(This post is Part 2 in a two-part series. For Part 1, click here.)
In our previous episode, we quickly reviewed the concept of data analytics as applied to social computing software—how it enables both admins and the software companies themselves to prescriptively target feature configurations or updates to user demographics that will benefit from them.
And that’s great, but being that this is a Microsoft technology blog, today we ask what’s really on your minds: What does that mean for SharePoint?
Well, for starters, in the 2013 version of SharePoint, the Office 365 / SharePoint Online is finally achieving the feature parity—certainly from a social computing perspective, but in other arenas as well—that Microsoft has been gunning for since the days of BPOS. I’ve tested the new version of SharePoint Online myself and it really does deliver on that promise.
Out of the box, then, SharePoint Online 2013 is a cloud-based social platform all by itself. That’s pretty nifty news. But what about Microsoft’s plans for Yammer? What about 2011 Partner of the Year, Newsgator?
Already Yammering Away
As it happens, Yammer—the newest addition to the Office family— has already been engaged in developing new releases based on audience analytics for quite some time. I’ve been told that this was actually a big part of why they had such appeal to Redmond in the first place.
The flexibility this gives Microsoft in terms of nimbly reacting to customer feedback is something we haven’t seen from them since… well, I was in high school learning BASIC on a TRS-80 the last time their company was able to be that responsive. Although we still don’t know quite what the immediate upshot of the Yammer acquisition will be from an integration perspective, we can assume based on various statements from both sides that the ties between SharePoint and Yammer will become pretty tight, and sooner rather than later.
How much sooner? Well, SharePoint Conference 2012 is in November, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we heard something before then—or in the SPC keynote at the absolute latest.
All the cool kids are doing it
Not to be caught off guard, NewsGator’s Social Sites—the leading enterprise social extension for the SharePoint platform—has also been providing an analytics package for quite some time. Social Insights has been available for the 2010 platform and is set to launch for 2013 as well. This software allows administrators to keep up with how the platform is used within the enterprise and tune it to take advantage of those findings.
And—while NewsGator doesn’t offer a purely cloud-based product—they do have a very high-touch answer to customer responsiveness. Every NewsGator customer has access to their extranet, eNGage, where they can interact directly with NewsGator personnel, partners, and even the development team. Over the last few years, this has proven to be an extremely valuable tool both for NewsGator and its customers—this company has shown a proven ability to deliver meaningful software updates more than once a year.
Often those updates directly reflect feedback surfaced, discussed, and coalesced thanks to eNGage. Tracking user behavior is great, but one-to-one engagement at the people level is still a pretty solid way to get feedback as well.
Conclusions
It’s still early and 2013 isn’t a reality yet, but from here it sure the outlook sure looks promising. For many enterprises, the online version of SharePoint 2013 will give them a basic cloud-based social software platform. At some point soon, we’ll learn more about how Yammer will extend that.
The same social features will be available in on-premise versions of SharePoint 2013 as well, and will likely also feature some Yammer integration. NewsGator is coming to market with an even richer set of solutions (Social Sites 3.0) that will extend this platform (and its cousins in dedicated hosting) for enterprises who need even more value out of their social investment.
From where I sit, it doesn’t pay to be an introvert much longer. Enterprises that haven’t been social before are about to start going there, and those who already have? Life’s only getting better.
