Enterprises want to know what the business case is before they begin buying.SANTA CLARA, Calif.—If
the concept of social media is to make an impact on the enterprise, it needs to
be customized or built for business, and few products currently fill that bill.
Employees are using social media tools, but new ones need to be developed
and the enterprise still wants to know what the business case is for these
applications, said Ajay Gandhi, senior director for enterprise social computing
at BEA Systems and a member of a panel speaking Jan. 29 at the WebGuild Web 2.0
conference here.
"The use of social media applications in the enterprise is currently
being determined by workers, who simply download and use them," said
Robert Rueckert, a senior investment manager at Intel Capital who focuses on
Internet startups. "Their IT departments are now recognizing this and
looking to consolidate those tools and make them useful for everyone in the
organization."
New tools need to be developed that are enterprise-specific and that are a
lot more secure and able to follow a corporate compliance and governance
policy, Rueckert said.
The companies having the most success are those providing enterprises with
useful solutions, but there is a shortage of these, Rueckert continued, noting
that there has been much talk about a "Facebook for the enterprise"
type of application, but one has yet to emerge. "Many enterprises are
trying to build these on their own," he said.
Facebook for the enterprise
BEA has plans to unleash in 2008 an enterprise version of a Facebook-like
solution called AquaLogic Interaction, which is based on the former
Plumtree Foundation and Plumtree Corporate Portal technologies, Gandhi said.
AquaLogic Interaction will let enterprises do social networking within their
environment, and will have a connectivity feed, profile pages and ways for
people to connect to one another in a way that allows the type of dynamic
collaboration not available today, he said.
"Many of the social media applications that are now being used in the
enterprise came from the consumer side and, over time, became part of the
enterprise. But they need to be adapted to its specific needs, especially
around security and governance," Gandhi said.
For its part, Salesforce.com has introduced Ideaforce, a feedback platform
where users can debate and vote on the new feature or enhancement they most
want included in the next product release, said Anshu Sharma, senior director
of platform strategy at Salesforce.com.
"The enterprise wants social media applications that allow them to
connect information that can then be extracted and used in a meaningful
way," Sharma said.
Enterprise Applications 
