Enterprise 2.0 News

How the Business Intelligence systems will look like in the Enterprise 2.0 world? Major market players are confident that these should be SaaS solutions. Because Business Intelligence requires a lot of computing resources to process the huge amounts of data, and the most effective way to get these resources - is to rent them from the "cloud". Even SAP, which historically doesn't like SaaS, recently released SAP BusinessObjects BI OnDemand. But simply delivering BI from a cloud - is not so cool, thinks RoamBI. Business Intelligence 2.0 should be beautiful. In order to satisfy executives when they investigate the "health" of the company and want to demonstrate the business results to investors in the most exciting way. That's why RoamBI created mobile apps for iPhone and iPad, which allow to effectively visualize the data from SAP BusinessObjects BI and other BI systems. ***

As is known, it's almost impossible to reach Google customer support. And there are 2 reasons for that. First, almost all Google services are free. Second, if the company decide to organize the traditional customer support and answer all the questions, then this would be the largest support team in the world. Therefore, Google decided to implement the beautiful solution and give users the opportunity to answer the questions of each other. Two months ago, Google acquired Aardvark, the social network for mutual support, and without considerable redesign put it to work: added it to Youtube and Google Toolbar. Probably soon Aardvark will appear on all Google services. How it works? ***

Major SaaS vendors are now less interested in providing applications - they want to create web platforms and grab the world (and earn commission on the other developers). Salesforce was the first to play this game, then Google, NetSuite, SugarCRM and others jumped into this wagon. Box.net (that doesn't have such financial strength as the above mentioned companies) invented even more interesting platform strategy. Box.net wants to be present on each popular platform. First, they created the connector for Force.com, then joint the Intuit Partner Program and Google Apps Marketplace, and recently released modules for SuiteCloud and Sugar 6. Thus, they build the cross-platform cloud content management system. This system allows to store all content in a single online repository and access it in different SaaS systems used in the company: CRM, ERP, Collaboration system. Even more interesting is the opportunity to create shared cross-company extranet based on Box.net: for example, the same file may be available from Salesforce account owned by company A and NetSuite account owned by company B. ***

Thanks to SaaS technology, a large number of business applications have appeared. Now companies can use multiple applications from different vendors (not just from Microsoft). But along with the wide variety of applications the problems of their integration and a single sign-on have come. Various platforms, marketplaces and SaaS associations are intended to solve these problems: Force.com, Intuit Partner Program, Google Apps Marketplace. OneLogin also tries to solve the single sign-on problem in simple and ingenious way. It is the centrally-administered username / password database + browser plugin, which makes working with a large number of SaaS applications very convenient. ***

OffiSync - is a plug-in for MS Office editors, which allows you to save Office documents in your Google Docs account, and open them from it. I.e. the idea of the service - to combine the advanced functionality to MS Office with collaboration features in Google Docs. Since our last review, OffiSync added integration with Google Sites (i.e. documents from MS Office can be saved as attachments to a selected pages in Google Sites and opened from there). And yesterday the most interesting feature was unveiled - the ability to simultaneously edit document, while working in any version of MS Office (2003, 2007, 2010) or online Google Docs editor. Of course, it's not so cool, like in the new version of Google Docs, but it unites the users of both solutions. ***

When Microsoft demoed the Office Web Apps, we noted that nobody knows what will Google Docs look like when Office 2010 finally launch. MS Office Web will appear at least in 2 months and this question is still relevant. While Microsoft is fixing bugs in its web office, Google is constantly improving Docs. The new version of Google Docs features the significantly improved collaborative editing technology. It has a sidebar, which displays a list of users who are editing or viewing the document right now. On the same panel is chat. Each user is assigned a color and you can watch in real-time how your co-workers edit document (like in Google Wave or Etherpad). Moreover, this technology works in text documents and spreadsheets, and in the new Google Drawings. ***

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". ***

Steve Jobs introduced the new iPhone OS 4.0 and it brings a lot of features for using iPhone in the enterprise environment. First, is multi-tasking (with some restrictions). For example, this allows to use of VoIP and security applications in the background, but not only when the user switches on them. Secondly, iPhone OS 4.0 adds important features to the mail client: the ability to create multiple email accounts, view attachments, email encryption and Exchange 2010 support. In addition, it allows IT-admins to install and update mobile applications via Wi-Fi or 3G and wipe data remotely. It also supports VPN SSL, so users can safely use enterprise web applications. ***

So, iPad is now available in US and like Avatar is breaking all records (already about 400 thousand devices are sold). The first users have already downloaded several millions iPad applications, but most of them are consumer apps, rather than business applications. As we noted earlier, iPad has a little chance to become a revolutionary business tool. And not just because of the lack of webcam, multitasking, Flash support and security measures. Despite its originality, iPad will compete in the corporate market with an army of netbooks and smartphones (including iPhone). But certainly iPad will be useful for business of software vendors, which have already begun to announce iPad clients to get the customer attention. ***

SAP seems to be adapting to the SaaS world. Less than 2 months since the introduction of SaaS product 12Sprints public beta, the company is launching the commercial version under the new name StreamWork. Yes, there are already some bugs in it (i.e. it doesn't support Chrome) but this is the right SaaS strategy: you launch a service -> get feedback -> quickly fix the bugs. StreamWork is positioned as a service for online brainstorming and decision-making. It's like Google Wave, but more structured and specialized for a particular task. Good news is that SAP StreamWork tends to be open. It supports the Open Social and can get data from other applications through the RESTful services. ***