At least since the previous year experts are talking about Social CRM, as of the most promising technology on the large CRM market. Now, these talks have the official confirmation - Gartner has published the Social CRM Magic Quadrant (as a rule, such reports are only created for the largest markets). According to the report, 80% of the CRM market growth in 2010 is due to the Social CRM development and the total investments in the social CRM in the next year will reach $1 billion. So what is social CRM? Gartner refers the following technologies to this concept: social Web monitoring, fetching contact information from social media, customer/partner community management, collecting feedback and ideas from customers. According to the report, Social CRM market leaders are Jive SBS and Lithium. Both solutions do not contain traditional CRM functionality, but rather, are designed for integration with traditional CRM. Salesforce, thanks to the release of Chatter, Ideas and acquiring Jigsaw, managed to get only into Visionaries section. Note the absence of startups in the Challengers section - it promises good opportunities for those who will decide to enter this market now.

This week, Microsoft filed a lawsuit against Salesforce, blaming the SaaS company in violating 9 patents. These patents are not about CRM functionality (it would be strange, because Salesforce CRM appeared earlier than Microsoft CRM was developed), but about basic software technologies. For example, here is the technology of displaying web-page with embedded menu: "A request for a web page is received from a web browser In response to the request, a web page and an applet associated with the web page are packaged for transmission to the web browser. The web page and the applet are then transmitted to and downloaded by the web browser. When the web page is displayed and the applet is executed by the web browser, the applet creates and manages an embedded menu in the displayed web page under control of the applet . This embedded menu provides a user of the web browser with a plurality of links through one action in the displayed web page." Perhaps having this patent, Microsoft could close any SaaS vendor, but they have chosen Salesforce, their main competitor on CRM market.

If you develop SaaS service or intend to move the IT infrastructure to the Internet, then, of course, you can buy VPS or dedicated server. But in the era of Cloud Computing that option is obsolete. If you want to have a really reliable, secure and scalable hosting,  to automate most operations and (eventually) save money, it is logical to use one of the cloud platforms. And, depending on your goal, you can select a very interesting solution, which provides far more opportunities superior than conventional hosting. For example, for SaaS developers some platforms provide ready client base. Below - our top ten list of cloud platforms.

Salesforce and Google are becoming less friends but more rivals. Following the start of the cold war between ChatterExchange and Google Apps Marketplace, the companies will soon compete on the cloud platforms market. Today, Salesforce and VMWare introduced the joint product - VMForce.com - the cloud platform for Java applications, which will compete with Google App Engine. Moreover, compared to VMForce.com, GAE would look like a toy. VMForce.com (theoretically) is the ideal solution for companies using (or developing) Java-applications. On the one hand it's the Force.com's infrastructure, which provides reliable, secure and scalable hosting, database, authentication, interface builder (Visualforce), business process designer, mobile access, integrated collaboration system (Chatter). On the other hand - it's the VMWare's ecosystem for Java applications: open-source Java Springs Framework and the runtime platform vCloud.

Nowadays the confidentiality of personal information is not so important. Especially for sales guys, like Salesforce's management. Today, Salesforce has acquired Jigsaw, which TechCrunch's Mike Arrington at first called evil and then simply amoral. Jigsaw - is a huge (21 million) online database of contacts and companies, filled by crowdsourcing: users add contact information of other people (without their knowledge) usually from business cards. When the service appeared in 2006, it paid people $1 for each added contact. Then Jigsaw sell the access to contacts database to companies using cold calling (or spammers). And there was no way to remove your contacts from the service.

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.

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".

Yes, Salesforce still had no inbuilt business processes automation tool (only integrated third-party solutions). But business process automation - is a delicate feature that it's better not to provide it at all than provide it somehow. Many other CRM systems promote their business-process automation modules, but actually they bring more problems than profits. In contrast, the new Salesforce module - Visual Process Manager looks pretty nice and simple. Generally, in this case it is better not talk about business processes, but about automation of any operation in the system. There are 4 main spheres where this new tool could be applied:

First of all, 2010 will be the year when Microsoft becomes a strong Enterprise 2.0 market player. This year Microsoft will launch the commercial versions of online MS Office, Sharepoint 2010 with web 2.0 features and Windows Azure cloud platform, and these products will of course push ahead SaaS and enterprise Social Software technologies. Besides, we expect revolutions in mobile enterprise technologies and VoIP sphere.

SugarCRM, an open-source Salesforce alternative, is trying to keep up with its rival. The newest version SugarCRM 5.5 is focused on the same areas as latest Salesforce versions: platform, social tools and mobile access. Of course, the most significant upgrade is the new integration platform Sugar Cloud Connectors, that allows to link SugarCRM to third-party business applications using Web services. As an example, the company introduced the LinkedIn connector, that allows to display LinkedIn-profile data on contact page inside SugarCRM. The new activity streams module Social Feeds is very similar to the recently unveiled Salesforce Chatter. In addition to short message exchange and status updates, it allows you to receive notifications about various actions in the system, such as invoice creation or customer data change.

Being a traditional software giant, SAP doesn't implement projects quickly. For years the company develops strategic plans, makes presentations, creates prototypes and test new products internally. That's why, we still haven't seen any working SaaS or Enterprise 2.0 solution by SAP. But they make a lot promises. Recently, SAP announced that it develops two fundamental products -  alternatives to Salesforce CRM and Google Wave. Regarding CRM system, we only known that it will be a SaaS solution built on multi-tenant architecture (like Salesforce). It is planned that the system will become profitable in late 2010, so it must be unveiled in the first half of the next year.

It seams, that competition with MS Dynamics CRM is not enough for Salesforce. Now the company wants to become a full-fledged SaaS alternative to MS Sharepoint. It already provides the platform for developers (Force.com) and missing only the intranet functionality. To fill this white-space, Salesforce has just acquired GroupSwim, the SaaS collaboration service. GroupSwim is quite popular startup that allows you to create workgroups (sites) with a wiki, file-storage and forum discussions. Also it uses semantic technology to automatically tag and rate content including discussions, emails, documents, wikis, and more. Until now, Salesforce used integration with Google Apps as a primary collaboration solution. Besides, recently Box.net unveiled the solution for file-sharing in Salesforce CRM. But, apparently, Salesforce, that has recently created the social layer Chatter, now is going to create its own collaborative layer.

Strange, but Salesforce, that always used to be in the forefront of the Enterprise 2.0 trends, still didn't have internal social tools (only the link the outside Social Web by means of Service Cloud 2.0). Therefore, in order not to loose its authority, the company decided not just add an internal social network to its CRM software, but also create a social platform for all applications developed on Force.com. The new product was called Salesforce Chatter, and if you look at the new menu on Salesforce.com, Chatter is on the same level with Salesforce CRM and Force.com. So for Salesforce it's not just a new feature but a strategic product. How it works?

Salesforce and Adobe announced about their strategical partnership, that supposes integration of their platforms Force.com and Adobe Flash+AIR. For Salesforce it means a huge step forward towards rich internet applications and desktop integration. So  now they can enhance these two features in competition against Microsoft S+S applications like Microsoft Online Services. And for Adobe - this is an attempt to enter the enterprise market and to strengthen its position against Microsoft Silverlight attack. The first joint product of the new alliance is Adobe Flash Builder for Force.com - integrated development environment  that allows to create flash-plugins for Salesforce CRM or stand-alone flash-applications, working on top of Force.com platform.

Box.net CEO, Aaron Levie, says that there are a lot of good SaaS business apps on the Web and most of them include (or should include) file collaboration capabilities. But in the world of bestsourcing it would be great for all if these business apps would focus on their specific functions and Box.net would provide the powerful file collaboration layer for them. In other words, Box.net wants to be the same for Internet, as Sharepoint for Intranet. And they decided to start this mission from the leading SaaS player - Salesforce. The other day, Box.net developed the connector, that allows Salesforce users to add Box.net to their accounts and use all Box.net file management tools right from the online CRM system.

Of course, Mark Benioff can persuade anybody to buy his Salesforce CRM. But if it were a bad product, any partnership would stop at this point. But no! It turns out that Salesforce largest customers Cisco and Dell are so loyal, that they start selling Salesforce themselves. Last week Cisco and Salesforce announced the joint solution for customer service (Salesforce Service Cloud 2 + Cisco Unified Communications). And today Dell and Salesforce have unveiled a new offering, combining Salesforce CRM and Dell Integration Services. Both solutions target small business market. Cisco and Dell have the largest customer bases, and probably in the nearest years we'll see the new Saleforce income records.

Service Cloud - is the revolutionary customer service solution, that integrates helpdesk with social networks and tools. Today Salesforce unveils the second generation of Service Cloud with 3 new modules: Salesforce Knowledge, Salesforce Answers and Salesforce for Twitter. All them are tightly integrated with Salesforce CRM and built  on top of Force.com (so they can be customized for particular company needs). Starbucks, Comcast and Dell are already using these new tools.