A benefit of using Newsgator enterprise server with SocialSites, says Rosenberg, is that Edelman can port feeds from external sources -- external blogs (from employees and clients), Facebook and Twitter accounts -- into activity streams on MyClient and MySite pages in SharePoint.

"This is a big win for us because as a PR and communications firm, we like to keep things as open and social as possible," says Rosenberg.

Both Edelman and Accenture are actively preparing for an upgrade to SharePoint 2010. Yet while both admit that the social tools in SharePoint 2010 are improving, they still don't match the social bookmarking and microblogging features of Newsgator and other Enterprise 2.0 vendors, as well as their ability to accommodate group and community pages, they say.

However, Accenture's Dana notes that although social software vendors provide capabilities beyond what SharePoint 2010 is offering, they will all have to adjust to SharePoint to survive.