For Colliers International, a decentralized commercial real estate firm based in Seattle that does business in 60 countries, the need to connect the local experts operating in all its global markets became vital as the firm expanded its operations.

"We make most of our deals through referrals, so we rely heavily on relationships -- with our clients and with each other," says Colliers CIO Veresh Sita. "But we did not have a social collaboration platform."

The firm had been depending on old school ways of connecting: email blasts asking if anyone has expertise in a subject or a relationship with a particular client.

"Most of these blasts would get deleted because they were viewed as spam," says Sita.

Colliers looked to Microsoft SharePoint 2010 to accelerate and manage how its far-flung employees connect with each other. Sita had never implemented SharePoint before and signed on with Microsoft's TAP (Technical Adoption Program) when SharePoint 2010 was in beta in early 2010.