IBM Expands Social Business Effort With New Services

Just ahead of Lotusphere 2012, which is expected to be a showcase for social business, IBM announced a set of new programs and services that expand Big Blue's social business strategy.

Ahead of its Lotusphere 2012 conference, IBM announced a series of new programs, services and partnerships to continue to push forward the company's social business strategy.

IBM launched its social business play in a big way at Lotusphere 2011, delivering new software and services to lay the foundation for its enterprise customers to take advantage of social networking and media to become truly social businesses. Now, with a Jan. 11 announcement, IBM has introduced a set of new efforts-including consulting opportunities, educational programs and workshops-to expand on its social business initiative.

"The opportunity to transform into a social business can be stunted without a focus on engagement, culture change and policy," said Alistair Rennie, general manager of Social Business at IBM, in a statement. "Social technologies, when combined with the right skills and culture, can truly unlock the potential of people within the organization to collaborate, innovate, make smarter business decisions and ultimately drive their bottom line."

With its Lotus software, IBM has a legacy of social software products and is poised to tap further into the lucrative market for social business software and services. According to Forrester Research, the market opportunity for social business software is expected to grow at a rate of 61 percent through 2016, reaching $6.4 billion, compared with $600 million last year.

Indeed, in June 2011, market research firm IDC ranked IBM No. 1 in worldwide market share for social platform software for 2009 and 2010. Also according to IDC, the worldwide revenue for the social platforms software market was more than $500 million in 2010, representing growth of 31.9 percent. The market opportunity for social platforms is expected to grow by a factor of nearly 2 billion worldwide by 2014, IDC said.

With this latest move, IBM is investing in its clients and business partners to develop the skills, technical support and industry resources that will allow them to effectively adopt social networking capabilities to transform their business operations, the company said. This includes introducing new technical workshops designed to improve skills and consulting offerings to help develop a business culture that fosters open collaboration and sharing among employees, clients and business partners.

The new IBM social business initiatives include:

• Strategic consulting from IBM Global Business Services to help organizations better understand their current adoption of social business tools for both internal and external purposes and to help articulate how social business accelerates and alleviates business challenges.
• Global educational and mentorship programs for clients and business partners on how to become effective community managers, the fastest growing job in social, while increasing employee engagement over top, line-of-business communities on the social software platform.
• Technical certification programs that help customers and business partners validate and demonstrate their skills through assessment exams and training resources so they can plan for and perform the installation, configuration and day-to-day tasks associated with ensuring the smooth and efficient operation of social software solutions. 
• Social Business Agenda workshops at IBM's Virtual Innovation Center providing immediate access to discussion forums focused on the benefits of becoming a social business, providing clients and business partners with case study examples of successful social businesses, and helping them to develop an agenda for driving social adoption. 

IBM also announced a partnership with The Dachis Group, a large social business consultancy, to help organizations quickly drive adoption success through a social business adoption quick start workshop. The workshop combines IBM services for the implementation of social business solutions for enterprises with additional services from The Dachis Group and focuses on the use of social business technology while fostering cultural skills and engagement, IBM said.

"You can really see a growth of maturity in the marketplace that IBM helped create," said Sandy Carter, vice president of Social Business Evangelism and Sales at IBM, in an interview with eWEEK's sister publication ChannelInsider. Carter was referring to IBM's major push into the space at Lotusphere 2011.