Quick Thoughts On The "Enterprise Social Software & Collaboration Report" From CMS Watch

 The reports from CMS Watch are consistently thorough, but usually geared for more technical tire-kickers. Some of the highlights in the press release echo some of what I’m seeing in the marketplace. (Full disclosure: I work at Telligent)

I agree with part of this one:

"Vendors’ growing emphasis on specific solutions in lieu of feature creep."

Yes, solutions are clearly a trend, but a big differentiator here is the partner ecosystem. If you ask most vendors for specific solutions, most of the time you’ll get partial pieces of the solution. It’s very difficult for most pure-plays to have the horsepower to deliver end-to-end. Make sure you understand your vendor’s alliance model.

There’s loads of inevitability around this one.

"Near total absence of the kind of significant M&A activity that has created significant upheaval for some customers in the ECM and Portals marketplaces, among others"

I think the interesting part is noticing which vendors have a heavy reliance on the biggest enterprise software vendors. That should tell you who’s gonna buy who. I’d also expect a potential merger of pure-play peers. For a few, that may be the only way to survive.

The last one alludes to some of the open source activity.

Maturation of key private vendors and open source projects, whose increasingly influential customer bases play a stabilizing role with respect to backwards’ compatibility and future directions

Between Dion Hinchcliffe’s recent marketplace chart and this one (CMS Watch), Drupal seems to have entrenched itself in the social software sector. While I won’t discount Drupal’s presence, I will say the C-Suite conversations I’ve had are devoid of any Drupal references. But I’m a business guy, not someone running a dev shop or IT organization.

And yes, I’ve used the platform to perform what Drupal evangelists call "Social Publishing." I think part of Drupal’s newsworthiness is a couple of things. It’s quickly captured mind share as it’s moved from one space (CMS) to another. That tells me that not only are things still early, there’s also a lot of confusion. The other thing I think it shows is open source can (and no doubt will) coexist in enterprise environments with more traditional platforms. If you think one tool set vendor can single-handedly move you to social, you need to reset your expectations.

And Byrne ends with a bit of captain obvious, but duly notes the importance of the right implementation strategy.

"In the meantime, buyers should assess each vendor individually. "You can’t just select any one vendor and succeed automatically," concludes Byrne. "But the collective risk profile among the leading two-dozen players is definitely lower than a year ago, which means enterprises can spend more effort focused on implementation success."