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Yesterday we took a look at the first part of the Forrester Wave: Cloud Strategies Of Online Collaboration Software Vendors, Q3 2012, report where we saw that many enterprises are concerned about the feasibility of using online collaboration services, Today, we will take a brief look at the companies and products that made it into the this Wave.

Leading Trends

The interesting thing about this Forrester report is that despite all the talk in the market place about collaboration and even online collaboration there are only eight vendors that made it into the Wave, of which five made it into the Leaders segment: Box, Cisco Systems, Citrix Online, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Salesforce.com and Yammer.

It is hardly surprising, then, that this market displays all the hallmarks of one that is only starting to evolve. It is currently in a state of flux where vendors are still refining, tweaking and improving their offerings with a number of clear leaders and the rest following in their wake.

IBM, Microsoft, and Salesforce.com

IBM, Microsoft, and Salesforce.com are leading the field, using their previous experience in the enterprise collaboration space to develop strong strategies for their online collaboration offerings. Both Microsoft and IBM have long histories in collaboration, while Salesforce is the pioneer in SaaS enterprise-grade collaboration, building on top of its customer relationship management and PaaS offerings.

Box, Yammer, Google

All three bring consumer experience to the enterprise with many collaboration service providers finding their way into the enterprise through knowledge workers who were adopting the tools to solve very specific problems. All three rode this wave with tools that were easy to use. Box and Yammer help potential customers to adapt to this kind of collaboration by providing easy integration into on-premises systems, while Google is making it easy to drop on-premises systems completely.

Cisco Systems and Citrix Online

These final two both possess collaboration portfolio’s that are still evolving. Both have evolved and are moving from purely conferencing services to fully fledged collaboration services. This has required a change in the way they think about collaboration and issues like integration, customization, access controls and encryption. Cisco is dealing with this under the WebEx brand while Citrix is beginning the collaboration journey as it integrates its recent ShareFile and Podio acquisitions.

Before diving into the report, Forrester recommends that potential customers look at all offerings and not just those that are in the Leaders segment. It is often the case that specific functionality will be found in the portfolio of vendors that fall outside the Leaders category.

Forrester Wave_Collaboration Online socres.jpg
Forrester Wave: Online Collaboration scores

Online Collaboration Leaders

IBM

IBM has been working for some time on integrating internal and external collaboration and appears to have found the right mix with the rebranded SmartCloud for Social Business offering. With it users can choose between a multitenant, and dedicated offering from a globally distributed data center. A significant part of its functionality can be accessed through most mobile devices and platforms, including iOS, Android and BlackBerry. Its Social Business Toolkit can both customized and extend its online portfolio.

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

There are a number of surprising takeaways from a new Forrester Wave report that should force many collaboration vendors to think through their development strategies twice. Not least of these is that despite all the progress that has been made, many IT leaders are still questioning the feasibility of cloud-based collaboration tools.

Cloud-based Online Collaboration

The report, Forrester Wave: Cloud Strategies Of Online Collaboration Software Vendors, Q3 2012, is based on research compiled by TJ Keitt and is the result of surveys sent to 2,438 IT executives and technology decision-makers located in Canada, France, Germany, the UK and the US working in everything from SMBs to large enterprises.

It identified what Forrester describes as eight significant collaboration services providers — Box, Cisco Systems, Citrix Online, Google, IBM, Microsoft, salesforce.com, and Yammer — that were scored on over 38 criteria.

Today we will look at some of the issues that this evaluation raised, while tomorrow we will look at the five companies that made it into the Leader’s segment of the Wave.

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Forrester Wave Online Collaboration: Vendors included in the Wave

Before looking at it in detail, there are three main takeaways from the study that put the entire body of research in perspective. They include:

1. Business Agility

To address business problems enterprises must partner with a number of external groups outside the firewall. Cloud-based collaboration tools can be delivered to both PCs and mobile devices and enables the free flow of information.

2. Cloud-based Collaboration Feasibility

Despite the massive strides in security and compliance and the fact that more than half plan to use online collaboration tools in the next two years, many IT leaders still don’t trust online services.

3. Vendors Reassure IT leaders

Following on from this, then, it makes sense that successful vendors in this space are those that can reassure businesses around these issues. Successful vendors in this space will be able to provide the flexibility enterprises require to achieve business goals.

Online Collaboration Appeals

While there is considerable competition in the online collaboration market, Forrester says that the rush to get products to the market is not vendors trying to one-up each other, but reflects a very real and expanded demand for products. More than half of enterprises survey said that they are or will be using SaaS collaboration technologies in the next two years. Business leaders believe SaaS offerings will offer them the following advantages:

Responsiveness

Customers that are increasingly informed and empowered can force an enterprise to change its strategy to suit. Business leaders believe that they will be able to respond to this with technologies that enable easy information flow, and a space outside the firewall where the enterprise can collaborate effectively with clients.

Feature Upgrades

Traditional on-premises software that depends on a three-to-five year refresh cycle prevents enterprises from changing and upgrading outdated software. Online services update themselves, a factor that was mentioned by 60% of those in the survey.