The real score behind the 'enterprise social' phenomenon

The advent of Facebook and similar social networking portals and tools is profoundly changing the world of work. While these changes may not have made themselves felt at your workplace yet, you can be sure they are on the way, as the industrial and institutional legacies of the 20th century are replaced by open and collaborative communities.

This article sets out the effects that social networking tools are having on the enterprise, first defining the phenomenon known as 'enterprise social' and then examining what is driving it.

Defining the trend

For the last 30 years, email has been the mainstay of digital communication in businesses. But today, many people wonder whether the communication tools we now use in our personal lives might work better in our workplaces too.

Email is a lonely experience: we come to work, clear the inbox and fire back a bunch of responses, all in preparation for the "actual work" we hope to get started on before lunch. This is not social.

Enterprise social applications and services effortlessly connect us with other people, making us feel included and empowered. They intrinsically connect the task at hand to the people who need to do it, enabling them to work together no matter where they are.

But they also have another effect on working lives: they bring a new level of community. Humans are social creatures and we value having open access to the relevant people and information. Enterprise social tools enable this without a physical meeting.

Unfortunately, most of today's enterprise tools have all the control and features an enterprise could want, but without the simple, accessible, collaborative experience that users want.

SharePoint offers a home to share our documents with colleagues, but lacks the accessibility of personal file sharing tools like Dropbox. Imagine a world with all the power of our day-to-day productivity applications, but which also offered the sharing and collaborative capabilities of personal social networking tools.

The drivers of enterprise social

Fast forward 20 years or so and we had rocketed through the genesis of the Internet and were standing at the threshold of Web 2.0, the enabler for social media. By acknowledging Web 2.0 technologies as evolutions of the original web technologies, it becomes easy to see the link between the early Internet visionaries and the social media landscape of today.

Mobile

We are now more connected than ever, and the ever growing range of mobile devices and applications is driving social software into the enterprise. Connected mobile devices may be old news to many, but it is these new devices that are enabling on-the-go sharing of information, paving the way for social applications and services to be taken into the enterprise.

Gen Y

The arrival of Generation Y into the workforce, and the social media they use in their in their personal lives, is accelerating the demand for social software in the enterprise. Sharing is becoming the default and the old command and control' approach of corporate IT is now viewed as an obstacle. We want to use the same behaviours, devices, and applications in our work lives as we use in the personal lives.

Out of the Web 2.0 social web phenomenon we have arrived at the Enterprise 2.0 social business.

Enterprise 2.0 Social Business

Many modern businesses see social technology as giving their employees greater flexibility over when and where they do their jobs. We research into the benefits of 'work-shifting' show it can increase business performance and employee satisfaction.

For example, an employee can work from home to avoid rush-hour traffic. The social business benefits from a more empowered, creative and open workforce. Information is accessible and barriers to communication are broken down.

Traditional business transactions that were B2B or B2C are becoming simply people-to-people. However, the path to this enlightenment is rocky – the challenges for business are technical, financial, and cultural. Forcing a change is unlikely to work for established organizations, and the technology is too immature to risk switching off mail servers just yet.

The natural approach for many businesses is to guide the change gradually or let it happen organically from within.

Enterprise software vendors are responding to this trend. Jive Software has recently completed an IPO and is rapidly expanding. They sell an on-premise or private cloud social platform with IM, an app store, with a strong emphasis on SharePoint, Outlook, and Office integration. BaseCamp, from 37signals, provides an enterprise social platform, with strong emphasis on collaborative project management.

Citrix joins the party

In this context, with customers demanding solutions and the market responding, it is crucial for Citrix to adapt its offerings too. So what are we doing about it?

This is where the recent acquisition of Podio comes in. Podio, based in Denmark and founded in 2009, provides a SaaS-based work platform. Imagine a Facebook-like experience but suited to your work needs; share ideas and documents with your colleagues in a secured workspace, but with the full range of real-time communication tools built right into the platform; start instant messaging, a voice or video chat or an impromptu team meeting without leaving the shared workspace; and do all this from anywhere on any device.

A social engagement

This new breed of applications and services that combine the features of our current enterprise tools with the social media experience makes it easy and natural to work across dispersed teams. The integration of social into the offerings of Citrix and other vendors allows our industry to address changing work trends and the needs of IT and users alike.

Expect to see Citrix play a bigger role in this space as we continue to innovate, partner, and acquire.

However, this is only the beginning. The distinction between enterprise and personal IT tools is, in the end, artificial, just like the distinction between work and home life. That's why people use personal smart phones for work, for instance.

Regardless of the activity you're engaged in, you still want IT to offer an efficient, user-friendly solution. By importing social networking functionality into the enterprise, certain IT industry offerings are doing just that, and the potential for such tools to improve the way we all work is huge.