Over the past several years, corporations began to feel the impact of several new technology innovations combined with key cultural shifts. The social Web, in particular, is having a dramatic impact on how people communicate and build online relationships.

The proliferation of smartphones and tablets has created a society of "always on," hyper-connected individuals. Employees, customers, and partners have changing expectations about engagement as well as communications technology and methods. Consumer Web tools have created much higher expectations for user interfaces (UIs) and simplicity of use. In general, people are exposed to new styles of working and communicating, and to new capabilities from consumer tools, long before these same concepts can be applied to enterprise tools.

Employees are forcing a change in the enterprise by bringing their own tools to work and by substituting consumer tools for corporate-approved software and hardware because the tools provided don't meet their expectations and needs.

A new category of enterprise software grew out of the consumer social Web to help companies meet the shifting expectations of employees, partners, and customers and to answer the challenges created by a tough economic climate. Organizations are turning to these enterprise social tools for a variety of uses, including customer communities and employee collaboration. This begs the question: Do the implementation and the use of social tools replace the need for email?