Greater availability of social networking services, coupled with changing demographics and work styles, will lead 20% of employees to use social networks as their business communications' hub by 2014, according to Gartner.
Analysts from the research firm say this is one of a wide range of capabilities that have emerged in communications, social Web and mobile, enabling richer interactions among people and expanding collaboration to a broader level.
“In the past, organisations supported collaboration through e-mail and highly structured applications only,” says Monica Basso, research vice-president at Gartner.
“Today, social paradigms are converging with e-mail, instant messaging and presence, creating new collaboration styles. However, a truly collaborative, effective and efficient workplace will not arise until organisations make these capabilities widely available and users become more comfortable with them. Technology is only an enabler; culture is a must for success.”
While micro-blogging is reshaping enterprise communications, business communications are evolving, says Gartner. Newer employees will enter the workforce with a predisposition to communicate via a social network, but they will use e-mail in parallel; thus optimising the business need with the communication modality.
“The rigid distinction between e-mail and social networks will erode,” Basso says. “E-mail will take on many social attributes, such as contact brokering, while social networks will develop richer e-mail capabilities.”
Vendors such as Microsoft and IBM will add links to internal and external social networks from within e-mail clients and servers, Gartner says, making services such as contacts, calendars and tasks shareable across e-mail and social networks. By 2012, Gartner predicts, contact lists, calendars and messaging clients in any smartphones will be social-enabled applications.
Collaboration is slowly moving to the cloud, and Gartner analysts expect to see steep growth rates for sales of premises- and cloud-based social networking services.
“Organisations will deploy hybrid models where some services live on-premises and some are in the cloud.” Gartner predicts that the percentage of e-mail accounts on cloud services will grow to 10% by year-end 2012, up 7% from 2009.
From a vendor's perspective, the market is consolidating around Microsoft and Research In Motion (RIM), the two market leaders. Gartner forecasts that by 2012, RIM and Microsoft will own 80% of the enterprise wireless e-mail software market.
Communications and collaboration are critical to business success, and any organisation should invest in these areas to pursue innovative organisational and work-style change. “Even in an economic downturn, innovation is a must for any organisation to prepare for recovery and further change,” says Basso.
“The reality is that mobile collaboration will increase for all categories of workers, and organisations can either take the lead, or be led by their users,” she notes.
“The most progressive organisations won't be afraid to explore the innovative communications and collaboration models enabled by new devices and social services allow their employees to generate innovative ideas by experimenting with them.”
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