Enterprise 2.0 & Collaboration News

SoftLayer Gets Listed as Niche Player by Gartner

Chelsi Nakano — 2009-07-09T17:01:45-05:00

SoftLayer Technologies (news, site), provider of on-demand virtual data center services, has scored again. Earlier this year the company announced their partner status in the Microsoft Hosting BizSpark program in addition to the release of a cloud package for the enterprise. This month they were recognized by the Gartner Magic Quadrant, which listed them as a “Niche Player” for Web Hosting and Cloud Infrastructure Services (On-Demand).

Each company in the Magic Quadrant was reportedly evaluated on its completeness of vision and ability to execute within: self-managed hosting, mainstream-managed hosting, highly complex managed hosting, global solutions portfolio, and enterprise applications hosting.

CloudLayer, SoftLayer’s set of cloud services and, in this case, recognition winner, includes a Content Delivery Network (CDN), Storage and Computing. All of these are available as standalone services or fully integrated with all other SoftLayer offerings.

“In my opinion, being evaluated in this report is proof that our unique approach is redefining hosting,” said Lance Crosby, CEO of SoftLayer. “Of course, our greatest pride and core goal is to provide solutions and scalability that make an impact on our customers’ business. But to me, being in the Magic Quadrant shows that we’re making a difference throughout the industry.”

Working Smarter - 4 Potential Ways to Avoid E-mail Chaos

David Roe — 2009-07-09T15:00:11-05:00

Why is it that the fraught subject of e-mail management gets so much coverage? There are probably dozens of reasons anyone can think of, but at the core of all of them is the often weary acceptance that we just can’t live without it.

Love it or hate it, we are going to have to learn not just to live with, but also to manage our e-mail more effectively.

It was probably with this in mind that HyperOffice, a provider of SaaS solutions for online collaboration, issued its recent white paper with possible solutions to managing the e-mail overload.

Oracle Unveils WebCenter Suite, a Social Computing Business Solution

Chelsi Nakano — 2009-07-08T18:00:26-05:00

Along with the recent launch of Oracle(R) Fusion Middleware 11g from Oracle (news, site) came a little something extra for business users and IT.

Oracle WebCenter Suite 11g is described by the company as a modern enterprise portal platform, and aims to bring together people in organizations with the business processes and information they require.

Content Circles: Collaborate Server-Free, for Free

Chelsi Nakano — 2009-07-08T08:41:04-05:00

Back when we first started talking about Content Circles (news, site), the collaborative content management tool that operates without a server, we thought it was a pretty big deal that the solution was offered for less than US$ 100 annually. Imagine our surprise when news broke earlier this week that the Personal Use license is now completely free.

This new wallet-friendly option comes after a handful of announcements about the company's efforts to branch out. Sri Chilukuri, Content Circles CEO, explains: "In the first half of 2009, the company was focused on adding support for Enterprise Content Management Systems such as Microsoft SharePoint, Xerox DocuShare and Alfresco Enterprise. Now that we have succeeded in this endeavor, we are ready to expand beyond the enterprise."

It's always kind of awesome when expanding beyond the enterprise translates to free stuff, don't you think? Chilukuri added, "Offering a free Personal Use License to Content Circles will give our prospects and customers a chance to experience the power of the solution and get a deeper understanding of the potential business, not-for-profit and education solutions that can add value to all sizes and structures of organizations."

Once the solution is downloaded and installed, the user can create a collaborative Circle, invite as many members as he or she likes, and add 100 files of up to 25MB each to that Circle. All of that lovely information can then be shared between Circle members no matter their time zone, and regardless of whether or not they have an Internet connection. Interested? Sign up for and install the personal license here.

For Google Apps, The Perpetual Beta is Over

Barb Mosher — 2009-07-07T14:14:00-05:00

Most of were beginning to believe that Google applications were to be tagged as "beta" forever. Today, Google (news, site) has surprised us by taking the Beta tag off of Google Apps, because they say it reached their "high bar for taking products out of beta". Not quite sure what that high bar is, but there are probably a few enterprises out there glad to see the beta tag gone.

Google Apps has worn the beta tag for the two years it has been in existence, Gmail for five years. But, as Google says, what they consider a beta application doesn't really fit the traditional idea that most of us understand a beta application to be.

To most, beta means it's not ready for production level consumption. This has not been the case for Google Apps. That has been proven with the ever increasing number of enterprises who have adopted either Gmail or Google Apps, or both, as their productivity tools of choice. And from the beginning Google has also provided 24/7 support and offered service level agreements for Google Apps.

What's in a name. A Google Beta by any other name, will work the same. So says Google. The beta tag may be gone from Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Talk -- enterprise and consumer -- but that's not going to stop Google from enhancing and improving these tools.

They just seem to have made a few nervous enterprises happier. After all, it must be kind of scary to convince management to invest in a production level solution that has "Beta" in its name.

eTouch Offers SamePage Wiki on MySMBStore.com

Barb Mosher — 2009-07-07T13:46:00-05:00

When your solution is up against a number of others in the market, you need to find ways to promote your offering where your market will look. eTouch (news, site) did that earlier this year for their SamePage enterprise wiki.

In April, eTouch announced that customers could pick up SamePage from the Salesforce.com AppExchange. Pricing starts at US$ 100 per month for up to 20 users, US$ 200 for 21 to 50 users and US$ 400 for up to 100 users. And of course, there's that 30-day trial offer you find it hard to refuse.

Today, eTouch announces a new location to pick up the SamePage enterprise wiki: MySMBStore.com. MySMBStore.com is owned by Renovatix Solutions. It offers a number of enterprise level SaaS solutions at the same price or, in some cases less, than buying from the vendor directly. Buying from MySMBStore.com also gives you a single point of support and integrated billing for all applications you purchase there.

Pricing for SamePage at MySMBStore.com starts at US$ 100 per month for up to 20 users. Head over and read the reviews or write one yourself.

Kapow Web Data Server 7 Smoothes Enterprise Data Flows

David Roe — 2009-07-02T10:23:00-05:00

The announcement that Kapow Technologies (news, site) has just put the latest version of its Web Data Server -- better known as its Mashup Server -- on general release should be of interest to anyone who is looking at their Web 2.0 apps for cost savings.

While a lot of companies claim a lot of things about their products, Kapow Technologies' financial success and growth over the past two years has backed up those claims principally as a result of some very serious software.

With the v7.0 release Mashup Server boasts enhanced scalability and performance -- and there are few other interesting bonuses as well.

Nuxeo Takes Enterprise Doc Management to the Cloud

Irina Guseva — 2009-07-02T06:00:38-05:00

Let's take another trip to the cloud, shall we? Yes, the adage may be old: to cloud or not to cloud? The open source Enterprise CMS vendor Nuxeo (news, site) solved this poetic dilemma and took its document management product to the cloud.

TeamViewer Adds More Languages, Connects More People

Chelsi Nakano — 2009-07-01T15:53:53-05:00

Expansion, expansion, expansion. There are tons of ways companies can achieve it, but TeamViewer’s most recent method of choice is of the multilingual variety.

The desktop sharing software, which was already available in English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, Dutch, and Danish, has added six new languages to the family: Turkish, Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, Polish and Japanese.

Zoho Projects 2.0 Released, Adds Twitter-like Micro Messaging

Chelsi Nakano — 2009-07-01T15:23:06-05:00

We saw productivity suite provider, Zoho (news, site), attempt to get social with it earlier this year when they released their multi-platform chat program. And then again when they released embeddable gadgets for their applications.

So what makes this time different? Well, instead of a simple gadget or two, Zoho’s kicking out Zoho Projects 2.0. The latest version of their online project management and team collaboration solution is backed by a host of social features that Zoho promises will change how teams get work done.

Lucid Imagination, ISYS Partner to Integrate Lucene, Solr and Document Filtering

Dee-Ann LeBlanc — 2009-06-30T13:20:43-05:00

Some technology partnership announcements make complete sense. Others leave you scratching your head as you try to decide what these people were thinking.

The announcement that Lucid Imagination (news, site) and ISYS Search Software (news, site) have partnered to combine their search technologies is fortunately not the latter.

Collaborate on Excel Spreadsheets Online With eXpresso

Geoff Spick — 2009-06-30T12:36:00-05:00

eXpresso Corp (news, site) offers a way to make collaborating online using Excel files less of a hassle, improving productivity and awareness when sharing data.

#e2conf - The Challenge for Enterprise 2.0 is Adoption Not Deployment

Barb Mosher — 2009-06-29T15:24:00-05:00

The Enterprise 2.0 Conference wrapped up in Boston last week. The key message coming out of this conference? It's not about the deployment of technology, it's about adoption. Along with the chance to see some interesting solutions, there were a number of sessions on getting started with these tools in your organization.

Secrecy Versus Openness in Communication

Gerry McGovern — 2009-06-29T10:49:06-05:00

Apple may make beautiful products but it resembles North Korea in how it communicates with the world.

What's New in Tomoye Communities 3.0

Barb Mosher — 2009-06-25T14:17:00-05:00

Remember us telling you that Tomoye (news, site) was demoing the latest version of their community solution at the Enterprise 2.0 conference? Well we finally got a little more detail on what's new in Communities 3.0. Take a quick walk with us through the community updates.

LotusLive Connections Unveiled, Wins Award at Enterprise 2.0 Conference

Barb Mosher — 2009-06-25T10:22:00-05:00

Not to be outdone by the other Enterprise 2.0 vendor announcements during the Enterprise 2.0 Conference this week, IBM (news, site) not only unveils the SaaS version of their social computing solution, LotusLive Connections, but they also take home an award for it.

IBM Offers Free Tool for Developing Web 2.0 Style Rich Internet Applications

Geoff Spick — 2009-06-25T09:04:00-05:00

IBM (news, site) claims that EGL (Enterprise Generation Language) is the new COBOL, an easy to code business tool. But, we don't recall people giving COBOL compilers away for free back in the sixties.

Bluenog Contributes Back, Makes Open Source Easy

Chelsi Nakano — 2009-06-24T15:30:30-05:00

Though it was only yesterday that Bluenog (news, site) announced the newest iteration of their integrated collaborative environment, better known as Bluenog ICE, the company is already back with more exciting news. Good Samaritans that they are, Bluenog plans to contribute back the enhancements it made to various open source projects during the development phase of Bluenog ICE 4.5.

Simply put, Bluenog ICE is a mash-up of an open source content management system, portal and business intelligence tools. The juiciest part of 4.5 is arguably the inclusion of wikis, thanks to the JSPWiki Open Source Project. Accordingly, initial contributions will center on JSPWiki, which also adds support for page level permissions. Bedework, the open source system responsible for ICE 4.5’s calendaring application, will reportedly also get some early play.

"Our contributions will make it easier for the open source community to use projects such as JetSpeed, Apache, Eclipse and JSPWiki and leverage the expertise and production-ready enhancements Bluenog has developed,” Said Suresh Kuppusamy, CEO and co-founder, Bluenog. “This will help shorten development lifecycles and improve the quality and reliability of applications based on these projects."

No complaints here; although, considering the fact that Bluenog ICE won’t be released to the general public until June 30th, tidbits like this probably only feed the fervor of all you hardcore fans. Sorry about that.

The best we can do for now is suggest you wipe the drool off your lip and follow the latest Bluenog news here.

Zoho Integrates with Microsoft SharePoint

Chelsi Nakano — 2009-06-24T14:30:55-05:00

This post comes straight to you from collaboration corner, where Zoho (news, site) and Microsoft SharePoint are sitting together like two peas in pod.

Aiming to bridge the gap between popular productivity applications and traditional, in-house office solutions, the pair recently announced a new plug-in that lets Zoho Office users work with Zoho online collaborative productivity applications to create, view, and edit files stored in Microsoft SharePoint.

CloudBerry Updates Amazon S3 Explorer, Offers Online BackUp Service

Geoff Spick — 2009-06-24T13:15:00-05:00

CloudBerry's (news, site) freeware browser for Amazon S3 has been a big hit since its launch back in March. Now the company is bringing new features and offering extra peace of mind.

NewsGator Adds Enhanced Knowledge Mgt Capabilities to Social Sites 3.0

Barb Mosher — 2009-06-24T12:57:00-05:00

NewsGator (news, sites) believes that social computing solutions like Social Sites are the next generation of operating system for the organization, calling them the "most productive home base for knowledge workers". They say the latest version of Social Sites -- v3.0 -- includes new capabilities that will transform the content in your organization into social knowledge that is both broad and deep.

Jive Integrates SAP's onDemand Business Intelligence Offerings

Barb Mosher — 2009-06-24T10:51:00-05:00

Yesterday's theme of integrating social software and business data (via application integration) was echoed by Jive Software (news, site). They have announced a new agreement that will see SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence onDemand solutions integrated into Jive's Social Business Software suite.

Bluenog Releases ICE 4.5 to Enterprise 2.0 Community

Chelsi Nakano — 2009-06-23T15:56:57-05:00

We imagine the creation of Bluenog’s (news, site) flagship solution went down a little like this: Someone was tired of switching between their portal, content management system and business intelligence tools, so they threw all three into a melting pot, stirred it up, and *BAM!* out popped Bluenog ICE.

OK, so maybe that’s not how it went. Whatever the case, the recipe is still a stellar one, and the recognition the company’s received certainly proves it. Today at Boston's Enterprise 2.0 conference Bluenog announced that ICE is back for another round, this time as version 4.5. The new software includes an Enterprise Wiki, secure group calendaring features and enhanced centralized administration.

Ontoprise Releases a Semantic Enterprise Wiki

Geoff Spick — 2009-06-23T13:54:00-05:00

German company, Ontoprise launches the latest version of its open source Semantic MediaWiki+ to help improve a company's knowledgebase and make finding information and retrieval easier.

Telligent Updates and ReBrands Community Solutions, New Analytics Solution

Barb Mosher — 2009-06-23T10:41:00-05:00

It's a day for news on the Enterprise 2.0 front and Telligent (news, site) wants you to hear what they've been hard at work on. It's about that time of the year when Telligent offers up a new version of their community solutions. This time, instead of simply a new version number with some new functionality, we get major products upgrades and new branding to boot.

Say goodbye to Community Server, Community Server Evolution and Harvest Reporting Server. Say hello to Telligent Community 5.0, Telligent Enterprise 2.0 and Telligent Analytics 3.0.

Oh, and for those of you interested in Telligent Graffiti, we have a little update, but don't get too excited.