SEATTLE, WA--(Marketwired - May 20, 2013) - Avanade, a global business technology solutions and managed services provider, today released results from a global survey on adoption of social collaboration technologies by 4,000 end users and 1,000 business and IT decision-makers in 22 countries. Data from the research shows that the majority of businesses are using social networking technologies in the enterprise.

However, Avanade's research also reveals common misconceptions when it comes to social collaboration. Those who have adopted social networking technologies in their company reported using consumer-oriented social technologies including Facebook (74 percent) for collaboration at twice the rate of Microsoft SharePoint (39 percent), four times more than IBM Open Connections (17 percent), and six times more than Salesforce Chatter (12 percent).

But, data shows this trend may change in the next 12 months. Decision-makers planning to adopt social technologies report Microsoft SharePoint (23 percent) and Salesforce Chatter (23 percent) at the top of their list of collaboration deployments planned in the coming year. Though Facebook is currently ranked No. 1 among social collaboration technologies in use today (74 percent), when asked what social tools businesses wanted to adopt in the next year, Facebook fell to the very end of the list with only 8 percent of decision-makers respondents noting it as a priority.

Avanade's research also shows the majority of businesses that have adopted social collaboration tools are seeing benefits and making plans to adopt more social tools in the future. Key data findings include:

• Eager adopters are leveraging social technologies at work -- approximately eight in 10 decision-makers (77 percent) and seven in 10 end users (68 percent) report using enterprise social networking technologies.
• Of those businesses currently using social collaboration tools, 82 percent want to use more of them in the future.
• Across the board, IT and business decision-makers, along with end users, report positive outcomes from their use of social collaboration technologies in the enterprise. IT decision-makers report these social technologies make their jobs more enjoyable (66 percent), make them more productive (62 percent), and help them get work done faster (57 percent).
• With all the positive perceptions and business outcomes, a healthy minority of business and IT decision-makers (23 percent) have not yet adopted social collaboration tools in the enterprise.

"Businesses have a variety of needs and expectations driving adoption of collaboration tools. And the consumerization of IT has raised expectations among employees about the social technologies that they can use to collaborate inside and outside of the organization," said André Huizing, Avanade's global collaboration lead. "To fully maximize the opportunity around these tools, successful collaboration strategies will align closely to the goals of the business, while prioritizing the needs of end users, and be supported by the right tools, training and policies to promote adoption throughout the organization. Furthermore, as reported in the 2013 Accenture Technology Vision, integrating collaboration into business processes will also transform the way work is done in the enterprise. We see huge opportunity for business results with the right social collaboration strategy in place."

To learn more about Avanade's views on social collaboration, please visit www.avanade.com/socialcollaboration.

About the Global Survey
Avanade's survey was conducted by Vanson Bourne (www.vansonbourne.com), an independent specialist in market research for the technology sector. It surveyed:

• 1000 C-level executives, business unit leaders, and senior decision makers within the IT department in organizations of 1000 employees or more in the following countries: United States, Canada, Brazil, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, the Nordics, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Australia and Singapore. This fieldwork was conducted between March 13 and April 16, 2013.
• 4000 end users in organizations of 500 employees or more in the following countries: United States, Canada, Austria, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, the Nordics, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Australia, China, Japan, Malaysia, and Singapore. This fieldwork was conducted between January 31 and February 20, 2013.
• Since the time of the survey, there have been some changes in the marketplace (including the decision by Salesforce to apply the Chatter interface to their entire application suite) that continue to highlight the business opportunity around Social Collaboration.

About Avanade
Avanade provides business technology solutions and managed services that connect insight, innovation and expertise in Microsoft® technologies to help customers realize results. Our people have helped thousands of organizations in all industries improve business agility, employee productivity, and customer loyalty. Avanade combines the collective business, technical and industry expertise of its worldwide network of experts with the rigor of an industrialized delivery model to provide high quality solutions using proven and emerging technologies with flexible deployment models -- on premises, cloud-based or outsourced. Avanade, which is majority owned by Accenture, was founded in 2000 by Accenture LLP and Microsoft Corporation and has 17,000 professionals in more than 20 countries. Additional information can be found at www.avanade.com.

Avanade and the Avanade logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of Avanade Inc. Other product, service, or company names mentioned herein are the trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.