OpenText released Social Communities 8.1 this week, a set of apps that provides a framework for companies to build social applications. While it's clear that many companies want to be social, getting from that desire to implementation is not always a simple matter, and this tool is meant to address that problem.

Eugene Roman, chief technology officer of OpenText says it's not a secret that social interactions are an increasingly important way for companies to communicate with their customers. "There's no question that shifting to a social business provides employees, customers and partners with a more effective method of communication that increases employee effectiveness and improves customer engagement," Roman said.

At its core, this package is designed to help companies build social communities using templates they can adapt to their individual company and marketing campaign requirements. In addition, tools in this package combine analytics with some social tools and the ability to build social sharing such as Facebook sharing right into a site with little or no effort.  

While it's clearly important for companies to build social applications, this is supposed to provide a roadmap for companies who might not otherwise know how to proceed. Roman believes these tools provide customers with both the ability to get social quickly and still provide some governance and back-end control that many enterprise customers crave.

The product is available immediately.

For more information:
- see the OpenText press release

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