IBM executive discusses social media business benefits

Posted by Elena del Valle on January 22, 2010

The Social Factor book cover

Maria Azua, an IBM executive, outlines the benefits of social media for business in The Social Factor Innovate, Ignite, and Win Through Mass Collaboration and Social Networking (IBM Press, $29.99), a 248-page paperback book published in 2010. Her goal in writing the book was to provide strategic and tactical insights for business executives based on her and her colleagues’ experience and case studies within her company, and help readers avoid social networking mistakes.

To complete the project which took four years of hands on investigation and analysis she relied on the contribution and input of 10 colleagues: Boas Betzler, Bill Bodin, Christopher Douglass, Brian Goodman, Reed Mullen, Carl Burnett, Dave Newbold, Mahesh Parakdar, Gina Poole, Michael Roche, and Laurisa Rodriguez, the only contributor that was not from IBM.

She and her colleagues at IBM believe three forces are driving social and workplace interactions: Information overload from the Information Age, standardization of technology, and the availability of low cost two-way communication online.

The book is divided into 12 chapters: Dawn of the Social Age, Social Age Organizations, Wikis: Bringing the Crowds to You, Blogs: Your Personal News Outlet, Tagging and Social Clouds, Cloud Computing Paradigm, Social Media and Culture, On the Shoulders of Giants, Social Brain and the Ideation Process, Social Innovation, Social Economy, and Mobile Society.

Maria Azua, vice president of Cloud Computing Enablement, IBM Enterprise Initiatives, is responsible for the technical implementation, deployment and operations of the Common Cloud Platform Living Lab share service, as well as the IBM Smart Business Development and Test on the IBM Cloud. She is also responsible for the creation of a community of independent software vendors, business partners, and technical community that fosters cloud computing IT methodologies and applications.