Xobni turns Email into universal access point to business apps

We have already talked about the competition between Email and corporate portals/social tools for the right to be the primary workplace. Initially, this role was fully owned by Email. Then appeared the web-based collaboration systems and social tools that were intended to replace the "outdated" Email. And it seemed that they would kill Email soon. But some clever people invented social Email plug-ins (Xobni, Rapportive, Harmon.ie, Gist, Etacts), that gave the second life to Email-clients. They added social and file-storage functions to the Email. And they're not going to stop. Today Xobni has opened the Xobni Gadget Store - the marketplace for apps, that can be embedded to MS Outlook and turn it into the universal interface to all business systems.



The apps are embedded in the Xobni sidebar as the new tabs. Technically, these are gadgets that support the open standard OpenSocial. Due to this technical implementation Xobni had no problems in attracting partners who want to create a gadget for their systems. And the initial list of apps available in the Xobni Gadget Store - looks very solid. It includes Webex, Dropbox, Evernote, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Sharepoint, Salesforce CRM, Chatter, Yammer, etc (of 20 gadgets). Most of these apps - are free, but there are also some paid (Salesforce, JIRA) that cost $ 9.99/god.



How it works? For example, you receive email from someone and without leaving Outlook you can to see the notes about this person from Evernote, look at his profile from Salesforce CRM, see what files you shared with him via Dropbox, or read his latest posts on Yammer. You can also enter new data about the contact into these business applications.



For while these gadgets only work in Outlook, but Xobni promises to add them to GMail soon.

See also: Top 10 Enterprise Social Software