Executive Changes at Jive and Telligent: Start of "SoftWar" in Enterprise Social Software?

As I wrote in Web 2.0: The End of the Beginning, the market for "social business" applications is growing up. According to a July 2007 Gartner report, analysts size this emerging software market at $226M in 2007 and predict it will grow at 41% per year through 2011, reaching $707M by 2011.

No word yet on whether Gartner forecasted the recession. Or why their forecasted growth rate was pegged at 41% instead of, say, 47.68% which is my personal projection. But it's just a rough estimate so don't hold me to it.

Push for market leadership

In signs that they believe the time to push for market leadership is now, both Jive Software and Telligent recently made key executive appointments. You see, it's one thing for analysts to write a report, but it's quite another to actually, um, hire someone in this economy.

On May 19, Jive announced that Ben Kiker has joined as Chief Marketing Officer, responsible for strategy, communications and alliances. What's significant about this is Kiker's background: a recent stint as CMO at Interwoven (a web content management vendor acquired by Autonomy early this year) and many years in the CRM industry at Siebel, Onyx, Vantive and Clarify.

With Jive investing in such a seasoned executive who has participated in other fast-growing markets, it's a clear signal that growth and market leadership is on the mind of Jive CEO Dave Hersh. However, since all of Kiker's prior employers were acquired, what does that say about the exit strategy for Jive?

Funnily enough, on exactly the same day as Jive's announcement, Telligent announced Patrick Brandt as the new CEO and a member of the board of directors, succeeding Rob Howard the founding CEO who will remain as CTO.

Speaking with both executives a few days after the announcement, I asked Brandt what he thought would determine the winners and losers in the next couple of years. He said:

1. Product leadership: Brandt says Telligent is already "ahead of the curve" in terms of product capabilities, and as CTO Howard will focus on keeping it that way.
2. Client value: Helping clients measure the value of social software, leveraging one key area of innovation—social network analytics.

Can't argue with either of these points, but winning the coming "SoftWar" in this space will require that Brandt reprise his performance as founder/CEO of Skywire Software, a vendor of insurance and document management business applications. In his 8 years there, Brandt built the company to 600 employees serving 2,400 customers worldwide. And then sold Skywire to Oracle in June 2008.

Buzzword bingo

It's obvious that all things "social" are the hot ticket right now, and that enterprises are jumping on board. What's less clear is what to call the darn thing.

One thing that will help this space is for the key players to start using the same name for it. CRM software wouldn't be a multi-billion dollar market if vendors still used the hodgepodge of terms in play during the mid-1990s. I think Gartner's term "Enterprise Social Software" is a reasonable name for the software market. But "social business" is still my favorite term for putting social technology to work to improve collaboration both internally and externally.

Some might say it's a bit cheeky for Jive to attempt to name the market space as "social business software" and then declare market leadership, but hey, this is the software industry. Hype works, just ask Marc Benioff. Jive recently settled on "Social Business Software" in a revamp of Clearspace and Clearspace Community which were designed for internal and external collaboration, respectively.

Although Telligent currently uses "Social Network Software," earlier this year Howard told me that "social can be a very dangerous word" if executives think it means playtime on the web. At this point, Brandt will only say "watch this space" as they sort out Telligent's go-to-market posture in the months ahead.

I suspect Telligent will either decide to stick with what they've got, or come up with some other "social" term. Let's face it, social is a powerful concept that can be applied to both business and personal affairs. It's time to rally behind the idea, not wimp out and use "collaboration" or, worse, "Enterprise 2.0."

Readers, what do you think is the right term for social software in the enterprise?