We would love the opportunity to show Ms. Bryant (at Intel) Amplify and how it is empowering organizations (for example, blue state digital) to learn what colleagues find interesting and what they think about it. A social application for business |
One of the themes cropping up again and again at this year’s Brainstorm technology conference is the pervasive use of social services like Facebook, and the frustration that while they dominate the consumer world, they aren’t quite right for large enterprises. |
First, though the sample size is quite small the results could be revealing. That said, I can’t help but think the managers who signed off on these services should know that the same adage holds true whether in their personal or business lives: if it sounds too good to be true it usually is. For vendors, failure to manage their customers expectations can only lead to major headaches or worse. | According to a new survey of more than 300 enterprises by Gartner Research, software as a service has failed to impress business users across the board. Both U.S. and U.K. users polled were far from enthusiastic about their experiences with SaaS |
Most telling was that customers gave the most dismal reviews to areas where vendors are making the biggest promises: namely, low costs and high performance. Despite changing attitudes towards its security and reliability, these results suggest that providers are creating some of their own ills by overselling and under-delivering when it comes to key benefits of SaaS. Read more at www.readwriteweb.com |
I’m hopeful that this idea will empower people within companies and organizations to think more creatively and give developers a better opportunity to get their products/services tested… |
It used to be that deploying a new application meant days or weeks of research, approvals, budgeting, planning and setup. Now it means that individuals outside the enterprise IT domain can pick a service offering of their choice, select a plan, and pay for it themselves. The barriers to start are low, the benefits of scale are high, and the decision gets boiled down to the simplicity of a free trial or impulse purchase. |
| Think departmental tools like project management, tailored campaign tools for marketing, an extra reporting service for finance, or an outsourced compute job by a creative developer — the possibilities are limitless |
| With corporate IT no longer the sole control point for new application deployments, we’ve only begun to scratch the surface of what an individual worker can accomplish |
| Perhaps the ecosystem of applications that emerge from “outside the enterprise” will provide the most compelling opportunities, and make application choices more friction-freeRead more at gigaom.com |
Starting to see more announcements like this…Groups/Social computing for the enteprise. Social sharing and messaging service, Plum, announced the availability of its new Groups feature Wednesday. According to the company, the groups will use status updates, comments, links, photos, and videos to communicate with others and they will be visible only to those in the group. Plum's platform is available as a white label service. The company currently powers small social networks for companies like Sears and Michelin. Read more at news.cnet.com |
Sounds like a pretty robust platform (except for the polling piece…snoozola). Integrating bookmarking apps? Good idea, but If social productivity is what they’re after, they need look no further than Amplify  | Jive Software has launched a comprehensive Social Business Software application suite, Jive SBS 3.0, which includes the company’s previous social computing applications, Clearspace and Clearspace Community |
| Modeled to offer Facebook-like features to enterprises, the software combines computing with social collaboration. The Clearspace app helps businesses hold collaborate on a variety of tasks, including holding discussions, sharing documents, blogging, running polls, and social networking features and more |
| a single community is enabled by new features like having a powerful data warehouse and activity tracking mechanism, adding video functionality for to train and engage employees, integrating social bookmarking apps to allow employees to track what’s important and having the ability to post content from a variety of sources to members of the greater communityRead more at www.techcrunchit.com |
| But Yammer has now raised a $5 million series A financing from the Founders Fund and Charles River Ventures, according to founder David Sacks. |
| Socialcast not only has a revenue model, it also has profits, so that seemed worth investigating |
Timothy said he is a big admirer of 37 Signals and Basecamp (as many of us are), but that the difference is that Basecamp is project centric, whereas Socialcast is more ad hoc. |
Socialcast can be deployed in two ways:
a) SaaS
b) Behind a firewall appliance |
A simple, low cost subscription model is good enough for Zoho, 37 Signals and it also works for Socialcast. They give the first 5 users free, enabling pilot trials. But there is no fancy “free but then we hook you with a paid version” model (which enterprises tend to be suspicious about). Read more at www.readwriteweb.com |
| AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) announced
that the use of social networking tools as part of everyday working life has
led to an increase in efficiency, according to an independent market report
released by AT&T. The pan-European survey of more than 2,500 people in five
countries, conducted by Dynamic Markets, shows that of those employees using
social networking tools in the workplace, 65% say that it has made them and/or
their colleagues more efficient. In addition, 46% say that it has sparked
ideas and creativity for them personally.Go to the source |
Microsoft  has announced this morning the availability of hosted Exchange, Sharepoint, collaboration and communication as part of the Microsoft Online suite. The hosted platform is a direct competitor to the Google App platform, which is currently available either for free or for as little as $50 per year.
The service plans for the Microsoft deals start from $3 per user per month - and with that plan users get an Exchange mailbox with webmail access, sharepoint server access and the basic communication tools such as messenger. The full hosted Exchange and Sharepoint, along with collaboration tools, starts at $15 per user per month - which is around $180 per year. While the alternatives are a lot cheaper, for most businesses an Exchange-based solution is at a different level than what Google or any other web-based company can provide.
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Business wants to get Social
