Chris Colotti's Blog Thoughts and Theories About…
One of the cool things I get to do is blog about any news related to everything VMware. Yes recently I have been the vCloud guy, and now Nicira dude, but I also follow some of the other spaces VMware is in. Specifically Socialcast since we use it a lot internally especially for the new four-man Nicira Team I am working with. I was informed recently of a new IDC report on the Social Enterprise Space where Socialcast was rated a leader. I wanted to provide some of the insight from that recent report for those not familiar with it.
Why is this important? Well from my perspective Social Enterprise medium has changed my job significantly. Once it was rolled out internally at VMware I was able to connect with people I otherwise would not have on E-Mail. It has provided a venue for discussions that otherwise would be cryptic to have in email. It is more real-time than email can be and allows for some familiar social interactions with “likes” and ‘Thank You’ tags along with search-ability of posts. The great thing for me is it also provides me a voice within the company when I cannot be at Corporate to attend meetings for various initiatives. So onto some of the data from the report.
IDC Key Criteria for Enterprise Social Software Solutions
- Solution capabilities that extend activity streams, blogs, and wikis to offer a broader and more inclusive system to include external groups and secure communities
- Optimized mobile user experience (UX), including an enhanced in-app experience across multiple devices
- Native platform analytics that supersede basic reporting, offering the ability to extend data models to application partners and perform behavioral and predictive analysis on data generated by the network
- A scalable and extensible platform that encourages customers and ISV partners to develop complementary solutions to extend the value of solutions for different roles, company sizes, and industries
- Prepackaged integrations with collaboration tools and major enterprise application vendors delivered via the cloud as well as support for on-premise legacy enterprise application systems
IDC Key Measures of Success for Enterprise Social Vendors
Key indicators for successful longer-term strategies
- Offering strategy
ex. Functionality or offering roadmap, delivery model, future integration strategy - Go-to-market strategy
ex. Pricing model, sales/distribution strategy, customer service strategy - Business strategy
ex. Growth strategy, innovation/R&D pace and productivity, financial/funding model
Key capability measures for successful short-term strategies:
- Offering capabilities
ex. Cost competitiveness, integration, scalability - Go-to-market capabilities
ex. Pricing model options and alignment, marketing, customer service - Business capabilities
ex. Growth strategy execution, employee management
IDC MarketScape: Enterprise Social Software
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Socialcast Strengths
According to IDC in the report, Socialcast is the standard upon which all competitors will be evaluated.
- Integration/extensibility
- Strong customer case studies
- Faster go-to-market
- Increased productivity
- Improved employee retention and hiring
- Competitive differentiation
- Greater business agility
- Focus on customer success and adoption
- Socialcast provides a single solution linking systems and services in a secure, but open platform
More Information
For more information on this report check out the following links and resources
- The IDC press release on the report.
- The Full IDC Report itself
- Socialcast customer case studies:
About Chris Colotti
Chris is currently a Consulting Architect in the Pre-Sales Solutions group of the Global Services Organization at VMware. He focuses on designing and integrating Cloud solutions for the field and VMware customers. Chris is amongst the first VMware Certified Design Experts (VCDX#37), and author of multiple white papers. Most recently Chris has become heavily involved with fitness as a Team Beachbody Coach through P90X and other Beachbody Programs. Although Technology is his day job, Chris is passionate about fitness after losing 60 pounds himself in the last few years. Now he spreads both the word of technology and fitness along with the Team Beachbody Business through both his blogs.
