks will develop richer e-mail capabilities,” predicts Matt Cain, research vice-president at Gartner. “While e-mail is already almost fully penetrated in the corporate space, we expect to see steep growth rates for sales of cloud-based social networking services,” he adds. The shift will also be marred of challenges. Through 2013, IT organisations will struggle with shifting from providing a platform to delivering a solution. This will result in over a 70% failure rate in IT-driven social media initiatives inside companies , says Gartner.
During the next several years, most companies will be building out internal social networks and/or allowing business use of personal social network accounts. Companies like Oracle and SAP already offer social networking applications inside their ERP systems.
The forecasts were part of a Gartner report that tries to predict the realm of social networking in companies for 2010-2015 . The huge popularity of the consumer-microblogging service Twitter has led many organisations to look for an “enterprise Twitter,” that provides microblogging functionality with more control and security features.
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Enterprise users want to use microblogging for many of the same reasons that consumers do to share quick insights, to keep up with what colleagues are doing, to get quick answers to questions and so on.
Already, Indian companies like Bharti have switched to SMS instead of email. Almost 90% of internal communication in the company happens through an SMS intranet developed by IBM. Gartner also predicts that by 2014, social networking services will replace e-mail as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications. Social networking will prove to be more effective than e-mail for certain business activities such as status updates and location , adds Gartner.
“Rigid distinction between e-mail and social networks will erode. Email will take on many social attributes such as contact brokering while social networks will develop richer e-mail capabilities,” predicts Matt Cain, research vice-president at Gartner. “While e-mail is already almost fully penetrated in the corporate space, we expect to see steep growth rates for sales of cloud-based social networking services,” he adds. The shift will also be marred of challenges. Through 2013, IT organisations will struggle with shifting from providing a platform to delivering a solution. This will result in over a 70% failure rate in IT-driven social media initiatives inside companies , says Gartner.
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During the next several years, most companies will be building out internal social networks and/or allowing business use of personal social network accounts. Companies like Oracle and SAP already offer social networking applications inside their ERP systems.
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