Announcing the “How to get the Most Value from Social Computing for Business with Microsoft” white paper
I'm very proud to announce that the "How to get the Most Value from Social Computing for Business with Microsoft" white paper is now available for public download here. Over the past 12 months, I’ve met with many customers and received numerous escalations from our field about how social computing capabilities can be used to solve real business problems. This white paper was developed primarily to answer those questions. I had originally planned to release the document at the SharePoint Conference this past March. However, after the countless conversations I had with customers during the conference, I decided to change the focus of the content to include more information that would be useful for business decision makers as well as IT decision makers, resulting in a sizeable document (you will see what I mean when you read it). There was just so much information that was relevant and compelling to include!
I’m sure that you will agree with me when I say “social computing means different things to different people.” Thus, there were challenges in getting the terminology defined clearly. The most common questions I get asked are:
- Is “social computing” and “social networking” interchangeable?
- How do “wikis”, “blogs”, and “discussion forums” differ in terms of usage scenarios?
- What is the difference between “personal sites” and “people profiles”?
One of my objectives with the white paper is to answer these questions.
In addition, I wanted to share stories directly from our customers in their own words about their business reasons, challenges, and successes from their social computing applications. The two customers I chose as references in the document, Accenture and Miami-Dade County School District, are great examples of innovative technology adopters that have embraced social computing and witnessed the successful results it has brought to their organization. Accenture and Miami-Dade County School District are from very different industries and with different business problems, yet they were both able to solve their needs with the same social computing platform - SharePoint.
My overall goals for the white paper were to:
- Describe what is the value of social computing from both business and IT perspectives.
- Leverage real world solutions (with real customer screenshots and quotes) to show practical usage scenarios and business benefits.
- Provide support for why SharePoint is the integrated business productivity platform of choice for social computing applications.
I hope you find this white paper helpful and that it helps clarify some questions or strengthens your ideas about social computing. Please feel free to leave a comment for any feedback or questions that you have. Thanks!
Alina Fu, Product Manager for Social Computing
Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies
