Gartner predictions on Social Media usage in Enterprises

Last night we had rather a good session on Social Media in the Enterprise, where we did quite a bit of crystal ball and navel gazing, so its interesting to see Gartner's predictions today. Here they are with my takes:

By 2014, social networking services will replace e-mail as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications for 20 percent of business users.

“The rigid distinction between e-mail and social networks will erode. E-mail will take on many social attributes, such as contact brokering while social networks will develop richer e-mail capabilities,” said 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 premises- and cloud-based social networking services. “

My take - what is more likely to happen is they will all be integrated into unified comms systems that can receive and send a message in whatever format one wants. And why cloud based? Enterprise email hasn't needed a cloud based system so far?


By 2012, over 50 percent of enterprises will use activity streams that include microblogging, but stand-alone enterprise microblogging will have less than 5 percent penetration.

“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. “When limited to a single enterprise, that same scale is unachievable, reducing the number of users who will find it valuable. Mainstream enterprises are unlikely to adopt standalone, single-purpose microblogging products.

My take - the reason enterprises are interested in Twitter and similar is not due to it being a social network, but because its a very flexible transport system. That transport system will find many uses, including M2M, M2P, P2M and P2P functions. It will be used for broad and narrowcasting and be part of the Unified Comms (UC) Architecture.


Through 2012, over 70 percent of IT-dominated social media initiatives will fail.

When it comes to collaboration, IT organizations are accustomed to providing a technology platform (such as, e-mail, IM, Web conferencing) rather than delivering a social solution that targets specific business value. Through 2013, IT organizations will struggle with shifting from providing a platform to delivering a solution. This will result in over a 70 percent failure rate in IT-driven social media initiatives. Fifty percent of business-led social media initiatives will succeed, versus 20 percent of IT-driven initiatives.

My Take - Indeed, but thats a "so what" - its a fairly standard failure rate with new technologies. Lessons will then be learned, best practice will emerge etc etc. The far, far bigger issue that emerged last night is that the way organisations are organised and the way social media works are orthogonal to each other, so it will require big shifts in workflow, processes, culture etc - companies will only do that if they can see a clear ROI based rationale. And because metrics are still new, failure will be as much about mis-measurement as mis-steps


Within five years, 70 percent of collaboration and communications applications designed on PCs will be modeled after user experience lessons from smartphone collaboration applications.

As we move toward three billion phones in the world serving the main purpose of providing communications and collaboration anytime anywhere, Gartner expects more end users to spend significant time experiencing the collaborative tools on these devices. For some of the world, these will be the first or the only applications they use. The experience with these tools for all who use them will enable the user to handle far more conversations within a given amount of time than their PCs simply because they are easier to use. Just as the iPhone impacted user interface design on the desktop, the lessons in the mobile phone collaboration space will dramatically affect PC applications, many of which are derivatives of decades-old platforms based on the PBX or other older collaboration paradigm.

My Take - this is Planet Mobile we are talking about, which is very susceptible to hype. Halve everything. Restated this is that " Within ten years, 35 percent of collaboration and communications applications designed on PCs will be modeled after user experience lessons from smartphone collaboration applications." Much more likely.


Through 2015, only 25 percent of enterprises will routinely utilize social network analysis to improve performance and productivity.

Social network analysis is a useful methodology for examining the interaction patterns and information flows that occur among the people and groups in an organization, as well as among business partners and customers. However, when surveys are used for data collection, users may be reluctant to provide accurate responses. When automated tools perform the analysis, users may resent knowing that software is analyzing their behavior. For these reasons, social network analysis will remain an untapped source of insight in most organizations.

My Take - Companies will try to spy now, staff won't like it, and some companies will go too far - expect regulation to emerge by 2015. Also, not all business functions and companies will have the same "bang for buck" from social media, so many will not really use it very much.