I was going through some IDC survey data that I got back recently and I think there's an interesting story to tell. My group does a regular survey 2-4 times a year on software applications, called Appstats. We have some fixed questions for trending and some questions that change out each time so that we can look at many different parts of the applications markets. this last survey I included some social software questions. One in particular is interesting: Which of the following Enterprise 2.0 technologies do you currently use now or plan to implement in the next 12 months? Here are the results from 503 senior business and IT personnel across businesses from mid-market to enterprise:
Some things of course are no surprise, like collaboration platforms are the most prevalent in current use (they have been around the longest after all). I was a little surprised that the use of web 2.0 tools like facebook and Twitter for customer service surveyed at 46.3% using or plan to use in the next 12 months. I suppose the current "over" hyping of success stories in the application of these tools to customer interactions has caused a bit of a bubble. As I look at each individual app I do have some reaction, blogs and wiki's are getting more main stream, Ideasourcing seems to have gained momentum this year...things like that. BUT the real story to me is the overall trend, no category is below 40% (using + intend to use) which is quite an increase from the survey's we did less than a year ago. To put it another way, at least half of the companies surveyed are using or plan to use social software tools in the next 12 months. Social software is gaining momentum and that momentum has seen a significant upsurge in only 12 months. Exciting...
