IBM Eats Its Own Social Dog Food - The BrainYard - InformationWeek

Big Blue’s social business VP details how IBM Connections fuels the company’s 500,000 users with social capabilities and a social media mindset.

When it comes to enterprise social networking, IBM not only talks the talk, it walks the walk with its IBM Connections software.

Among business-oriented social platform software vendors, IBM has been ranked No. 1 in worldwide market share in 2009 and 2010 by IDC. According to IDC, worldwide revenue for social-platform software was more than $500 million in 2010, representing growth of almost 32%. IDC expects the market opportunity for social platforms to grow by a factor of nearly 2 billion worldwide by 2014.

I recently spoke with IBM’s Jeff Schick, VP for social business, about the cultural shift these huge numbers represent, as well as about the company’s own use of IBM Connections. The product includes profiles, communities, a blogging service, social bookmarking service, task management capabilities, a content library, and a wiki system. The latest edition of Connections, version 3, added moderation capabilities, an ideation blog, and a media gallery.

Permalink

Celebrating Social Media Week: Our Big Blue Social Business - IBM Social Business Insights Blog By Todd “Turbo” WatsonE-Relationship Manager, IBM Software Group Remember the logo, that curvy red “e” that mimicked the “@” symbol, which came to represent what IBM meant by the idea of “e-business” back in the late 1990s?  Well, imagine replacing it with a curvy “s” instead and calling it “social business” instead, and you’d have a pretty good symbol for describing IBM’s social transformation inside the company, as well as the market it’s helping to make for other companies and organizations around the globe to follow suit.   IBM: The Social Case Study   As we celebrate “Social Media Week,” I wanted to write a post to let people know some details and facts behind IBM’s social transformation. As the largest consumer of social technologies, IBM is a case study for this transformation into a social business.   This goes beyond IBM’s business in social software and services (IBM’s collaboration software, consulting services, analytics/social media research, conducting Jams for clients). IBM is leading social business on all fronts – technology, policy and practice.   IBM takes social networking seriously – to develop products and services, to enable sellers to find and stay connected with clients, to train the next generation of leaders, and to build awareness of Smarter Planet among clients, influencers and other communities.

Celebrating Social Media Week: Our Big Blue Social Business - IBM Social Business Insights Blog

By Todd “Turbo” Watson
E-Relationship Manager, IBM Software Group

Remember the logo, that curvy red “e” that mimicked the “@” symbol, which came to represent what IBM meant by the idea of “e-business” back in the late 1990s?

 Well, imagine replacing it with a curvy “s” instead and calling it “social business” instead, and you’d have a pretty good symbol for describing IBM’s social transformation inside the company, as well as the market it’s helping to make for other companies and organizations around the globe to follow suit.  

IBM: The Social Case Study

 

As we celebrate “Social Media Week,” I wanted to write a post to let people know some details and facts behind IBM’s social transformation. As the largest consumer of social technologies, IBM is a case study for this transformation into a social business.

 

This goes beyond IBM’s business in social software and services (IBM’s collaboration software, consulting services, analytics/social media research, conducting Jams for clients). IBM is leading social business on all fronts – technology, policy and practice.

 

IBM takes social networking seriously – to develop products and services, to enable sellers to find and stay connected with clients, to train the next generation of leaders, and to build awareness of Smarter Planet among clients, influencers and other communities.

Permalink

IBM Connections - Android Market IBM® Connections is social software for business. It enables you to build a network of colleagues and subject matter experts, and then leverage that network to further your business goals. With its integrated suite of tools, you can share and discuss ideas, work collaboratively on presentations or proposals, plan and track project tasks, and much more. IBM Connections is a web application that is deployed on a company intranet to promote collaboration within the company. The IBM Connections mobile application extends access to company data to employees who are on the go. via smarterplanet:

IBM Connections - Android Market

IBM® Connections is social software for business. It enables you to build a network of colleagues and subject matter experts, and then leverage that network to further your business goals. With its integrated suite of tools, you can share and discuss ideas, work collaboratively on presentations or proposals, plan and track project tasks, and much more. IBM Connections is a web application that is deployed on a company intranet to promote collaboration within the company. The IBM Connections mobile application extends access to company data to employees who are on the go.

via smarterplanet:

Permalink

IBM: Instant messaging has replaced voicemail - Fortune Tech IBM CIO Jeanette Horan It’s too early to tell whether Facebook-like features in the workplace will be a passing fad or a lasting trend, but IBM says it’s eating its own dog food. The company uses its 400,000 worldwide employees as a testing ground for upcoming social products and features. IBM employees have launched 17,000 blogs to date. They also generate 1 million page views of internal wikis and 40-50 million instant messages per day. I recently caught up with IBM’s new CIO, Jeannette Horan, to find out more about how employees use social networking features in and out of the office. Fortune: What are your priorities as CIO?Horan:The whole area of social media and the enablement of it in our very large diverse workforce is a key innovation area for us. Many of our [social software] ideas get tested within the IBM sandbox before they make their way into products that we deliver to the market. We partner heavily with the software development teams to make this happen. What kind of social tools do you use internally? We had internal implementations of a lot of the social media technologies like wikis and blogs when they were first emerging in the marketplace. We have over 400,000 employees and had a very active set of internal bloggers. All employees have an IBM Connections page. When you join IBM you have an entry in the HR system and that populates an entry into the employee directory. Initially it just has your name, phone number, work address, etc. Then you can add information about your skills, your resume and projects you’re working on. This becomes your public persona on Connections. We encourage people to do this, and a significant percentage of the IBM population do. With 400,000 people, you want an easy way to find people that are experts in specific areas. Beyond that the second most prolific use of social networking within IBM is this notion around self-identifying communities. You can establish a community with different rule sets. And increasingly, people are also using microblogging, or Twitter-like, features. But people here don’t tend to do the “I’m going for lunch” kind of posts. It’s more like “I’m going to give a seminar.”

IBM: Instant messaging has replaced voicemail - Fortune Tech

IBM CIO Jeanette Horan

It’s too early to tell whether Facebook-like features in the workplace will be a passing fad or a lasting trend, but IBM says it’s eating its own dog food. The company uses its 400,000 worldwide employees as a testing ground for upcoming social products and features. IBM employees have launched 17,000 blogs to date. They also generate 1 million page views of internal wikis and 40-50 million instant messages per day. I recently caught up with IBM’s new CIO, Jeannette Horan, to find out more about how employees use social networking features in and out of the office.

Fortune: What are your priorities as CIO?
Horan:The whole area of social media and the enablement of it in our very large diverse workforce is a key innovation area for us. Many of our [social software] ideas get tested within the IBM sandbox before they make their way into products that we deliver to the market. We partner heavily with the software development teams to make this happen.

What kind of social tools do you use internally? We had internal implementations of a lot of the social media technologies like wikis and blogs when they were first emerging in the marketplace. We have over 400,000 employees and had a very active set of internal bloggers. All employees have an IBM Connections page. When you join IBM you have an entry in the HR system and that populates an entry into the employee directory. Initially it just has your name, phone number, work address, etc. Then you can add information about your skills, your resume and projects you’re working on. This becomes your public persona on Connections. We encourage people to do this, and a significant percentage of the IBM population do. With 400,000 people, you want an easy way to find people that are experts in specific areas. Beyond that the second most prolific use of social networking within IBM is this notion around self-identifying communities. You can establish a community with different rule sets. And increasingly, people are also using microblogging, or Twitter-like, features. But people here don’t tend to do the “I’m going for lunch” kind of posts. It’s more like “I’m going to give a seminar.”

Permalink