Enterprise 2.0 News

DropBox and Box.net - are, probably, the most popular and successful online file sharing and collaboration services. And though they use two different approaches to the SaaS file storage, they both have alike strategy, supposing constant upgrades and new features development. During the recent months both services did a good job and it's interesting to compare their results. ***

When early this year IBM released their new SaaS platform, LotusLive, they promised to add Email to its suite. Today this promise is realized: the brand new SaaS email service LotusLive iNotes is available for business-users. IBM pushes it as a new alternative to Google Apps. Why Google Apps, but not GMail? Because, except the email tools, iNotes contains calendar and contact manager. IBM reps say that Google can't understand the difference between consumer web-services and business apps, and IBM has a vast experience in creating and supporting complex enterprise systems. So, it's just a question of time, when iNotes will drive away Google Apps users, moreover it costs only $36/user/year against Google's $50. ***

Cisco Systems announced that it has agreed to acquire Norwegian videoconference equipment maker Tandberg for $3 billions in cash. Cisco competed with Tandberg on the high end of the videoconferencing market (in the telepresence niche), but on the smb videoconferencing  market, they had no chance to reach the Norwegian company. So they decided to buy the rival and its 40% market share. In result Cisco becomes the leading vendor of the video systems that range from small "videophones" to full conference-room setups. Number two in this space, US based Polycom has 34% market share. By the way, it's rumored that Polycom after that has all chances to be acquired by another IT giant, Hewlett-Packard. ***

On 30 of September the destructive tsunami wave hit the islands in Pacific Ocean. We don't know if this was a part of Google Wave promotion, but the effect from both is quiet comparable. Yesterday Google started sending 100000 invitations to Google Wave and the craze around this event has nothing similar in the Internet history. The number of news and comments about it is amazing and people already selling  the invites on eBay for couple hundreds of bucks. Of course, it's a new cool and game-changing products, but lets calm down and think about its enterprise-perspectives. ***

37Signals, the developer of online project management service Basecamp, according to the recent investment round, has become the most expensive company in the Internet services market. The group of investors, led by Yardstick Capital and Institutionalized Venture Partners purchased 0.000000001% of the company for $1. So, the potential 37Signals' market price has increased to about $100 billions. This was officially  announced in the company blog. During the company-wide meeting, dedicated to this event, Jason Fried (37Signals founder), announced, that all SaaS applications, developed by 37Signals, including Basecamp, will become free in order to attract more users and to reach the estimated userbase already in 2013. ***

As was promised by Data Liberation Front, Google opens access to the data stored inside its intranet-service Google Sites. It's implemented in a form of Google Sites API. So, from now, users shouldn't worry that they can't backup or import their data in a suitable format. But "data liberation" is not the main reason why Google Sites API was created. It's rather a necessary move to survive. Because Google is developing all these business tools not to make money, but to compete with Microsoft and to draw its attention from the search/advertising market. And if Google Sites doesn't rival its antipode - Sharepoint, it has a chance to be dismissed. ***

It's generally known, that Hewlett-Packard produces the complex telepresence and collaboration system Halo. It costs almost half a million dollars and occupies a whole conference room. But as the rich customers die out, HP is going to target the small business market with its new HP SkyRoom. It's a p2p application (like Skype) for videoconferencing and collaboration. Unlike Skype it supports up to 4 concurrent users that can share video, documents, applications, 3d-content, files, streaming video and whiteboard. SkyRoom is a business-class system. First, video quality and screen-sharing speed is very high. Of course, it requires a powerful computer and broad internet channel (at least Core 2 Duo 2.33 GHz, 2 GB, 1Mbit channel). Second, it provides a high level of security by encrypting all streams of media—audio, video, and data. ***

TeamWox - is a web-based collaboration software, created by MetaQuotes Software Corp. This is really cool solution with suitable interface and powerful functionality.  And it's performance speed is worth special mention - it's hardly slower than optimized Google ajax applications. And the software is constantly adding new features. During recent 6 months it added the full-featured Service Desk module and numerous enhancements in other sections. But the software pricing policy is probably the main negative factor that prevents TeamWox market share growth ($10000 for installed version and $9000 per year for SaaS version). To remove this issue, TeamWox creators decided to unveil a free version that supports up to 10 users. ***

Zoho unveiled its anniversary (twentieth) service. It is Zoho Discussions - a solution for company forum. Zoho recommends to use this tool as a customer support forum, but you can also setup access rules and use it as an intranet forum for internal collaboration. Unlike the popular forum engines (phpbb, vbulletin), Zoho Discussion provides less features, but the functions that are important for customer support are quite powerful. Besides the solution setup (on your own domain) and administration is much more easier than in case with common forum CMS. The best way to see Zoho Discussions in action is to visit Zoho support forum, that uses the same platform. ***

The company of the future - is a social network that includes employees, customers, partners, market experts, and the crowd of the web. All them are engaged in the business - discuss problems, share ideas and contribute their knowledge. Such company has no exact borders - it exists as an organic part of the market. That is why its product always meet expectations. But how to involve external contributors to the corporate community? It's not necessary any more. Let them communicate where they like. You just need to unite the internal corporate network with the global Social Web. That's the central idea of Jive Market Engagement - the new service of Jive (the leading Social Software vendor). ***