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In Case You Needed Reminding, Social Enterprise Software Is Going to Be Big

Arik Hesseldahl — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 05:00:43 +0000

Just in case today’s launch of Chatter by Salesforce.com wasn’t enough, the fine folks at Jive Software would like to remind you again how important social enterprise software is going to be, and they have survey data to prove it.

The company asked 500 people at 300 companies, many of them large companies with 10,000 or more employees, about the benefits they were seeing from using social business software, which in this case is Jive, naturally, though an independent firm did the survey itself.

Some of the results were a little vague. For instance, respondents reported a 39 percent increase in “employee connectedness.” Others were more concrete: Jive users generated 32 percent more ideas, sent 27 percent less email and found answers to questions 32 percent faster

And there were benefits for customers. For one thing, employees spent 42 percent more time communicating with them, which in turn led to a better rate of customer retention, 31 percent, while the volume of support calls dropped by 28 percent and sales to new customers jumped by 27 percent.

The survey also found that 83 percent of companies in the survey are preparing to deploy some kind of social enterprise solution across the entire company this year. That finding is at least validated in part by a Gartner study that forecasts spending on enterprise social software will grow a little more than 15 percent this year to reach about $770 million.

Jive, you’ll remember, is the company that landed a $30 million venture capital investment from Kleiner Perkins last summer, and hired former Mercury Interactive head Tony Zingale as its CEO.

BoomTown’s Kara Swisher visited its offices last August, and her video interview with Zingale and Ted Schlein–Kleiner partner and Jive director–is below:

[ See post to watch video ]

iPhoneBook?

John Paczkowski — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 15:16:44 +0000

What are Apple’s intentions in the fledgling Netbook market? More than what the company is letting on, if a report in today’s Commercial Times is to be believed. The daily Chinese-language financial newspaper claims that Wintek has been tapped to manufacture touchscreens for a device targeted at the category.

And that would seem to belie claims by the company’s leadership that the term “Apple netbook” is an oxymoron. Asked during Apple’s Q4 earnings call last year if the company will ever enter the netbook market, CEO Steve Jobs said, “We don’t know how to make a $500 computer that’s not a piece of junk, and our DNA will not let us ship that….As we look at the NetBook category, that’s a nascent category. There’s as best as we can tell not a lot of them getting sold. You know, one of our entrants into that category, if you will, is the iPhone for browsing the Internet and doing e-mail and all the other things that a NetBook lets you do, and being connected via the cellular net wherever you are, an iPhone is a pretty good solution for that, and it fits in your pocket. But we’ll wait and see how that nascent category evolves and we’ve got some pretty interesting ideas if it does evolve.”

Certainly a kiss-off, yet one delivered with that “we could build a netbook that would blow your head off if we wanted to” caveat: We’ve got some pretty interesting ideas.

Apple COO Tim Cook was similarly dismissive of the netbook category during the company’s Q1 earnings call this year. “We’re watching [the netbook] space,” he said. “But, right now from our point of view, the products in there are principally based on hardware that’s much less powerful than we think customers want. Software technology that is not good, cramped keyboards small displays….And so, we don’t think that people are going to be pleased with those types of products. But we’ll see…it’s a category we watch. We’ve got some ideas here. But, right now we think the products there are inferior and will not provide an experience to customers that they’re happy with.”

Another harsh Apple kiss-off for the netbook category, yet like Jobs’s, it’s delivered with that “we’ve got some ideas” caveat–one that might just as easily be interpreted as “we’re going to redefine the category when we’re ready to.”

So what to make of this Commercial Times report? Like all Apple (AAPL) rumors, it could be something, could be nothing. But two things are certain: If Apple is planning to release a netbook it won’t be piece of junk. And it won’t sell it for $500, either.

[Image credit: Gizmodo]

iPhoneBook?

John Paczkowski — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 15:16:44 +0000

Certainly a kiss-off, yet one delivered with that “we could build a netbook that would blow your head off if we wanted to” caveat: We’ve got some pretty interesting ideas.

[Image credit: Gizmodo]