Have you looked at SAP or Oracle's social CRM products? (@pgreenbe jump in here.) - Michael Krigsman

Salesforce.com - the silent but deadly ones. - Mona Nomura

but then does every enterprise app really need social collaboration aspects? there is always something to be said for apps that are lightweight and simply do their sole function instead of bloating them up with feature du jour. Should they move to a simple API based system that can be harnessed by a fully fledged collaboration suite? - alphaxion

Mona: Salesforce is hardly silent, but in this area not clear they're more advanced than Oracle or SAP. - Michael Krigsman

Alphaxion: not all enterprise apps need social features. But many could benefit from well-planned collaboration processes. - Michael Krigsman

With social CRM? They're silent. I can barely find information online about the Facebook + Salesforce partnership except press releases. There's something big planned in the pipeline and I think it may also involve commerce too. http://www.insidefacebook.com/2008... - Mona Nomura

Sigh, Can someone explain to me when CRM was Anti-Social? Or lacked collaboration? Not to snark, but I've only been in this space since before CRM was called CRM (who remembers Scopus?) and it has always been social and collaborative (done well anyway). - Brian Roy

For my money Enterprise 2.0 is less about social and more about a complete re-thinking of how IT gets done/delivered in an Enterprise. More crowd sourced and dynamic, less centralized and controlled. - Brian Roy

Traditional CRM has been top-down. The social elements change the shape to peer collaboration. Big difference. - Michael Krigsman

I should be clearer. SAP is also doing new Enterprise 2.0 stuff too. It's the old stuff that I was trying to riff off of here. Krigsman is right. - Robert Scoble

Michael - Peer collaboration has been in KB & Chat and other CRM tools since 2001/2002. CRM will ALWAYS be top down (IMHO) because the employees who use it most are the lowest paid, least trained/educated employees in the company. It is what it has always been - 3000 low pay people in cubes answering customer phone calls/chats. - Brian Roy

Robert: Clearly I don't understand what you mean by Enterprise 2.0 - Brian Roy

Brian: it's like porn. You'll know it when you see it. - Robert Scoble

Robert: While I'm all for porn in the enterprise... that doesn't help me much :) - Brian Roy

Brian: See this post on Oracle social CRM. (Also see associated podcast) http://tinyurl.com/4jd7bj - Michael Krigsman

Have a look at http://cyn.in . Is this a good example of Enterprise 2.0? - Dhiraj Gupta

Dhiraj: There are many tools out there, but software alone is not enough. It's requires a lifestyle change. - Michael Krigsman

Michael - Read it (before today) - Saw preview when I was at Intuit (Big Oracle shop). What I see is what I saw before with CRM with the word "Social" splashed in at various points. CRM required a culture change too - and I can tell you first hand that it rarely happens... I won't list my resume here but I've DONE this stuff many times... Social doesn't change CRM. - Brian Roy

Obviously that is just IMHO... time will tell. - Brian Roy

Brian - Timing is more important than terminology, imho. I've seen (and worked on) some Oracle CRM products we (the US) weren't ready for. - Mona Nomura

Less timing and more culture. If the company isn't interested in creating relationships with their customers CRM is of little value. Most large companies see CRM as sales/marketing opportunity... - Brian Roy

Brian: My entire work and blogging life is devoted to cultural / organizational aspects of IT failures. So yes, I agree with you - Michael Krigsman

Not convinced at all that e.20 products must build in social tools from the start. Many vendors are adding a social layer on top of existing products, particularly Sharepoint, for instance. SAP does appear to be working on baking in the features early on. As far as enterprise 2.0 is concerned, @BrianTroy, I think Andrew McAfee is virtually required reading on this stuff, particularly where defining it is concerned. http://blog.hbs.edu/faculty... - Alex Howard

Alex: I agree, but not sure I would use Sharepoint as a shining example of anything. Lots of smart people hate it. - Michael Krigsman

michael: but sharepoint does neatly integrate with AD and exchange for some very compelling collaboration mechanisms - large one that springs to mind would be calendars that are accessed by fat clients, PDA's and browsers. You're always gonna get people that hate it and people that love it. Personally I detest the aspect where it will store your files in the SQL database... but then I've always preferred granular control over things and don't trust lumping everything into a single place. - alphaxion