Cisco’s Foray into Enterprise Social Networking

 Recently,  John Chambers, CEO Cisco, unveiled Cisco’s Innovation in the enterprise social networking and collaboration space. Although, I hadn’t in the past thought of Cisco to be one of the players leading the charge on enterprise social  networking, Chambers was unveiling the many products they’ve packaged together to provide a comprehensive platform for supporting enterprise social networking and collaboration.  Although, I am extremely pleased with what Cisco is doing in the tele/video collaboration space, I am not all that convinced about their other offerings in the enterprise social networking space. 

 Firstly, web 2.0 technologies are still very much evolving. Plunking down a lot of money to get something that is a combination of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc may not be the most ideal toolset for supporting a vibrant and organic social network in the enterprise (while at the same time boosting productivity). Additionally, even with a successful social networking program implemented at an organization, one cannot fully rely on just the employees to tag and categorize data for consumption. Organizations, don’t have the critical mass (as is typically found on digg.com, twitter, etc) to self organize user generated content. This means that organizations have to invest in either manpower or provide some additional tools to self organize such information. It would be great if Cisco provided some tools to organize data meaningfully.

 All in all, I believe Cisco’s real focus is where it needs to be, which is in the tele/video collaboration space. They’ve simply built some familiar web 2.0 concepts to enhance their current collaboration experiences (and perhaps to even keep observers from complaining that they are not a cool forward looking company).

Related posts:

1. Salesforce.com Chatter – Yet another platform for Enterprise Social Networking
2. Challenges to Sustaining an Effective Social Network within the Enterprise