Enterprise Social Software Market to Hit $4.5 Billion in 2016
Apparently, the themes for this summer are “enterprise software” and “billions of dollars.” Market intelligence firm International Data Corporation (IDC) released a new report detailing the massive-expected growth of the global enterprise social software market, which IDC predicts will hit $4.5 billion in 2016. Just last week Gartner released a report saying the enterprise application software market will reach $120.4 billion for 2012.
From the announcement:
As new features are being defined and incorporated to meet emerging business needs, IDC expects social software to encroach and possibly replace other collaborative applications throughout the forecast period. From a regional perspective, growth in enterprise social software in the Americas will be aggressive, with all regions expected to grow fairly well. The Americas represent a disproportionately high share of revenue early in the forecast period, as the EMEA and APJ regions can expect a longer timeframe for change.
Juan Carlos Perez of the IDG News Service explains that enterprise social software, which includes products like IBM Connections and Microsoft Sharepoint, “adapts Facebook-like and Twitter-like features for workplace use, including employee profiles, activity streams, microblogging, discussion forums, wikis, and content tagging, rating and reviewing.”
With the rise of this market, Larry Dignan at ZDNet posits that the recent $1.2 billion acquisition of Yammer by Microsoft is an example of how major software companies are now frantically bulking up their social technologies in an attempt to outpace each other.
From ZDNet:
For context, Microsoft’s $1.2 billion valuation of Yammer accounts for 25 percent of all enterprise social software revenue in 2016. It remains to be seen whether Microsoft garners 25 percent of the social software market by then. Ditto for Oracle and others cobbling together social suites.
