By now, many collaboration software providers consider it a must to have an enterprise social-networking component in their suites, but Google, which shook up this market with its Web-hosted Apps product in 2006 , stands out for lacking this capability.
Many large and small collaboration vendors, including IBM, Microsoft, Socialtext, Box.net and Jive Software, have responded to demand from CIOs and IT managers for enterprise social-networking capabilities in collaboration suites.
[ Related: Enterprises become the battleground for social networking | Advice Line: Social networking software for businesses | Time to check out social networking and SOA. ]
As has happened before with wikis, blogs, and syndication feeds, the popularity of social networking among consumers has propelled it to the workplace, where employees have found great collaboration and communication benefits in Facebook-like systems designed for use in companies.
In fact, some collaboration vendors are already on their second iteration of their enterprise social-networking technologies, giving them microblogging capabilities popularized among consumers by Twitter.
With so much activity in this space, Google seems to be trailing and slow on the uptake, as Apps remains a suite centered on e-mail communications and document sharing, devoid of social-networking capabilities.
This hasn't gone unnoticed by Apps administrators.
"In our domain, we'd definitely find that it'd be beneficial to have some type of interface into social networking," said Douglas Menefee, The Schumacher Group's chief information officer.
The health care company, which provides emergency medical staff and management services to hospitals, is testing the Apps Premier version of the suite with an eye toward buying licenses for about 2,500 physicians and nurses that it works with as independent contractors.
"As a company, we're continuing to look at how we can better utilize the concept of social networking as it relates to project management and updates, and have a little bit more transparency into each other's domains," he added.
Chris Abraham, president and COO of the online marketing and public relations firm Abraham Harrison LLC, would also find it useful for Apps to offer social-networking capabilities.
The company has 16 employees, two of which work full time, two part time, and the rest are contractors, he said. "We don't have a corporate Facebook. That would be good to have," Abraham said.
It would also be good for Apps as a product, since its contact-management and task-management features leave a lot to be desired, Abraham said.
Asked whether Google plans to add enterprise social networking to Apps, a Google spokesman said via e-mail that the company has no comment about the issue.
Get the independent advice and expertise you need to support a virtual workforce.
The increase in Linux popularity has increased the frequency and sophistication of malware attacks. Read this 2 page white paper now to learn how you can protect your Linux environment with real-time protection that is certified by all major Linux vendors.
Download now »
Ensuring acceptable application delivery will become even more difficult over the next few years. As a result, IT organizations need to ensure that the approach that they take to resolving the current application delivery challenges can scale to support the emerging challenges. This handbook elaborates on the key tasks associated with planning, optimization, management and control and provides decision criteria to help IT organizations choose appropriate solutions.
Download now »
A common misconception is that mid-range storage requirements are dramatically different than that of a larger enterprise. Mid-range storage users may require less capacity, but they have similar functionality and management requirements. This ESG paper examines mid-range storage needs and reviews a new solution that adjusts size while retaining value, performance and functionality.
Download now »
Sign up to receive InfoWorld Resource Alerts
10 Recommendations
