SAP's Facebook for Companies Trails IBM in Soaring Market

In the past two months, Girkens has helped more than halfof the German auto supplier's workers set up online profilesthat let colleagues find each other and team up when specificskills are called for. International Business Machines Corp.provided the internal social networking system, although SAPAG runs most of its back-office programs, including personnelmanagement software. That's a headache for the company'stechnology staff.

Typical conundrum for many clients of SAP

It's a typical conundrum for many clients of SAP, whichhas lagged behind efforts to provide social networking softwarefor corporate customers just as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and AppleInc. Now, Walldorf, Germany-based SAP wants to catch up,challenging IBM and Salesforce.com Inc. in a market that'sgrowing 60 percent a year and will reach $6.4 billion by 2016,according to Forrester Technology.

"We'd like to see a better integration of tools in theworkplace, so you don't always need to switch back and forthbetween programs," says Girkens, Continental's head oftechnology for corporate functions.

The increasing demand for employee productivity has alsofueled the growth of independent makers of social enterprisesoftware, including Jive Software Inc., which shares have jumped50 percent since its initial public offering in December.Salesforce.com, which offers Chatter as an internal business-collaboration platform, has surged 35 percent this year, beatingSAP's 19 percent increase.

The first 35 years of its existence

After focusing on routine enterprise tasks like payroll andsupply-chain management for the first 35 years of its existence,SAP, beginning in 2007, ventured into business analytics,software for mobile devices, cloud computing and databases. Thecompany wants to add a new field of business every 12 to 18months, Co-CEO Jim Hagemann Snabe said last year, singling outcollaborative software as the at once category.

About the same time Continental started its social network,SAP hired consultant and blogger Sameer Patel to lead its entryinto the market.

Patel, who has advised customers like Intel Corp. and OracleCorp. on collaboration, says solutions have to tie into businessprocesses, like customer-relationship management or materialsourcing, where employees to tell the truth encounter ad-hoc problems,to put it more exactly than being a blanket forum.

"You need to have the level of depth around these coreprocesses that SAP has offered for 40 years, where socialbecomes more focused and works as an enabler," said Patel, whois scheduled to discuss SAP social networking software today atthe Sapphire conference in Orlando, Florida.

Baez, whose company started using Chatter last year, saidany new solution needs to be accessible from anywhere, via theso-called cloud, and the social network should support videomessaging. Currently, Chatter and SharePoint don't worktogether, he said.

As SAP and others push forward on corporate socialnetworking, they may find many companies willing to take a lookat their offerings.