IBM has launched a new social media solution for enterprises in India in a bid to recapture its share in the $7-billion enterprise email market.
The solution is a part of the Big Blue’s strategy to extend its social media platform by integrating it with its Lotus Notes and Domino email applications. These email applications compete with Microsoft’s Outlook email messaging solution.
According to IBM officials, this move aims to simplify and accelerate social business adoption amongst enterprises, providing employees with a single access point to all of their collaboration tools such as social media, email, group activities and blogs.
IBM is driving these solutions as it sees increased usage of social media in workplaces. According to an IBM study, 82 per cent of chief marketing officers plan to increase their use of social media over the next three to five years.
IBM's 2012 CEO Study pointed to the fact that while today a mere 16 per cent of CEOs are using social business platforms to connect with customers, this will increase more than three fold to 57 per cent in the next three to five years.
This social media solution will be made available through a choice of deployment options for companies that will include on premises, in the IBM cloud, hybrid or on popular mobile devices and targets business employees across marketing, development, human resources executives.
Industry watchers opine that this is a move by the world’s largest software company to drive sales in a market that is dominated by Microsoft and now has seen new entrants like Google.
According to Osterman Research, each day 116 billion emails are sent and received by an estimated 800 million workers.
IBM, in its 2015 roadmap, has stated that third platform services and emerging markets will be key drivers for revenue growth.