Socialtext has announced record quarter-over-quarter bookings growth in 2009, bolstered by social computing’s growing presence in the enterprise.
It’s important to note that Socialtext is reporting record bookings, not record revenues. The company does not disclose its actual revenues. It’s hard to to give Socilatext a lot of credit without knowing how its revenues fared. Further, the year ahead may be one of the most challenging for the company as competition is only getting more fierce.
Socialtext is one of the most established companies in the Enterprise 2.0 space, dating back to 2002 when it got its start as a wiki provider. In recent years, the company has diversified, adding a microblogging platform and collaborative tools such as SocialCalc, its collaborative spreadsheet application. Socialtext said it now has 6,500 customers, compared to 4,000 in 2008. The company also said it set a record for the number of companies that renewed contracts.
Jive Software may be one of the biggest competitors for Socialtext. Microsoft will be pushing hard into the enterprise market this year with Sharepoint 2010. Google, Cisco, IBM and a host of new players are also fighting for the same piece of the pie.
But, overall, the Soclaltext news is more real proof that social computing did get the attention of the enterprise in 2009, and that the year ahead should be another record year for the overall market.
