Enterprise Social Data Isolated in Departmental Silos

A recent study of 35 large organizations found that social data is still “largely isolated from business-critical enterprise apps” and is created in departmental silos.

The Altimeter Group study found that the average enterprise-class company owns 178 social accounts, with 13 departments “actively engaged” on social platforms. That’s creating serious social data silos, and, not surprisingly, there’s very little effort to integrate all this data.

You really didn’t need a crystal ball to see this coming. As long as businesses function in departmental silos, there will be data silos that mimic that structure.

Five Ways to Improve Survey Engagement and Customer Insights

The report also revealed it’s not always easy to integrate this data, attributing the issue to the fact that so many organizational departments touch the data, “all with varying perspectives on the information,” the article states, adding:

“The report also notes the numerous nuances within social data make it problematic to apply general metrics across the board and, in many organizations, social data doesn’t carry the same credibility as its enterprise counterpart.”

When social data is integrated with enterprise data, it’s usually through business intelligence tools (42 percent), followed by market research at 35 percent. CRM (27 percent), email marketing (27 percent) and sensor data (uh? 4 percent) are also points of convergence.

What can I say about this situation that hasn’t already been said? I sometimes think toddlers are taught more about cooperation and working together.

Informatica Second Quarter Revenues Show Growth

I don’t usually report company earnings, but Informatica is always a bit interesting to look at as an indicator of the integration market, because it’s more of a pure-play data management and integration company. And yet, it competes with IBM for the top spot in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Data Integration Tools.

The company reported second quarter software revenues of $91.4 million. Overall revenue reached $222.4 million. You can read all the gory financial details in the press release, but Barron’s Tech Trader columnist Tiernan Ray noted the earnings report beat analysts expectations, while also pointing out that share prices were down slightly.

Upcoming Webinars

“The Big Connection: Integrating Cloud with Enterprise Systems,” Tuesday, July 30, at 4 p.m., ET. For this edition of The Briefing Room, veteran analyst Robin Bloor will explain how the progression of cloud services has advanced application integration techniques. You will also hear about Dell Boomi’s cloud integration solution. You can find a link to the registration page on the Briefing Room’s list of upcoming events.