IBM Plays The Social Software Business Game

The social business technology has seen quite a lot of activity in the recent weeks, these include Microsoft purchasing Yammer, and along these lines it was noted that Salesforce purchased Buddy Media, furthermore Oracle decided to purchase Vitrue, subsequently it was also purchased Involver.

Now enters IBM,  has now further embraced its social deeply in its business, with new social product offers which include IBM Customer Experience and Intranet Experience Suites.  IBM states that "The new software suite will help employees engage across business units and access information from a variety of sources including external and internal news feeds."

The IBM VP of social software (Jeff Schick), stated “From digital marketing and mobile commerce to websites and social media, marketers are inundated - often paralyzed - by data amassed from consumers via searches, purchase histories, and social media commentary. Combine that with in-store traffic data, call center conversations and supplier updates, and marketers confront a daily deluge of data waiting to be sifted for nuggets of intelligence...We intend to help them to see this as an opportunity, to learn to become entrepreneurial rather than gatekeepers. Many of them are waking up to the risk of being sidelined; they see the writing on the wall.”

It appears that the IT giants are now fully embracing the new social business technology, as a result it can be anticipated many new creative and innovative solutions which should rival many traditional social media technology companies and their offerings. It does however, make sense that the giants of IT join the game as they only have to gain and little to lose, we would argue that they are a few years later, nevertheless they have the resources to quickly catch up and integrate solutions with a development social mind.