Salesforce Chatter vs SharePoint

On Friday nobody wants to read long news. Good video is much better. This is the video that was shown at the opening of the Dreamforce 2011 conference - probably the most glamorous event in the IT-industry. This video marks the focus change of Marc Benioff and his Salesforce. Last eight years the Dreamforce conference started and ended with the word Cloud. Now it changed. Moreover, one of the main news of this year conference was the opportunity for Salesforce customers to store part of their data on a local server, not in the Cloud. And the new main focus for Salesforce is Social Enterprise. Benioff is comparing modern companies with the Arab countries falling under revolutions: "Either CEOs will make their companies social, or customers and employees will depose them like Muammar Gaddafi". So what should a company do to become social?

Your company still don't use the (free) Chatter? Then Salesforce is coming to you. Today, the company has introduced the new version of this social collaboration tool. The new Chatter absorbed the functionality of the web-conferencing tool DimDim, that Salesforce acquired earlier this year. Now Chatter allows to see the online status of other users, communicate with them in real-time chat and even start screen-sharing sessions. The chat and screen-sharing support the group mode. In addition, Chatter now allows you to collaborate not only internally but also with external users. Now you can create an private group and invite your customers and partners to it.

In the past few days, the hype around Salesforce Chatter overshadows all other Enterprise 2.0 news. And of course, the developers of Chatter's main rival - Yammer have taken the chance to get a share of public attention and reminded Salesforce boss about how all this stuff was started. It started 3 years ago, when at the startup contest Techcrunch50 Yammer team introduced the world's first enterprise microblogging tool. Marc Benioff was the judge there and he expressed his excitement about the new service. And now, 3 years later Salesforce has introduced the Yammer's twin - Chatter.com. However, Yammer developers say that during those 3 years they where busy adding new features and have built much more advanced functionality and market progress. Yammer's progress is really amazing, but now it will be hard for them to compete with FREE Chatter.

Though Salesforce announced free Chatter back in November 2010 and it was officially launched on Feb. 1, 2011, we specifically waited for today when the joint project of Salesforce and Black Eyed Peas has been unveiled. It is a cool example of the beautiful marketing, that becomes an integral part of Enterprise 2.0. To be successful in today's economy every IT business needs to attract attention and, therefore, should become a show business. No one is very excited about the news like "Salesforce partnered with Dell". But the news "Salesforce partnered with Black Eyed Peas" - really attracts attention of potential customers. Nobody wants to look at how Marc Benioff talks about Chatter advantages, but it's very interesting to at him dancing to the Will.I.Am's bit:

Salesforce has acquired the popular SaaS service Manymoon, that is known as the best project management tool for Google Apps. Moreover, since Google Apps Marketplace opening, Manymoon has been the top app there. So, it would be logical is Google bought the service. But Salesforce, that is now aggressively taking on collaboration market, did it first. Obviously, soon the project management functionality will appear in Salesforce Chatter. In addition, for Salesforce this acquisition means getting a connetor to Google Apps. So we can also expect better integration between Chatter and Google services. According to the official Manymoon announcement, the service will continue to exist separately and will not change anything for the free and paid versions. Besides, the developers promise to continue adding new features. They also say that Salesforce will significantly improve the scalability, reliability and security of Manymoon.

Marc Benioff, Salesforce CEO, was in good mood during his conference call with financial analysts. First, he boasted that the company's revenues has grown by 30%, and profit - by 100% compared to the previous year, and that in 2012 fiscal year Salesforce expects to set the new great record for a SaaS industry - $2 billion revenue. Secondly, Mark announced that the social collaboration tool Chatter will be available in free edition. Benioff was very proud describing Chatter. This is the most successful Salesforce product in term of annual growth. Since the year after launch, it's used in 60000 companies, that makes it the most popular intranet social network. Among its users - Dell (90 thousand seats), Amazon, Bank of America, Motorola, Siemens and Vodafone. Yahoo! and Nokia use Chatter even not being Salesforce CRM users. And unlike Salesforce CRM users, that get Chatter for free, they pay $15 per user per month.

When Google Apps Marketplace launched, we noticed that Google's partner Salesforce hadn't joined this ecosystem. Now it's clear why. Salesforce is building its own ecosystem of collaborative applications around Chatter. Although Chatter (Facebook for enterprise) is nothing like Google Apps (email + docs), however the aim of both tools is the same - collaboration. At the ChatterExchange presentation, Marc Benioff has clearly stated that Chatter will compete with MS Sharepoint and IBM Lotus Notes (he modestly omitted Google Apps). "Don't be confused that these systems have little in common" - said Benioff, - "the fact that Sharepoint and Lotus Notes were created back in these days when people didn't use Twitter and Facebook and when the top collaborative technologies were email and shared folders".

For Microsoft health and safety of the users - is the highest priority. And to prevent people from falling and being injured while working with SharePoint on the go, Microsoft just doesn't release mobile clients for SharePoint (except one for Windows Phone, which is used by very few users). But there are people for whom money means more than user security. Harmon.ie (the company known for its Outlook plug-in, which allows to collaborate on files stored in SharePoint) has released a mobile application for iPhone/iPad that works as a mobile SharePoint app. Now mobile users with smartphones and tablets can collaboratively edit documents stored in SharePoint, comment them, track the history of changes and versions, agree the documents. It's so easy and convenient that people do this even while walking and because of this already 2675 were injured due to falls and other accidents. The sufferers have already created a web site protesting against the new mobile app - www.DontSharepointWhileWalking.com

Recently we noted that for a long time there is no news about the progress of the enterprise software superstar - intranet system Microsoft SharePoint. And today the news appeared: SharePoint 2010 finally adds full support for the third-party browsers: Firefox, Chrome, and partial support for Apple Safari. Developers say that the limitations of these browsers didn't allowed to use all the bells and whistles of the SharePoint interface before. Wow! That's a really huge achievement of SharePoint developers. There is still no word about support of mobile platforms (except Windows Phone). But there is a word about social features. Jared Spataro, Microsoft's senior director of SharePoint product management recently said that they were carefully studying the opportunities of social networking technologies for enterprise collaboration and Microsoft's approach will be to increase enterprise social features in SharePoint. Looks like SharePoint is really in crisis.

In this case by "Dropbox for Enterprise" we don't mean the business version of Dropbox. The fact is that the expression "Dropbox for Enterprise" has become a new meme. The largest enterprise software vendors want to release a product under the label "Dropbox for Enterprise". That's how they say: "We want to create something like Dropbox for Enterprise" (watch the video). Recall, Dropbox - is the super-popular file syncing and sharing service, which has already attracted 50 million users thanks to its simplicity and multi-platform support. It's business usage is limited due to the strict corporate security standards. But employees still tend to use it bypassing IT admins, and that is why the enterprise vendors are standing in the line to become the Enterprise Dropbox provider.

Today, Microsoft has rolled out a new service Office 365, which is a reincarnation of the SaaS package BPOS. The name change was expected, since Microsoft critics have referred BPOS as "Big Piece of Shit" instead of "Business Productivity Online Services". But not only name is to be changed. The new service except SaaS versions Exchange Online, Sharepoint Online and Lync Online, will include the online office tools Office Web Apps. I.e. Office 365 can now be considered as a full-fledged alternative to Google Apps. The service will be available in 2 editions. Small Business Edition for companies with less than 25 users costs $6/user/month and includes the basic functions. Enterprise edition provides additional customization and administration features, full functionality and provides users with desktop suite Office Office Professional Plus with pay-as-you-go licensing. This edition costs from $2 to $ 27/user/month depending on configuration. Recall, Microsoft also plans to include its CRM and ERP to the SaaS suite. At the moment, Office 365 is in beta stage and will be available worldwide next year.

Just yesterday we talked about Sharepoint Workspace - the tool which allows to sync files between Sharepoint server and user's computer, and today the cloud file collaborative service Box.net (which is positioned as a Sharepoint alternative) released the similar tool Box Sync. This is a program that is installed on your computer and allows you to sync any folder in your online Box.net account with desktop. If you change any file in that folder, it will be immediately synced, and those users who have access to this folder - will receive an alert. For now Box Sync is only available for Windows and only in the paid (business) accounts. Versions for Mac and Linux, as well as the free version will appear later this year.

We have already mentioned that p2p collaboration app MS Office Groove was renamed to SharePoint Workspace and utilized as an offline client for Sharepoint. Now we have got the chance to see SharePoint Workspace 2010 in action and it appears that offline access to Sharepoint - is not the only function of this application. First, SharePoint Workspace can be used without Sharepoint - as well as MS Office Groove. I.e. you can create Groove Workspace (with files, calendar, discussions) and sync it with computers of co-workers or customers. However, the audio-chat and permission levels disappeared from the application. Recall that SharePoint Workspace is not sold as a part of Sharepoint Server, but as a part of Office 2010 Pro Plus.

Last week together with Office 2010, Sharepoint 2010 was officially released. Of course, this is an important event for Enterprise 2.0 industry, however, not so important as we expected. Because despite the fact that Sharepoint 2010 was introduced as a cloud solution, at the moment neither Hosted, nor SaaS version of Sharepoint 2010 are not available. Hosted version (in BPOS-D) will be available only by the end of the year. SaaS-version (Sharepoint Online) by the end of the year will will be available for beta testing and official release is expected only in mid-2011. (We included Sharepoint Online in our Top 10 cloud platforms for Enterprise, but apparently that was too early). And now about the positive moments: Sharepoint 2010 really contains a lot of improvements that will strengthen its (almost monopolistic) position of the intranet platforms market: