Socialware, a new company that is enabling the social enterprise through the use of Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, has launched the Social Middleware Platform, which enables enterprises to integrate and leverage public social networks where employees, customers and partners congregate.

The company said that the cloud-based middleware platform sits between business users and public social networks, giving enterprises the control, security and visibility they need to transform the social web into a viable business channel.

According to Socialware, the new platform creates an on-demand, flexible, secure layer between enterprise users and public social networks that allows social data to be filtered, tagged, integrated, archived and aggregated. It offers enterprise security, privacy, access control, reporting, integration and data retention to allow companies to benefit from social networking.

In addition, the platform can enable any number of innovative social applications (HR, CRM, marketing) that pull from all the resources available in the social web and are completely integrated with the systems and processes within the enterprise.

Chad Bockius, vice president of marketing and product strategy at Socialware, said: Social networks continue to become a larger part of our lives – Facebook alone has 400 million users who spend close to an hour a day on the site. Businesses have taken notice of this, but few have been able to truly leverage these sites.

The problem continues to point to enterprises struggling to handle governance, security and compliance on these public social sites. This fear has led 54% of companies to block access entirely, leaving employees without access to important social sites and their employers shut out from a proven business channel.