Look for the social software and collaboration market to grow 17% in 2021 to $4.5 billion over last year, as forecast by Gartner. Social software integrations within other enterprise applications is driving significant growth, and as a result of the pandemic, remote work needed support, the firm said.
“Technologically enabled remote knowledge workers have been around for decades,” said Craig Roth, research vice president at Gartner. “I’ve been a remote knowledge worker for two decades now. But this was not the norm in most organizations. The need to suddenly empty out office buildings while keeping businesses afloat gave a jolt to many markets with social and collaboration being at the forefront. Social and collaboration products went from ‘nice to have’ to ‘must have’ within a period of a few weeks.”
It was evident early on that it would be a challenge for most—if not all—staff working off the premise to maintain easy social interactions that often took place around the proverbial “water cooler,” and the enterprise quickly became reliant on the social and collaboration market to provide a virtual version…READ ON
