Social media becoming more common internally at companies

Proact Storage Barometer: Three out of ten companies use social media and chat internally with a view to relieving the load on their IT systems and handling rapidly growing quantities of information. These are the findings of the Proact Storage Barometer, a survey involving IT managers from 100 listed companies and authorities in Sweden.

Swedish companies are grappling with ever increasing quantities of information which have to be managed and stored. Estimates from IDC and EMC predict that the amount of information created every year will increase 44-fold between 2009 and 2020*. Unstructured information, such as in e-mail and file directories, is growing most quickly. One of the solutions for managing this avalanche of information involves using social media and chats internally. The Storage Barometer shows that no less than 30 per cent of Swedish companies are doing this at present.

“Social media and chat were often considered previously to be something which lowered staff morale at work and distracted them from doing their jobs. Today, many companies have had a rethink and realise that these are actually tools which often help to enhance communication and allow staff to exchange experiences with one another. Moreover, they take the strain off e-mail, thereby speeding up IT systems,” says Göterheim, intranet editor at Proact.

Proact itself has created a social intranet where staff can set up profiles, create interest groups, share experiences and express their opinions of proposals and decisions. The social network has a particularly important part to play as the company is expanding rapidly, both organically and through acquisitions in Europe. New colleagues in different countries can easily learn all about the Proact culture thanks to the social intranet.

About the survey
The Storage Barometer is an annual survey carried out on behalf of Proact. The survey was carried out in February 2011 through telephone interviews with 100 randomly selected authorities and listed companies in Sweden. The questions were put to CIO’s/IT managers.

*http://www.emc.com/leadership/programs/digital-universe.htm

Per Sedihn, CTO, Proact IT Group, tel.: +46 (0) 8 410 666 52, e-mail: per.sedihn@proact.se

About Proact 

Proact is a specialist in storage, archiving and securing large volumes of mission-critical information. As an independent integrator, Proact provides systems, support and consulting services within its focus area of data storage and archiving.

The Proact Group has more than 570 employees and conducts business in Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Great Britain, Latvia, Lithuania, The Netherlands, Norway, Slovakia, Spain and Sweden. Proact was founded in 1994 and its parent company, Proact IT Group AB (publ) has been listed on Nasdaq OMX Stockholm since 1999 under the symbol PACT.

Additional information about Proact is available at www.proact.eu

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