July 2015, IDC #257492 MARKET ANALYSIS Worldwide Enterprise Social Networks and Online Communities 2015–2019 Forecast and 2014 Vendor Shares Vanessa Thompson IDC OPINION The market for enterprise social networks (ESNs) evolved significantly in 2014. There is an increasing presence of social workflow capabilities being surfaced inside business applications, but at the same time, online communities to support customers, employees, partners, and suppliers are growing rapidly. IDC expects the market for both standalone and embedded ESNs to continue to slow significantly as many more enterprise applications become social in nature. However, the market for online communities is growing rapidly. Toward the end of the forecast period, enterprise social networks may not even be called out as a separate market. In addition: IDC expects the worldwide enterprise social networks market revenue to grow from $1.46 billion in 2014 to $3.5 billion by 2019, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.1%. IDC expects the worldwide online communities market revenue to grow from $392.95 million in 2014 to $1.2 billion by 2019, representing a CAGR of 24.3%. Connecting to customers, employees, partners, and suppliers has always been a mission- critical activity. Alongside rapidly shifting expectations, communities have become a broker between business networks and will only continue to contribute more value to organizations trying to develop ongoing relationships.
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Worldwide Enterprise Social Networks and Online ... · July 2015, IDC #257492 MARKET ANALYSIS Worldwide Enterprise Social Networks and Online Communities 2015–2019 Forecast and
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July 2015, IDC #257492
MARKET ANALYSIS
Worldwide Enterprise Social Networks and Online Communities 2015–2019 Forecast and 2014 Vendor Shares
Vanessa Thompson
IDC OPINION
The market for enterprise social networks (ESNs) evolved significantly in 2014. There is an increasing
presence of social workflow capabilities being surfaced inside business applications, but at the same
time, online communities to support customers, employees, partners, and suppliers are growing
rapidly. IDC expects the market for both standalone and embedded ESNs to continue to slow
significantly as many more enterprise applications become social in nature. However, the market for
online communities is growing rapidly. Toward the end of the forecast period, enterprise social
networks may not even be called out as a separate market. In addition:
IDC expects the worldwide enterprise social networks market revenue to grow from $1.46
billion in 2014 to $3.5 billion by 2019, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.1%.
IDC expects the worldwide online communities market revenue to grow from $392.95 million in 2014 to $1.2 billion by 2019, representing a CAGR of 24.3%.
Connecting to customers, employees, partners, and suppliers has always been a mission-critical activity. Alongside rapidly shifting expectations, communities have become a broker between business networks and will only continue to contribute more value to organizations
The following factors are likely to drive revenue growth in enterprise social networks and online
communities during the forecast period:
Communicating with customers rather than just responding has become a business focus.This shift signifies that organizations are wanting to drive more awareness of their brand as well as have an ongoing conversation with customers. This is particularly suited to online
communities where brands can quickly build a trust relationship with customers, employees, partners, and suppliers.
Social workflow is at the core of how companies can create competitive differentiation and advantage, but it is far from simply implementing some new software/hardware and automating processes. It should be inherent in how companies do business, with technology
being the enabler.
The rapidly changing nature of work means that the role of social workflow will become
increasingly important to enable users to get their work done wherever they choose to work. Business decisions will be made via new outputs (likely mobile based) that integrate analytics and data with people and systems.
There is an opportunity for online communities to become marketplaces of their own where partners and suppliers are able to start transacting in the community to help solve other
customer or partner questions.
The following factors are likely to inhibit revenue growth in enterprise social networks during the
forecast period:
The level of deployment of enterprise social networks (the Americas region in particular) indicates that many organizations have already deployed solutions, and the incremental
increase in revenue for standalone solutions will be nominal.
The IT department will be increasingly involved in deployment and integration to ensure social
solutions meet enterprise requirements for security, compliance, and IP protection.
Worldwide Enterprise Social Networks and Online Communities Forecast, 2015–2019
IDC's estimate of growth of the enterprise social networks and online communities markets through
2019 is presented in Table 3. The enterprise social networks market is expected to reach $3.5 billion
by 2019 at a CAGR of 19.1%. The online communities market is expected to reach $1.2 billion by 2019
at a CAGR of 24.3%.
IDC analysts around the globe supplied regional input and insight into the enterprise social networks
forecast. The worldwide forecast is the aggregation of this regional data. The forecast is for the
Americas region to retain a good growth rate throughout the forecast period, although EMEA and APJ
are expected to grow more aggressively. To date, the Americas region represents a disproportionately
high share of revenue, as the EMEA and Asia/Pacific (including Japan) regions can expect a longer
time frame for change with respect to standalone enterprise social networks and may transition directly
to embedded applications as more enterprise applications assume social workflow. Table 4 shows the
regional share breakdown for 2014 and 2019 and revenue forecast for 2014–2019. Figure 4 shows the
regional revenue data for 2014 and 2019 in graphical form.
IDC expects the deployment of standalone enterprise social networks to continue to slow. However,
the uptake in online communities is encouraging. Over time, enterprise social networks will become
part of the business platform, and vendors like salesforce.com already work in this way. Toward the
end of the forecast period, there will be increasing focus on self-service interactions where
communities become a powerful business tool to support existing business interactions with
customers, employees, partners, and suppliers. In addition:
Online communities will become a place of interaction as well as transaction. As businesses
look beyond customer support as a way to engage users in the community, there are many opportunities in delivering a comprehensive business platform that can connect to other business functions. By connecting components of the business and supplier network that may
collaborate through disconnected but shared processes, organizations can start to build an experience that transcends existing business relationships.
Capturing influence, relevance, and expertise across a business or community remains a complex challenge. As organizations look to target future potential touch points of customers and partners, it will be essential to deliver context to these touch points with quick reference to
relevant expertise across all business stakeholders.
To enable the core features of enterprise social networks to be surfaced inside enterprise
workflow, open APIs need to be provided to enable information assets to become productized, syndicated, and distributed as callable IP assets via an API. Streamlined user interface connectivity also needs to be included to deliver seamless user connectivity between apps.
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Methodology
Historical Market Values and Exchange Rates
Historical market values presented here are as published in prior IDC documents based on the market
taxonomies and current U.S. dollar exchange rates existing at the time the data was originally
published. For markets other than the United States, these as-published values are therefore based on
a different exchange rate each year.
Because many individual countries contribute to regional totals, it is difficult to give precise differences
between current and constant currency values in this document. However, the scale of the difference
can be understood from the movement of the U.S. dollar against major regional currencies. Customers