After writing my 2012 Predictions post I thought it would be appropriate to take a look back at some of the things that happened in the 2011 within enterprise social software.
The items below are in no particular order. I'd love to hear your comments, additions, etc.
- I think this past year was a little bland in the startup world. Of course all the vendors had new releases that made their products more functional and better looking, integrated with more tools, added mobile and analytics, etc. but nothing jumps out at me as a real innovation the way streams and microblogging changed things in 2010. I can't think a major new player that emerged in 2011, but I guess I'm hearing more about Tibco, Moxie and Podio than I did in 2010.
- HR/HCM/Talent Management replaced CRM as the hot vertical for "social". Just take a look at the money trail: Oracle acquired RightNow for $1.5B, SAP acquired SuccessFactors for $3.5B, (after SuccessFactors had bought Plateau for $290M earlier in the year) and (on a much smaller scale) Salesforce.com acquired Rypple. Workday received $85M in funding. The folks at Saba, Taleo, Kenexa, WorkSimple and others must be eagerly awaiting 2012. (should I have put that in my predictions post?)
- The big software vendors made their social software platforms more credible. IBM has had a solid offering in Connections for years, but now Oracle, Cisco, SAP and others are actually becoming legitimate options. I heard next to nothing new or exciting about SharePoint other than customer disappointment that Microsoft did not release a microblogging enhancement. I'd imagine companies that "make SharePoint more social" such as NewsGator, Beezy and Blue Roster did not mind.
- Here's an interesting one I don't hear social business folks talk about, Enterprise software vendor Lawson was acquired by GGC holdings for $2B. While Lawson is mainly focused on financial, supply chain, manufacturing, etc. I'd imagine two billion dollars could easily help them enter the social software fray the way all the other big players are doing. We'll see.
- Jive had a good year acquiring both Proximal Labs and OffiSync and then on Dec 13th became the first enterprise social software startup to IPO.
- Google+ entered the scene. At the moment this is not an enterprise social software product but there is no denying Google has finally (after the Wave and Buzz failures) figured out how to successfully build social software. The speed at which Google is enhancing G+ and integrating it with its other products is astounding. In 2012 a combined/integrated Google Apps and Google+ product will be a real challenger in the enterprise collaboration space. (that's another one for the predictions post)
- Salesforce.com made a lot of noise this year as they jumped both feet into "social business". In addition to making Chatter the cornerstone of everything they do Salesforce also acquired DimDim, Assistly, Radian6, Model Metrics, ManyMoon (which is now Do.com) and Rypple as mentioned above. I could care less about the billionaire-battle that is going on between Benioff (SFDC) and Ellison (Oracle), I just want to see them make some great software.
- 2008 called and file sharing is hot again.
This year Box (formerly Box.net) raised $179M while DropBox raised $250M. These two companies have billionaire dollar evaluations! Congrats to them, I'm pissed I did not come up with this. - Badgeville raised $12.2M and Bunchball $6.5M. While gamification has not yet become a hit at work, leader-boards, progress wizards, awards badges and other features are starting to show up in products and gain some traction among employees. I'm growing tired of the "gamification is a stupid term" debates. I hope in 2012 everyone gets over the name wars and starts to realize that the real value here is not pretty badges, but in the backend database that is gathering information about the way people interact with others and with content. That data will lead to some incredibly powerful tools to help build relationships and recommend information that organizations can use to help their employees succeed.
- Evernote raised $50M and acquired Skitch. While Evernote is not someone you typically think of as E2.0 software I think they have potential to enter the conversation. Almost everyone I talk to uses Evernote and I've recently become of convert myself. They have great apps for the web and every major mobile device. While the current platform is not enterprise grade, $50M can help build some interesting security, identity, authentication, scalability and integration tools. I'm looking forward to seeing what they do in 2012.
- Here are some more examples of money flowing in 2011: Telligent acquired Leverage, Spigit and GetSatisfaction both raised $10M, Yammer raised $17M and Kaltura (they make open source video products used in several E2.0 platforms) raised $20M.
- Oh yeah, Facebook had several security scandals and released the Timeline Profile UI and Twitter raised a combined $1.1B. You think these two companies don't influence enterprise social software? ;-)
So there you have it. A quick look back at some of the things that happened around enterprise social software in 2011. What do you think of the year? What did I miss?
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