IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced it is extending its social business platform with an integrated social email solution.
The move aims to simplify and accelerate social business adoption in the marketplace, providing employees with a single access point to all of their collaboration tools — social media, email, group activities, blogs and more.
According to an IBM study, 82 percent of chief marketing officers (CMO) plan to increase their use of social media over the next three to five years. IBM’s 2012 CEO Study identified the same trend — while today only 16 percent of CEOs are using social business platforms to connect with customers, that number is poised to spike to 57 percent within the next three to five years.
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According to Osterman Research, says IBM, each day 116 billion emails are sent and received by an estimated 800 million workers. When compared to Facebook and Twitter, which have reported 2.5 billion items shared and 400 million tweets a day respectively, it is clear that email remains the dominant communication application in the workplace, says IBM.
Social Email
However, in this social business age, email can no longer exist on an island, the company believes. As for those companies using Microsoft Outlook, IBM also provides a new social connector for Outlook and integration with Microsoft Exchange.
Through this connector IBM is able to bring the capabilities of shared files, communities and other key social capabilities directly into the Outlook client to ensure social email can be a reality for virtually any business.
The IBM social business platform features a complete set of capabilities including enterprise-grade social networking, social analytics, and social content management in a seamless, unified experience across a myriad of business applications.
