The worldwide market for social software and collaboration in the workplace is expected to grow from an estimated $ US 2.7 billion in 2018 to $ US 4.8 billion by 2023, nearly doubling in size, according to Gartner, Inc.

“The collaboration market is the most fragmented and contextually focused it has ever been, making the barrier to entry extremely low,” said Craig Roth, research vice president at Gartner.

“By 2023, we expect nearly 60% of enterprise application software providers will have included some form of social software and collaboration functionalities in their software product portfolios.”

The collaboration market has fragmented into many submarkets – for instance, employee communications applications or meeting solutions – that often do not compete.

“The market is not yet a winner-takes-all space, creating opportunities for innovation that will expand the size of each submarket,” said Mr. Roth. “The future of social software and collaboration will leverage new capabilities like social analytics, virtual personal assistants (VPAs) and smart machines.”

Social media and real-time messaging are now key to enterprise collaboration, according to the recent Gartner Digital Worker Survey. Fifty-eight percent of respondents reported using realtime mobile messaging tools daily, and 45% reported using social media networks daily.

“Digital workers turn to tools that are common in their personal lives to get work done. Real-time mobile messaging is quite common in support of enterprise endeavors, as are social media and file sharing tools,” said Mr. Roth.

“The use of such tools effectively blends workers’ personal experiences and their work experiences.”