IBM Is Social Business Software Leader: Study

eWeek: According to IDC, IBM was the leading provider of enterprise social software for the third year in a row. While the market for enterprise social software grew 40 percent in 2011, IBM’s sales grew twice as fast. IDC says the enterprise social software market could hit $4.5 billion by 2016.

“Social software is gaining in momentum in the enterprise,” said IDC’s Michael Fauscette. “Companies are seeing significant gain in productivity and increasing value from successfully deployed social software solutions including supporting ad hoc work by bringing people, data, content and systems together in real time and making more effective critical business decisions by providing the ‘right information’ in the work context.”