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Vendor Landscape: Collaboration Platforms
Stop! Collaborate and listen…to the rapidly changing collaboration marketplace!
Last Revised: September 21, 2012
More Details
Your Challenge
- The adoption of collaboration platforms is rapidly accelerating. Not all platforms are created equal, and choosing the right platform can be a daunting task in a market with many emerging new features and shifting delivery options.
- Choosing the wrong platform is a costly mistake for any organization, not just in terms of the time and money wasted on the platform, but also from the failure of the platform to meet business needs.
- This solution set will help you understand and identify collaboration opportunities that exist within your organization, identify leading vendors and compare capabilities, and select the right solution to implement.
Our Advice
Critical Insight- The rise of social collaboration features has fundamentally altered the collaboration landscape – vendors now offer social media equivalents for enterprise use, alongside more traditional collaboration functionality like content management. The rise of these features is a relatively recent phenomenon. Info-Tech recommends that organizations take advantage of this new functionality to enhance internal collaboration.
- The market is also being disrupted by the rise of ubiquitous mobile access, cloud-based storage solutions, and freemium products that allow you to try before you buy.
- Selecting a collaboration platform involves defining the organization’s functional requirements, creating a shortlist based on these requirements, formally evaluating vendor offerings, and choosing the platform that is best tailored to the organization’s unique circumstances.
- Understand the features and business benefits of using a collaboration platform, where the market evolved from, and where it is going.
- Plan and select a collaboration solution that brings distributed people and information together to get more done in less time.
- Use Info-Tech's Vendor Landscape to compare the major collaboration platforms available and prepare a vendor shortlist, saving time and money in the selection process.
- Use Info-Tech's collaboration platform RFP template and demo scripts to prepare solid requirements for vendor finalists and select the right product.
Get to Action
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Narrow down a list of collaboration vendors
Create a strong list of vendor candidates.
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Compare leading vendors and develop a shortlist
Narrow the leading vendors down to the most appropriate few.
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Contrast and evaluate a shortlist of vendors
Select the right collaboration platform vendor.
Related Solution Sets
Build an Enterprise Collaboration Strategy
Hierarchies are obsolete – don’t let employees fend for themselves!
Implement a Collaboration Platform
Implementation doesn't end with platform deployment: build ongoing collaboration solutions.
Related Content
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Solution Road Map
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Build an Enterprise Collaboration StrategyHierarchies are obsolete – don’t let employees fend for themselves!
-
Vendor Landscape: Collaboration PlatformsStop! Collaborate and listen…to the rapidly changing collaboration marketplace!
-
Implement a Collaboration PlatformImplementation doesn't end with platform deployment: build ongoing collaboration solutions.
2 Comments
I think NewsGator is plotted incorrectly - their product is certainly a leader in this area!
Hi Keith, thanks for your comment. NewsGator did indeed rate very well on the product axis of our vendor landscape. We were particularly impressed with the depth of their social collaboration abilities, and we recommend them to clients looking to extend the social capabilities of their SharePoint deployments. With respect to why they were placed in the Innovator rather than Champion category, the second dimension we rate vendors on is vendor strength. In this dimension, we had to recognize that NewsGator is a newer entrant whose vendor credentials don’t stack up as well against incumbent heavyweights like Cisco and IBM. Additionally, using NewsGator means you have to already be locked into the SharePoint ecosystem – unfortunately, those without SharePoint cannot take advantage of the product at present.