Independent Research Firm Places NewsGator Among 'Leaders' in Evaluation of Enterprise Social Platforms

DENVER, Aug. 25, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Forrester Research Inc. has ranked NewsGator as a leader in its first-ever, 62-criteria evaluation of enterprise social platform vendors.

NewsGator was among the select companies that Forrester evaluated in its August 2011 report; "The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Social Platforms Q3 2011". In this evaluation, NewsGator's flagship enterprise social offering, Social Sites 2010 v2.0 garnered a top score for cross-platform support, and was among the top scorers for information workplace readiness, and architecture and administration.

Noting that it is "built completely on top of the native SharePoint platform," the report highlights Social Sites' ability to quickly iterate new social features that fill in key gaps. NewsGator's agile development process and release cycle helps the company stay on the forefront of the fast moving world of enterprise social computing. "NewsGator maintains a razor-sharp focus on enterprise social functionality while enjoying the benefits of Microsoft's investment in the broader platform," the report states.

"We are extremely pleased to be recognized as a leader in this comprehensive, detailed evaluation," said J.B. Holston, president & CEO of NewsGator. "Enterprise social computing is a complex, rapidly evolving space. Social Sites offers the simplest way to both maximize existing IT investments and provide the leading-edge social capabilities that deliver real business benefits," he added.

As companies pursue strategic business goals such as increasing innovation, collaboration and workplace productivity, they are increasingly turning to "more people- or network- centric software," according to "The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Social Platforms, Q3 2011" report. "Hundreds of Forrester inquiries in the past year suggest that these lofty business goals often trickle down to IT initiatives that use enterprise social technologies."

Social Sites 2010 Version v2.0, as documented in the report, introduced a host of features and capabilities important to organizations seeking a quick, seamless and truly enterprise-scale solution for advanced social collaboration, including:

• Support for deployment across multiple server farms with a farm-level RAM cache option;
• Enterprise-class microblogging capabilities including the ability to share (i.e., re-Tweet) activities/events in the activity stream, send private messages to counterparts, and flag events/items for later follow-up;
• Filtering of activity streams based on author, published date, hashtag, community, activity type, and contributors using a new Silverlight Web Part based on Microsoft Pivot technology;
• Indefinite retention of activity streams with microblogs and questions integrated directly to SharePoint or FAST search, enabling improved knowledge management; and
• Native apps for the iPad, iPhone and Android platforms to support today's highly mobile and often geographically dispersed workforce gave Social Sites a perfect 5.00 score on its cross-platform support.

In sum, with SharePoint already positioned as a dominant presence in the social enterprise computing market, "The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Social Platforms, Q3 2011" report states, "NewsGator takes SharePoint's social offering to higher levels through its close partnership with the software giant."

About NewsGator

As a Microsoft Gold Certified and Depth Managed Partner, NewsGator is helping nearly three million paid users in industries across the globe propel the future of productivity. NewsGator Social Sites delivers robust social technology to the enterprise with proven scalability and security to flagship clients like Accenture, Adidas, Deloitte, Ericsson, General Mills, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Kraft Foods, Merck & Co., Unisys Corporation, and the US Army. No other social software vendor can rival our deep integration with the entire Microsoft stack – reducing your total cost of ownership while increasing adoption, collaboration, and innovation. And for all that, Microsoft honored us as its 2011 US Partner of the Year. We're making SharePoint and Office365 social. Follow us @newsgator!  www.newsgator.com

SOURCE NewsGator