The global social software and collaboration market in the workplace is seeing significant growth over the last few years. In 2018, this market was valued at around $2.7 billion. By 2023, it is expected to double in size, reaching $4.8 billion, according to Gartner.
“The collaboration market is the most fragmented and contextually focused it has ever been, making the barrier to entry extremely low,” said Craig Roth, research vice president at Gartner.
As per the analyst firm, more and more enterprise software providers are including social software and collaboration functionalities in their existing software portfolios. By 2023, around 60% of these providers will have included these functionalities in their portfolios.
Growth of the market is driven by the increasing adoption of social software and collaboration services among the enterprises. Gartner says that the enterprises are shifting toward a portfolio approach for a wider world of collaborative technologies.
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“While decision-makers still want a foundational platform, there is acceptance that no single vendor can address it all,” said Mr. Roth. “At the same time, collaboration services are becoming infrastructure services, which is good, but it also means more silos since everyone wants to be their own destination.”
The collaboration market can be divided into a number of submarkets, such as employee communications or meeting services.
Only a single service provider cannot dominate this market, as the size of each submarket is also expanding. Mr. Roth added that the future of social software and collaboration will make use of new functionalities such as social analytics, smart machines, and virtual personal assistants (VPAs).
Businesses are using collaboration software in their workplace and connecting it to the routine work that is continuously growing.
In the collaboration market, businesses have always been using tools, such as Slack for workstream. However, vendors like Microsoft and Google have bundled the workstream collaboration services with cloud office offerings. A large number of enterprises are now using these cloud office suites for general productivity requirements.
Whereas, social media networks and real-time messaging have become the new norm for enterprise collaboration. Around 58% of businesses are already using real-time messaging tools on a daily basis, and 45% are using social media networks daily.
“Digital workers turn to tools that are common in their personal lives to get work done. Real-time mobile messaging is quite common in support of enterprise endeavours, as are social media and file-sharing tools,” said Mr. Roth. “The use of such tools effectively blends workers’ personal experiences and their work experiences.”
Gartner finds that the existing user base and buyers for these solutions is increasing in the emerging regions like China. There will be more than 1.14 billion knowledge workers around the world by 2023.
