Top Enterprise Social Software Vendors

Who has a whopping majority 44% market share, leading the top enterprise social software vendors? Hint: It’s not IBM, they have 14% market share. Hint#2: It’s not Jive, they only have 8%. Hint #3: It’s not Yammer, they have less than 3%.

The top enterprise social software provider with a 44% market share is…the smaller aggressive start ups. A collection of many small firms (MangoApps, Huddle, BlueKiwi, Igloo, and more) accounted for an incredible $340 million in revenue in 2011.

How the Start Ups are Winning

How and Why are the smaller firms claiming the lion’s share of revenue? The answer is simple. The smaller firms cater to the SMB and mid-market space, and these customers far out number the Fortune 500 companies.

SMB and mid-market companies are now requiring the enterprise grade security, customizations, and integrations normally reserved for larger Fortune 500 accounts.

While the IBM & Jive’s of the world are happy to perform custom work for Fortune 500 accounts, they expect SMB and mid-market customers to accept their solution as is out-of-the-box.

Since significant value is gained by integrating existing business applications with the new enterprise social network, custom work is critically important. Smaller providers of enterprise social networks are often times happy to customize a solution for SMB and mid-market customers.

Finding the Right Vendor 

When Solera Networks, a network security company, wanted to implement a social collaboration network, they looked at all vendors. Solera had specific “must have” needs that would require any vendor to customize their offering. Solera demanded the higher security of a single-tenant private cloud deployment. Solera also needed customizations to accomplish the specific capabilities they had in mind.

Solera found most vendors expected it to accept their offering “as is”. Any vendors that agreed to perform customizations quoted the cost so high it was not economically feasible.

Solera then found MangoApps, a 5–year old enterprise social software provider specializing in the SMB and mid-market space. After reviewing Solera’s requirements list, MangoApps agreed to customize a private cloud solution. Less than 30 days later, Solera was up and running with their new enterprise social network which matched their needs exactly. [Disclaimer: The Author works at MangoApps]

The Future is Social

The writing is on the wall. Enterprise social networks are replacing email for communication, collaboration, and file sharing at work. Most will even allow you to invite in external “guests” so you can collaborate with partners, suppliers, and customers as well.

What do you think? Will enterprise social networks become the next business tool you wonder how you ever lived without? Before you answer too quickly, think back to when you questioned the need for email (I have a phone), cellphones (I already have a desk and home phone!), and more recently Facebook (I already have email why do I need another thing to check!).

Guest Author:

Vipin Thomas, Product Manager, MangoApps (Twitter: @vipint7)