According to Forrester Research, the market opportunity for social enterprise apps is expected to grow at a rate of 61 percent through 2016, reaching $6.4 billion. The stated intent of this new social business software is to facilitate convergence of cloud, mobile and social networking  features accessible in safe and secure environment for the enterprises.

The social business portfolio expands adding collaboration features including file sharing, online meetings, instant messaging, email and calendar, unlimited real-time chat irrespective of whatever chat software the other users are using, all available in the cloud. Such an expansion is a step forward to meet the demands of the growing enterprise collaboration needs.

The new IBM SmartCloud Docs cloud-based office productivity suite allows users to simultaneously collaborate on word processing, spreadsheet and presentation documents in the cloud to improve productivity. The new IBM Connections capabilities in the cloud allow users to embrace business-grade social networking between employees, partners and suppliers to find and share the right insight when needed. The new e-meeting service allows teams to meet on the fly, using instant messaging chats, screen sharing to share information and presentations.

European expansion is one of the key elements that is being seen since last few months for all organizations intending to expand their business beyond US. Understandably IBM is no exception and has declared ready support for European Union Safe Harbor privacy principle standards regarding collection and processing of personal information on the cloud. 

IBM claims that its clients who are already experiencing the new enhancements in social and cloud are the University of Texas at El Paso, Colleagues In Care (CIC), Centrax TCL, NEC Corp., the Victoria Implementation Center and Netkom iBPM LLC.

"As the mobile workforce moves beyond gaining access to email and calendars to collaborate and generate new ideas and be more efficient anytime, anywhere, on any device, the intersection of social, mobile, and cloud becomes even more critical," said Alistair Rennie, general manager, social business, IBM. "Social and mobile are driving business transformation, helping all aspects of an organization from marketing, human resources, sales and customer support and development leverage social concepts in their business processes. The power of cloud helps to amplify this by delivering enterprise strength computing power where and when you need it."

IBM SmartCloud Docs is available now for no additional charge in IBM SmartCloud Engage Advanced service. IBM SmartCloud Docs is also available for purchase as a service add-on for IBM Connections and IBM SmartCloud Engage Standard for $3 per user, per month.