'A virtual water cooler' - Social software market will hit $4.5bn in 2021 - Gartner

Remote home working and social software integrations within other enterprise applications will drive double-digit growth, says Gartner

The social software and collaboration market will rack up $4.5bn in revenues in 2021 with double-digit growth expected through 2022, Gartner has predicted.

The analyst firm claims remote home working and social software integrations within other enterprise applications has driven significant growth, forecasting a rise of 17.1 per cent from 2020.

"Many of the existing use cases propelling the social and collaboration market, such as coordinating a distributed workforce and providing a ‘virtual water cooler,' got a sudden jolt from the pandemic," said Gartner research vice president, Craig Roth.

"Social and collaboration tools went from a ‘nice to have' to a ‘must have' within a matter of weeks."

The research firm added that additional investment in technologies will continue even as office work returns, in order to "facilitate, capture and organise open conversations and information sharing."

Gartner highlighted the integration of social software as an embedded capability in other applications and platforms as another key driver, predicting that by 2025, nearly 65 per cent of enterprise application software providers will have included some form of social software and collaboration functionality in their software product portfolios.

"Providers of packaged business applications, such as ERP and CRM software, have previously offered basic social and collaboration functionality," Roth added.

"However, they are now facing heightened expectations about the seamless inclusion of nonroutine tasks, such as conversations and marking up content, within their process-oriented products.

"Partnerships between software providers will take on more importance, as a close relationship is required for tight integration of disparate application functions."