Open-Xchange and Social Networking

Before heading off to the OpenSource World/NGDC/CloudWorld conference, I had a chance to speak with Jürgen Geck, CTO Open‐Xchange, and Bill Baker, CEO of Baker Communications Group. They wanted to bring me up to date on their progress.

This time, the focus was on tying Open-Xchange's collaborative application, cleverly named "Open-Xchange," to various social networking sites to facilitate individual's use of both an organization's collaborative system and chosen social networking sites, such as LinkedIn, Facebook and the like. Open-Xchange, by the way, has made the transition from a stand alone software product to a Software as a Service offering that is being made available through several managed and hosting services suppliers.

Jürgen pointed out that quite a number of decision makers are using these social sites to poll users on feature requirements for upcoming versions of products, seek out qualified employees, catch up on what competitors are doing and the like. He also stressed that in house systems are now the repository for a significant amount of organizational knowledge and that the organization, to be successful, needs to find ways to leverage that knowledge.

While I enjoyed catching up with old friends, I'm not convinced that organizations want their decision makers spending a great deal of time on these networks. So, making the connection easier to make between in-house systems and the world of social networks may not be seen as a desireable feature.

What's your opinion?  Please post your thoughts about this as comments to this post.