Demo: Measure the Success of IBM Connections with Community Metrics

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One of the important aspects of a social business platform such as IBM Connections Cloud is to monitor the health and usage of communities / team sites. IBM Connections provides a comprehensive set of quantitative and qualitative metrics that help measure the business value of IBM Connections in your organization.Metrics in IBM Connections allows community managers or System Admins view information on how users are participating on Connections, the content in Connections, and how people are visiting different portions of the product.

Community owners or managers need the ability to monitor the adoption and participation in their community. The Community Metrics component lets owners see metrics based on users, participation within the community, and content in the community. Additionally there are metrics for each application within a community under ‘All Metrics.

Here's a quick 3 minute demo that I created so you can see how it works.

Equivalent functionality is available for the org admins to see metrics at the global level across all communities deployed in the system.

To learn more or to start a trial, go to http://ibmcloud.com/social

What's New and Coming in IBM Connections and IBM Docs for Q2 2016

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Hours ago, IBM just made another update to IBM Connections Cloud.

To start off, community managers and administrators have access to even more metrics.  If you are an organization administrator, you can easily see how your user base is getting business value out of IBM Connections. For example, you can track Connections Cloud events such as every time that a user reads a blog entry, creates a To do item in an Activity, updates a wiki page, or follows a Community. You can drill down on one application or a particular time period. You can set filters to track how many people viewed a blog in the Customer Support Community in the last seven days, last four weeks, last quarter, or last 12 months.

Community owners can also get metrics only on the communities that they own. Track who visits the community, information shared such as comments, and participation in such activities as downloading files.

In an upcoming release this quarter IBM is also going to be releasing some significant enhancements to search.  Want to learn more and see what else is coming in the rest of Q2 for IBM Connections & IBM Docs? Then check out this deck:

What's New in IBM Connections Social Cloud - Q2 2016 from Luis Benitez

And there's more that was released if you are using IBM Verse. Check out the full list of what's new in IBM Connections Cloud. IBM Connections is ready to transform your organization, anywhere in the world. And since today is Monday, I figured I would leave you with this.



If you still haven't seen IBM Connections, start your free trial here.

Gartner Recognizes IBM as a Leader in the 2015 Magic Quadrant for Social Software in the Workplace for IBM Connections

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Put it in the books! For the 7th year in a row, Gartner has placed IBM as a Leader in their recently released 2015 Magic Quadrant for Social Software in the Workplace* based on IBM Connections.

We are now getting ready for another major release of IBM Connections and organizations continue to report value from deploying a social collaboration platform such as IBM Connections.

If you haven't seen IBM Connections lately, check out this video that we recently published to showcase our secure file editing capabilities for iOS and Android.

So where do we go from here? And don't forget to register for IBM Connect on January 2016. We are also just coming back from IBM Insight 2015 and I shared some content so you can see what was presented there.

Update 16/Nov/2015: To download the report, you can access it from this page. And then start a free trial of IBM Connections!

*Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Social Software in the Workplace, Mike Gotta, Nikos Drakos, Jeffrey Mann, 26 October 2015



Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

IBM Ranked as Leader in the 2015 Aragon Research Globe for Enterprise Social Software

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And the great news keep piling up as we get ready for another major IBM Connections release. I'm just back from IBM Insight 2015 and will share some content soon about that but wanted to get this out soon!

The latest to hit the wire is that IBM Connections has been ranked as a Leader for the third year in a row in the third Aragon Research Globe for Enterprise Social Software. This is in addition to the Gartner report where IBM came out as a leader in the Enterprise Social Software MQ (more on that soon)!

According to Aragon's announcement, the report evaluates 22 social collaboration vendors against 3 dimensions: Strategy, Performance, and Reach. Based on the evaluation of each vendor, each vendor is placed in 1 of 4 spheres: Leader, Innovator, Specialist or Contender. Again, IBM was ranked as a Leader.

“When it comes to Social Software and Communities, the biggest challenge for the enterprise has been connecting people with critical content and knowledge,”said Jim Lundy, CEO and Lead Analyst at Aragon Research. “Our new Aragon Research Globe for Social Software will help buyers understand the current state of the market and why the market has shifted from feature comparisons to use cases, and how ESNs are helping the enterprise get to faster outcomes.”

Aragon called out the growing number of apps available for IBM Connections: With its growing set of partner apps, IBM Connections can be configured to meet multiple business user needs.

A great example of a customer reaping the benefits of becoming a social business with IBM Connections is Verisure. Check out this video where they share the benefits that they've seen:

Update 19/Nov/2015: To download and read the report, click here. To start a free trial of IBM Connections in cloud, go here.

The Results Are In: IBM Connections Benefits $26.5 million over 3 years !

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A recent commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of IBM titled The Total Economic Impact of IBM Connections analyzes the cost savings and business benefits of utilizing IBM Connections. The purpose of the study is to provide a framework to evaluate the potential financial impact of implementing the IBM Connections social collaboration platform within their organizations to improve internal processes to engage, empower, and inspire both employees and customers and unlock new opportunities.

To better understand the benefits, costs, and risks associated with an IBM Connections implementation, Forrester interviewed existing customers with multiple years of experience using both the IBM Connections cloud and on-premises collaboration platforms.

As one example, Forrester refers to a representative organization with about 35,000 employees and calculated benefits of about $26 million over a three year period. These come from increased productivity, reduced turnover, and reduced IT costs.

Here's an infographic with some of the highlights:

Here's a testimonial from one of our customers where Jacob Andersson, Corporate Systems Manager at Verisure, talks about his experience with IBM Connections.



You can download the study from here. To start a free trial of IBM Connections, go here: http://ibmcloud.com/social.

IBM was named the Worldwide Market Share Leader in Enterprise Social Networks for sixth consecutive year by IDC

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In IDC's recently published report, IBM is ranked number one in worldwide market share for enterprise social software for the sixth consecutive year. According to IDC's analysis of 2014 revenue, IBM continues to hold the lead in market share.

According to IDC, the enterprise social networks market is expected to reach $3.5 billion by 2019, representing growth of 19 percent over the next four years.

If you are not familiar with IBM Connections, check out how you can get started today using the Enterprise File Sync and Share capabilities provided by IBM Connections Cloud.




Updated 18/Aug/2015: To view the report from IDC, click here.

IDC MarketScapes Name IBM a Worldwide and European Leader for Enterprise Social Networks

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In late 2014, IDC released its IDC MarketScape Worldwide MarketScape Enterprise Social Network 2014 Vendor Assessment and their 2IDC MarketScape: European Enterprise Social Networks in 2014. IBM Connections was positioned as a leader in both reports.

Also in 2014, IBM was also named as the market share leader in the IDC Worldwide Enterprise Social Networks 2014-2018 Forecast and 2013 Vendor Shares report.  I'm extremely excited to see how IBM was positioned.

Also evaluated in the IDC MarketScape: European Enterprise Social Networks in 2014 is HYPE Innovation who IDC positioned as a Major Player.



You might recognize HYPE as an IBM Business Partner (Suzanne blogged about them last year) and their offering complements the IBM Connections solution. You can check out the demo here:



HYPE will also be at IBM ConnectED next week so make sure you go to their session and check out their announcement of their new integration with IBM Connections Social Cloud.

Gartner Recognizes IBM Connections as a Leader in the 2014 Magic Quadrant for Social Software in the Workplace

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Put it in the books! For the 6th year in a row, Gartner has placed IBM Connections as a Leader in their recently released 2014 Magic Quadrant for Social Software in the Workplace.

This year, I had the opportunity to engage in the entire process from beginning to end.  The whole process started back in May of this year.  There's a lot of things that happen during the evaluation process such as coordinating customer references, filling out feature surveys, showing the solution and more.

This report follow recent analyst reports:

• Forrester which placed IBM Connections as the Leader in the Enterprise Social Platform Wave
• OVUM which placed IBM Connections as a Leader in the Enteprise File Sync and Share Space
• Aragon placing IBM Connections as a Leader in the Enterprise Social Software Globe
• Forrester report placing IBM Connections as a Leader in the File Sharing and Sync Wave

If you haven't seen IBM Connections lately, check out this video that we recently published (and if you are reading today, yes, our mobile app is ready for iOS 8 support! )



So where do we go from here? We have a release coming to the cloud in several days which I'll share more details on soon.  And don't forget to submit your abstract for IBM ConnectED on January 2015.

To download the report, you can access it from Gartner's page here.

Brand Image and Security Concerns – All the More Reason to Become a Social Business

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To get the full benefit of social business, you must inject it into your key business processes for stronger customer engagement and workforce collaboration. But many enterprises are afraid to fully embrace social business, with 30 percent of them citing security concerns and perceived risk as major adoption barriers, according to IBM's 2014 Business Tech Trends report.

But these fearful enterprises need to realize the true nature of social business. At its core, social business is a grassroots movement. Your customers have already embraced social. They’re online, on multiple channels, multiple platforms, talking about your business and reviewing your products and solutions. In other words, there’s no such thing as ‘opting out’ of social business.

In fact, the real risks of security and brand perception are increased when you don’t engage in social business. If you're struggling to integrate social into the core of your business internally and externally, IBM can help.

For example, IBM Connections can help you reorganize, restructure and transform your enterprise into an effective social business with social guidelines and policies set into place to optimize both customer engagement and your internal workforce communication.

When social business is done right, the possibilities are endless. In fact, Pacesetters engaging in social business have reported an 87 percent stronger competitive advantage in their respective markets.

To read the full IBM 2014 Business Tech Trends report, click here.

To watch the webcast replay of the Business Tech Trends announcement, click here.

After you’ve read the report, join us for a Bluemix app JAM! Simply download the report's data in an IBM Bluemix app and start discovering new insights! Share with us and IBM will highlight our favorites!

IBM Connections Cited as a Leader in the Ovum Enterprise File Sharing & Sync Decision Matrix

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Today, IBM was among the vendors that were cited as a Leader in Ovum's Decision Matrix: Selecting an Enterprise File Sync and Share Product, 2014-2015.  This report was based on IBM Connections, both the cloud and on-premises version. W00t !


IBM Connections is IBM's premier cloud-based online 
collaboration platform (or enterprise social network). For some time now, I worked with my peers on this report 
showing Ovum the capabilities that we have today. Needless to say, I'm extremely excited that 
Ovum considers IBM Connections a leader in their Enterprise File Sync and Share Decision Matrix report!

The report takes into consideration 241 data points around the end-use functionality of the 19 vendors evaluated and the "enterprise-fit" of the 19 vendors across 194 data points (yes, that's over 400 data points total!!).


More and more companies are looking at leveraging cloud-based 
collaboration solutions. For example, aatranslations chose 
the IBM Connections platform on the cloud to better collaborate with its 
global employees.

Check out the following video that was shared by them and explains their challenges as a global business and how they use the file sharing capabilities to become more efficient working with translators all over the world:





Congrats to the entire team who worked on this. To purchase the Ovum report now go 
here.

Rethinking Your Social Strategy to Act Like a Pacesetter

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Last week I told you about the amazing results that Pacesetters are seeing from deploying social business solutions, according to IBM's 2014 Business Tech Trends report. This week I'm going to tell you what your enterprise can do to catch up in social based on those Pacesetters’ key practices.

The Business Tech Trends report found that Pacesetters are using analytics as their fuel and integration as their breakaway move. So, what does this mean for social?

To compete like a Pacesetter, integrate social with:

• Mobile to reach more customers and segments and strengthen current customer relationships
• Analytics to mine all of the unstructured data and better understand your customers' needs
• Cloud to manage the large amount of data collected and to quickly and easily scale technology and initiatives 

Some of this might sound obvious to you, but the study found that Pacesetters are seven times more likely to use social business on the cloud and six times more likely to use social media analytics and mobile analytics than other enterprises! There is still a huge gap between the Pacesetters and everyone else. When it comes to social business, it's time to integrate and analyze.

 

Ibm connect 2013 sw 102 social analytics key to a social enterprise from Mark Heid

Read the 2014 Business Tech Trendsm report and then start analyzing it on IBM Bluemix at our Bluemix app JAM! Remember, share your insights and IBM will highlight our favorites!

Social Business More than Doubles Since 2012 - Pacesetters Are Seeing the Biggest Wins

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IBM's Center for Applied Insights has just released their 2014 Business Tech Trends report, which surveyed over 1,400 decision makers across 15 industries around the world to find out how businesses are deploying key technologies. The study found that social business is now being deployed by 70 percent of enterprises! That is more than double the number of enterprises (34 percent) that were deploying social business solutions in 2012.

Pacesetter enterprises, which regard big data and analytics, cloud, mobile and social technologies as critical to their success and adopt them ahead of their competitors, have seen amazing results from integrating social into their DNA:

• Pacesetters are achieving improved customer experience through social at six times the rate of other enterprises.
• Additionally, 72 percent of Pacesetters are seeing enhanced communication and collaboration across the organization and ecosystem through their social initiatives, which is also six times more than other enterprises!
• Furthermore, Pacesetters report that they are expanding into new markets and segments at three times the rate of other enterprises.

It's clearer now than ever that having a social business strategy is imperative. But with 70 percent of enterprises deploying social, how do you get results like the Pacesetters? Stay tuned – I'm working on a post now that will tell you how!

The following graph indicates the deployment gains since 2012:

If you missed the webcast in which Sandy Carter, General Manager of Ecosystem Development, IBM, made the exciting Business Tech Trends announcement, not to fear you can re-watch it here!

TemboSocial Plugs Into IBM Connections and Takes Ideation To The Next Level

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By now, I'm sure that you are aware of TemboSocial. They have been adding value to IBM Connections, the market leading enterprise social collaboration platform, and it's some great work and I've talked about them in the past.

The first add-on they created was a bit over 2 years ago when they first introduced The Hive for IBM Connections, a social recognition module.

Last year, they further integrated with the IBM Connections platform by taking advantage of new integration points and extending our native mobile app in iOS and Android.

Now, TemboSocial has introduced TemboSocial Ideas for IBM Connections.  This new add-on plugs directly into a team site within IBM Connections and takes ideation to the next level.

With this add-on, you can crowdsource and gather ideas, surface the best ideas and comments, and the experts and moderators can curate the best contributions and provide updates on the idea (e.g. "In Progress", "Under Review", "Closed", etc). Additionally, it includes detailed real-time reports to determine sentiment, where the best ideas are coming from (e.g. by geography, role, workgroup, etc) and you can filter by time to measure the impact of your campaigns and see the results of your promotions.

Update 2:30pm ET: Tembosocial Ideas is front and center at the customer IBM Webinar "Innovation Starts with Social: How IBM Connections Social Software can Transform your Organization - Tuesday August 26th"

"Join ICS NA Executive Sales Leader Laura Wolf and Tembosocial president and founder Steven Green on Tuesday August 26th. It's the "Aha" moment for LOB how to best get value from, Social (on-prem or cloud), how existing Social organizations can make Social more strategic, and where first time Social organizations can effectively start. "

Registration here: https://events.na.collabserv.com/portal/wippages/register.php?id=65a4c4e364&l=en-US.
Since a picture is worth a 1000 words and a video is worth (a trillion?) words, check out this video to see how it works:



For more info, check out TemboSocial Ideas for IBM Connections.

IBM Ranked as Leader in the 2014 Aragon Research Globe for Enterprise Social Software

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And the great news keep piling up on the heels of the IBM Connections 5.0 rollout.

The latest to hit the wire is that IBM Connections has been ranked as a Leader in the Aragon Research Globe for Enterprise Social Software.  This is in addition to the Forrester Wave report where IBM came out as a leader in the Enterprise Social Software Wave a couple of weeks back and the news that IBM Connections continues to be the market leader in enterprise social software !

According to their announcement, the report evaluates 20 social collaboration vendors against 3 dimensions: Strategy, Performance, and Reach. Based on the evaluation of each vendor, each vendor is placed in 1 of 4 spheres: Leader, Innovator, Specialist or Contender. Again, IBM was ranked as a Leader.

Aragon called out the purposeful use of social as one of the differentiators of the IBM Connections platform:

IBM is leveraging Connections across its software portfolio, including its social HCM (Kenexa) product line

Aragon delivers high impact research and advisory services to provide enterprises the insight they need to help them make better technology and strategy decisions.

A great example of a customer reaping the benefits of becoming a social business with IBM Connections is CEMEX who has actually measured the ROI of their Social Business journey with IBM Connections.  They shared an update of their recent success stories a few weeks back:



If you want to read the report, you can get it from Aragon here.

IBM Cited as Leader in the Enterprise Social Platform Wave Report

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As we continue our march towards the release of IBM Connections Next, there are some amazing news I would like to share according to the most recent blog entry from one of my peers in product management, Suzanne Livingston.

There you'll see IBM was compared against 13 other vendors.  Suzanne and I worked very closely with Forrester throughout this process and needless to say, we are extremely excited with the results.

Update 13/Jun/2014: Download the Q2 2014 Forrester Wave for Enterprise Social Platforms from here.

This is another perfect case where timing couldn't have been better as the release of IBM Connections Next is imminent. I hope by now, you have seen some hints of what's coming.  If you missed our webcast on May 21st, or the Live Q&A on May 22, or the follow on webcast on May 28th, then definitely go catch those replays (note: the Live Q&A was through a Forum discussion so you can catch up all the conversations there).

Another opportunity for a sneak peek is this blog entry by Albert Nichols, another peer of mine in product management team.  There, he expands on some of the demo that we did on the May 21st webcast. Get ready, we are almost there! Get ready to put people back in the center of your business:

Enterprise Social Software Market Hits $1B, IBM Leads for 5th Consecutive Year

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Hot off the press!

IBM today announced that for the fifth consecutive year, IDC ranked the company number one in worldwide market share for enterprise social software.

According to the press release, IDC's analysis of 2013 revenue, the worldwide market for enterprise social software applications grew from $968 million in 2012 to $1,242 million in 2013.

The press release quotes IDC's Vanessa Thompson:

Customers are increasingly assuming that all applications must be social.  IBM's focus on a core social networking platform to support application environments, such as Smarter Commerce and Smarter Workforce aligns well with this customer intent.

Here's a look at the key innovations in the past 5 years (click to see it full screen):

The news comes in timely as we are getting ready to unveil IBM Connections Next on May 21st.  If you haven't yet, register for our virtual event Collaborate or be Left Behind: Leading the Digital Frontier.

IBM's Social Business portfolio, including its industry leading IBM Connections and Smarter Workforce technologies, allow organizations to integrate social solutions with critical business applications and people-centric processes that empower employees, increase workforce productivity and deliver exceptional customer service. Deployed on cloud or on premises, these solutions also enable business leaders like the Chief HR Officer (CHRO) to attract and retain top talent when combined with social workforce analytics that ensure the organization has the skills and expertise to meet emerging market demands.



The press release also quotes our General Manager, Craig Hayman:

The transparent nature of today's business environment, combined with the integration of social, cloud and analytic capabilities into everyday processes, has fueled the emergence of a Smarter Workforce.  We’re thrilled to be recognized by IDC as the market share leader for the fifth consecutive year as our clients continue to harness Social Business to accelerate innovation, increase agility and remove boundaries to collaboration.

Want to see what's coming in the latest release of IBM Connections? Then don't wait and register today and see you on May 21st.

IBM Positioned as a Leader in the 2013 Magic Quadrant for Social Software in the Workplace

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As we come close to our next big launch I have some great news to share. Analysts at Gartner have positioned IBM in the Leaders Quadrant of the 2013 Magic Quadrant for Social Software in the Workplace(*) -- for the 5th year in a row! IBM’s placement is based on its ability to execute and completeness of vision. As you know, earlier this week, IBM deployed the latest IBM Connections release to the cloud, continuing to build the core of the IBM Social Business Platform.

This new report adds to the recent analyst reports from Forrester and Aragon Research which also list IBM as a Leader in their respective research reports. IBM Connections has also been listed as the worldwide market share leader by IDC.

I'm extremely proud to be part of the IBM Connections team! To walk you through all the great new features and watch demos of our new capabilities (spoiler alert: I'll be doing one of the demos), please make sure that you attend the following webinar. It will be on September 18th and that's where we'll go into more details about our amazing latest release. Click here to register for the webinar.

To get a copy of the report, click here.

---

*Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Social Software in the Workplace, Nikos Drakos, et al, September 10, 2013. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose

Take Your IBM Connections Reports to the Next Level

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Yesterday, we made a video tutorial available to walk admins through the process of customizing the out of the box IBM Connections Reports.

Out of the box, IBM Connections provides over 100 reports for admins and community managers to monitor adoption and figure out the content that's working so they can focus their energies in the right place. The data in these reports can be aggregated in several formats such as by date, by geography, by department, etc.

Sometimes, there's data or dimensions that specific community managers want to see. When we built out the reporting mechanism, we had this in mind and made it extensible. It takes just a few steps to take the reports to the next level!

To see how you can customize the reports, check out the video below:

To learn more about customizing the IBM Connections reports, click here.

Updated on 12/Sept/2013 @ 12pm ET : - Also see the following presentation that Klaus shared in the comments:

Give your community owners the reports they really need from Klaus Bild

IBM Connections Cited as a Leader in File Sharing and Sync

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Amazing news to share today! IBM was among the vendors Forrester Research 
invited to participate in their latest Forrester Wave: File Share and 
Sync, 3Q 2013 . In this report, IBM SmartCloud for Social 
Business, built on IBM Connections, was cited as a leader. W00t !


IBM SmartCloud for Social Business is IBM's premier cloud-based online 
collaboration platform (or enterprise social network). I've been working with my peers on this report 
showing Forrester the capabilities that we have today and what we are 
going to deliver in the rest of 2013. Needless to say, I'm extremely excited that 
Forrester considers IBM a leader in this Forrester Wave report!


More and more companies are looking at leveraging cloud-based 
collaboration solutions. A recent example is Apex Supply Chain who chose 
the IBM Connections platform on the cloud to better collaborate with its 
global employees. Their success story was published in the SMB Group Blog 
a couple of weeks ago and why they chose 
IBM SmartCloud for Social Business.

Check out the following video that was recently shared by them:





Congrats to the entire team who worked on this. To purchase the Forrester report now go 
here.

Updated on 23/Jul/2013 - You can now download the report from here.

IBM Releases 2012 Tech Trends Report

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Today, IBM has released the 2012 Tech Trends Report covering mobile, cloud, social and analytics. The 2012 Tech Trends Report is based on a survey of more than 1,200 professionals who make technology decisions for their organizations (22 percent IT managers, 53 percent IT practitioners and 25 percent business professionals). Our respondents come from 16 different industries and 13 countries, spanning both mature and growth markets.1 To better understand how technology trends are impacting future IT professionals, we also surveyed more than 250 academics and 450 students across these same countries.

Something that stands out from the report is a skill gap that may threaten progress by businesses to adopt these technology shifts. And the report doesn't just highlight these skill gaps, it actually gives concrete recommendations for business and IT leaders as well as for IT practitioners.

I also found interesting the rate of adoption. Globally, only 34% of companies have adopted Social Business. And as you can see from the Infographic below countries like Brazil , South African and Spain stand out since almost more than half of the companies have adopted social business, demonstrating a huge opportunity still worldwide.

Check out the info graphic below (hover over the different elements to learn more):

As part of the report, IBM has developed a set of videos that feature technology experts by topic area (analytics, cloud, mobile, social, security) offering their opinions on the skills gap, what types of skills students and professionals need, as well as prescriptive advice on how people can get skills in these specific technology areas. In this video, Doug Heintzman describes what people should think about when developing social business skills.

The video the other videos playlist is here. To download the report, click here.