Smart phone is now main focus at Nokia

Nokia recently decided to drop its work with enterprise email and work with partners such as Microsoft, Cisco, and IBM to focus on collaboration between smart phones and enterprise platforms. The plan was mapped out at EWeek.

Niklas Savander, Nokia's executive vice president for services and software, had this to say abou the new focus:

"Together with them, we will use our expertise in devices, as well as the combined channel footprint and customer base, to deliver a range of unbeatable end-to-end offerings for business."

The next James Bond on Facebook?

We've seen a growing trend lately in how web 2.0 tools can be beneficial to recruiting the right people for your organization. Now, one more organization is finding its new workers through the net. In a recent article at CNet, we find out that MI6, the UK's Secret Intelligence Service, is using the networking tool to recruit their next generation of spies.

As the article points out, the job ads placed are relativly simple. Copy used in one says: "Time for a career change? MI6 can use your skills. Join us as an operational officer collecting and analysing global intelligence to protect the UK."

David and Goliath

I came across this post on ZDNet discussing how with giants in the enterprise 2.0 industry such as Oracle, is it possible for smaller startups that want to enter the fray now to succeed. I personally thought this was thought provoking since in America, many of us want to believe that it is the land of opportunity where anyone can succeed. As the author of the post recants about the enterprise 2.0 industry however,

"These are areas in which many of the startups simply cannot compete. Don’t get me wrong, there is always room for innovation. I myself work for a company that wins daily against the giants of the network security industry. I want the “little guy” to win. But is it probable?"

What do you think? Do you think in the enterprise 2.0 industry full of Giants, is it possible for little guys to succeed.

Cisco Focuses on Business Users Collaborating

Cisco, as announced in this WSJ article, that they will be releasing several new tools and products with the aim to help business users collaborate more effectively. The company has predicted that this market is worth $34 billion, and as such with this announcement, hopes to reel in a chunk of it. The start of their entry into this market space began with their acquisition of WebEx, and along with the new releases and updates to existing products, Cisco will be facing existing industry heavyweights including Microsoft and Google. Regarding this entry into a new market, the WSJ article reports:

“The offerings include Cisco WebEx Connect, an online service designed to integrate tools such as instant messaging and Web conferencing with conventional business software and newer Internet applications such as blogs and wikis, which are collaborative Web sites.”

Oracles New Enterprise 2.0 Platform: Beehive

Oracle announced their new enterprise 2.0 platform, Beehive, at their developer’s conference. This has been a 3 year “communications middleware project” created solely by the company as reported in this article from Social Computing Magazine. The purpose behind this project was to create a platform to integrate communication and collaboration within the enterprise. As the article comments, the benefits that this new platform provides includes:

- Secure Communications - Full-featured Web conferencing, instant messaging, e-mail, calendar, and team workspaces based on a unified information model and centralized security.
- Integrated Collaboration - Standards-based, hot-pluggable architecture enables organizations to embed collaboration tools into existing business applications and processes.
- Increased Security and Compliance - Built-in security including verifiable deletion, auditing, policy management, and encryption.
- Lower Total Cost of Ownership - Works with existing collaboration clients and servers on Windows, Linux, and Solaris platforms and can be deployed on premise or through Oracle On Demand.

Currently Oracle Beehive is available for a free 30 day trial.

Instant Messaging in the Enterprise: Is it Finally Here?

There has been some recent hype this past week about the Cisco’s latest purchase of Jabber, a tech startup that enables real-time text and VoIP communication over the internet.

This post on Telecommunications Industry News discusses how Cisco will be able to embed certain messaging features into its collaboration products such as the WebEx Conference system and Cisco Unified Communications. Instant messaging has long been banned by many corporate offices across the US, but could this new acquisition be the changing factor in the adoption of IM in the enterprise?

Web 2.0: An Asset and a Liability

There is a reason why companies are still hesitant in adopting web 2.0 technology within the enterprise. This post on ZDNet discusses how even though there is potential ROI from using social media in organizations, there are also pitfalls.

Security remains the main reason why companies are still skeptical. Information can still be breached if there is not a secure enough server, and for companies this can lead to malpractice and lawsuits. Privacy issues will play a major factor in the adoption of social media in the enterprise.

The Case for Collaboration

The latest post on ComputerWeekly.com makes the case that effective collaboration could have saved us from the mess that banking systems are at now. Financial institutions make an effort to analyze risk, and so why not use collaborative technology to aid in this process.

Integration of collaborative portals would given the right people access to the right knowledge, thus improving decision making within all parts of the enterprise. Ian White mentions that people should not ask when and what collaborative technology should be used for, but how can the features of the applications be used to improve the organization.

Enterprise Email is Interesting Again

Early this morning I came across this post from the Collaboration and Content Strategies Blog in which Bill Pray lists 5 reasons why the email market and enterprise messaging is getting interesting again. Here’s a summary of the reasons:

1. Choice – Microsoft and IBM had long dominated this market, but Google, Zimbra, Yahoo!, Cisco, Oracle, and Novell are all playing catch-up to these industry giants. Greater choice will foster more innovation and lower prices.
2. SaaS – Google, Yahoo!, and Cisco are all software as a service offerings for email, and that keeps them interesting. Microsoft and IBM should soon be unveiling something similar to compete with these three companies.
3. Social Software – Social media and software is making email more interesting by providing new ways to collaborate within bigger platforms and networks.
4. Mashups – There are several solutions out there that serves as email aggregators: Zenbe, Orgoo, and Fuser are just a small list of solutions that offer this feature.
5. Legal Decisions – Courts are still deciding and defining the legal status of email used within the enterprise between users. Courts will continue to add complexity to email usage.

Wiggio: Group Collaboration Made Easier

Cnet gives a great review of Wiggio, a web-based collaboration site that was recently released on Monday. This interface was built to get rid of complications associated with group projects.

A big downfall in collaboration software and interfaces is the inoperability and difficult features that less tech savvy employees have a hard time learning. Wiggio’s features, blast test messages, free conference calls, email poll to a group, and asking questions of your choice are all simple and easy to use; thus, it eliminates the long learning process that more difficult applications have.

It will be interesting to see if Wiggio can capitalize on previous mistakes made by group collaboration applications and lead the pack.

CMS Watch Presents Enterprise Portal Marketplace Going Into 2009

CMS Watch in conjunction with the IT & Business Alignment Forum presents a complimentary one hour web seminar presented by Tony Byrne. The webinar Enterprise Portal Marketplace Going Into 2009 will be presented by Tony Byrne of CMS Watch on Thursday September 25^th from 2:00 to 3:00 PM EDT. Don’t miss your chance to view this webinar free of charge, as Tony’s last webinar “Evaluating SharePoint from a Business Perspective” generated a huge response. Here’s a brief description of the webinar:

Enterprise Portal technology underpins many enterprise integration and SOA strategies. However, going into 2009 the portal marketplace is in some flux, as older technologies and platforms become deprecated while new use cases around social computing emerge. Meanwhile, the rise of Microsoft SharePoint has led to divergent reactions among traditional enterprise portal suppliers – like IBM, Oracle, and SAP – while open source portal projects continue to expand vigorously.

Please join noted analyst firm CMS Watch to learn more about where the enterprise portal marketplace is headed so you can carefully plan your 2009 investments in this critical area.

What you will learn by attending:

· How the enterprise portal marketplace is segmented today

· Shifting vendor strategies in the face of SharePoint

· What open source portal platforms bring to the table

· How Portals relate to Enterprise 2.0

· Common enterprise portal use cases

· How to go about selecting the right portal technology

Don’t miss your chance register for the webinar by clicking on this register button below:

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/875154842

Winner of DemoJam: Enterprise Wide Spell Checking

In Las Vegas this week,SAP hosted their version of American Idol.Encouraging techies to come up with applications to suite the enterprise, seven applications made it to Las Vegas. They were:

- CN Track Inspection System: Canadian National Railways
- Improve SAP Data Quality Using Web-Based User Interfaces with Workflow Approvals and Posting: BackOffice Associates, LLC
- Enterprise-Wide Spell Checking: SAP
- ESME: Enterprise Social Messaging Experiment: Siemens SIS
- Consuming Web Services Using XML Over HTTP: Apple
- ABAP Ninja: Panaya
- iPhone-ize your SAP Data: Xact Soft

In the end, after the fanfare and festivities, Enterprise Wide Spell Checking by SAP won out. For more indepth coverage on the contest, check out ZD Net.

Enterprise 2.0 How To’s

In the past we have brought to you many posts on how to effectively utilize Enterprise 2.0 tools. Martin White provides his take regarding this topic in his paper titled: “Achieving effective Enterprise 2.0”. He comments on a recent survey conducted by the McKinsey that found only 21% of individuals were “satisfied overall with their 2.0 initiatives” and that 22% were “voicing clear dissatisfaction.” Some of the topics that White covers include: making the most of human capital, intranets and Enterprise 2.0, the challenge of social networking, and making Enterprise 2.0 work for you.

Read more here, and let me know what your thoughts are on his views.

Zoho Docs…At it again

Today I came across this post on eWeek which describes how Zoho is beating Google Apps to SaaS file management. Zoho is launching Zoho Docs, which unlike Google Apps, will be able to store files created in Zoho Writer, Zoho Sheets, and Zoho Show.

Zoho is making the productivity experience much easier for users since they can now use an online one-stop storage space for all of their files. Users will be able to edit, collaborate, share all of their files through Zoho Docs. Zoho is definitely giving Google a run for it’s money in Saas productivity apps.

LinkedIn joins forces with CNBC

Recently, CNBC announced its alliance with LinkedIn. This new partnership will allow networking functions to be integrated into CNBC and news and information shared on LinkedIn to create a forum for people to discuss current news with their professional contacts. LinkedIn will remain independent and look to grow their current user base beyond 27 million. LinkedIn will contribute consumer generated content to CNBC such as polls, and LinkedIn will have access to CNBC’s programming, articles, blogs, financial data and video content according to this article at eWeek.

Enterprise 2.0: Interesting Facts

I thought I would post today on this interesting slideshare presentation that I came across titled: Enterprise 2.0 Overview. The presentation covers interesting facts, such as “a new blog is created every second.” In addition, the presentation discovers what they call Generation C, and reminds corporations that it is important to “Implement the technology to create an ecosystem so you can deliver value.” Look over the entire presentation here, and let me know what you think!

Enterprise 2.0 Overview

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: billy middleware)

Microsoft Applications Vs. Google Apps in the Enterprise

A while back, we received a lot of buzz on this post “Microsoft Keeps on Innovating” on our front end of innovation blog. Today I came across this podcast on eWeek in which George Langan, eXpresso CEO, explains why delivering Microsoft productivity applications as a service makes a whole lot more sense in the enterprise when compared to Google applications. The podcast is 15 minutes long. What’s your take on the on-going battle in the enterprise between Microsoft and Google?

Peek brings email to mobile devices for small businesses

Peek is a mobile phone service setting out to capture an untapped portion of the mobile phone market, aiming for the small business wireless market. According to this article at EWeek, they’ll be partnering with Target to distribute this new wireless email device which is low-cost and can satisfy the email side of those working for small business, and do what the Blackberry is doing for the corporate world.

This wireless start up company decided to tap into this market for the amount of customers that haven’t been satisfied yet. Of the 32 million cell phone users, 15 million manage their email over the phone.

When developing this mobile device, Peek came up with and followed these six objectives to better meet the needs of small businesses:

1. low cost

2. wide, color display with high-contrast fonts

3. an easy-to-use QWERTY keyboard

4. easy-to-set-up access to popular e-mail portals

5. well-designed software that gives a good user experience

6. easy to buy

YouTube Exclusively for Business

Amid breaking news on Google Chrome, as we discussed here, you may have missed that the undoubtedly innovative company also launched Google Video for business. This new application allows businesses to have a YouTube like app, exclusively for their use with additional capabilities to limit access. As this article summarizes:

“Google Video for businesses is a new enterprise application that enables messaging and collaboration among employees who require more discretion in sharing video content. Google Video for businesses leverages the cloud computing infrastructure Google employs for YouTube, one of the company's core Web services.”

Also as Matthew Glotzbach, product management director for Google Enterprise, stated:

"Think of it as private-label YouTube for your domain, with security in place so you can control who has access to what video"

With the tremendous influx in messaging, and video as well as file sharing, this new app from Google will help enterprises to feel more secure while still participating in this trend. What are your thoughts on this new application? Are there benefits to be found in this for your organization?

Google Chrome: Enterprise Browser?

There’s been a buzz recently about Google Chrome, the web-browser Google is launching. Larry Dignan poses the question ‘should businesses pay attention to this move’ in this latest post on ZDNet.

It is still unsure how Google Chrome will fit in the enterprise since it is in its early beta stages. Companies will have to keep a close watch in this web browser though, as with all other Google Apps it winds up sneaking into your enterprise somehow. We all readily await the features and perks that Google’s new browser will bring to the table. I’ll be keeping a close watch on its arrival, analyzing whether the browser makes business sense.