Leading social business platforms – list of reviews, articles, reports

I’ve been plotting a piece of work similar to what I did in terms of reviewing, evaluating and selecting from a list of idea management systems (see report at bottom of page) for some time now. This latest exercise if I get to it, would focus on the major social business platforms. I’m not sure what shape the ultimate work and report would take but to start me off I thought a list of the best reviews, articles and reports I could find would be good. Hopefully you find it of use and if I missed any I’d appreciate any pointers. I will be updating this post as I find more and will add yours. This post does not provide a review of each platform, just the list of others that have done a decent job in this regard.

Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for social software in the workplace 2011

I guess any review would have to start with Gartner and their Magic Quadrant series that is relevant to this sector. I have already done a review of their latest report (as far as the copyright allows me to) and so I don’t propose to go through any of their input here other than to use their list as a basis for mine. On a hilarious aside and lest we take these types of report too seriously – check out this really funny video parody of Hitler’s failure to get his cloud app in the leader section of the Gartner magic quadrant. Not to say that that Gartner’s input (or any of the other analysts) is not valid or has been influenced in any way, just that they may not be the “be all and end all” of views. You can buy the report here. I would say it is a relatively comprehensive review of the different platforms but at a high level with no breakdown of features in comparison to others, nor major technology components or company considerations, costs, etc.

The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Social Platforms, Q3 2011

Forrester provides a worthy counterpoint to Gartner and it is interesting to compare the two lists and see where they tally up. Click on the images to see for yourself. Forrester has a smaller list. They used a set of inclusion criteria that eliminated a number of more focused social technology offerings. Vendors that placed a primary focus on specific areas of functionality, typically microblogging, activity streams, and profiles rather than broad platform functionality evaluated in the Forrester Wave (e.g. Yammer, Socialcast) were excluded. Other vendors that have placed a premium on specific vertical or horizontal capabilities, like PBworks and Traction Software, were also excluded. Vendors adding social capabilities to existing products — like portals and applications, e.g. Oracle with its WebCenter Suite, salesforce.com with Chatter, and Tibco with Tibbr were also excluded. Finally, those with insufficient market presence and/or market awareness within Forrester and its client base were excluded (e.g. Igloo, Moxie, and Saba). You can buy the report here.

THE LIST

Before I head into the list I’ll just say that it was gleaned from a combination of Google searches, the use of Zemanta which is a WordPress plugin that aggregates relevant content from blogs that can be included in a post and my knowledge of experts in the field that sometimes write about these platforms – I’m following some of them in one of my Twitter lists. And it would be remiss of me not to reference a list (perhaps the “mother of all lists”) that was started way back by one of the leading experts who used to work at Forrester (I think he started their Wave series), Jeremiah Owyang and his List of “White Label” or “Private Label” (Applications you can Rebrand) Social Networking Platforms, Community Platforms. That is rather an outdated list now and there has been a lot of consolidation since. I also want to stress that my list is not as complete as his and will focus on the biggest players in the corporate space (meaning those that have large corporate customers with tens of thousands of employees at least). So now the list in alphabetical order, lest any favouritism is suspected.

Atlassian Confluence

blueKiwi

Drupal

Cisco Quad

Clearvale

Huddle

IBM Connections

IGLOO

Jive

Microsoft Sharepoint

Moxie

Podio

Saba

SalesForce.com Chatter

SAP StreamWork

Socialcast

SocialText

Telligent

Tibbr

Yammer

If you have any great articles, reviews or reports on the above vendors or think one should be added, please let me know in a comment or via Twitter. It would be best if they were as independent and comprehensive as possible.