With Xobni Enterprise, I.T. admins can manage the deployment and permissions surrounding the plugin's use via a web-based portal that provides access to user's profiles as well as a groups management feature. By placing different subsets of users into groups, I.T. can deploy custom versions of the plugin to different users. For example, everyone company-wide may get a plugin that offers LDAP integration, but only sales professionals would receive the version that connects to Salesforce. Admins can also choose to "switch off" other previously default integrations such as the Facebook and Twitter extensions.

To push the plugin out to end users, Xobni Enterprise offers an MSI file and registry settings that can be modified as necessary.

Extensions for Salesforce, SharePoint, and More

At launch time, Xobni's Solution Provider Program has partnered with a number of Enterprise vendors to provide extensions and integrations for their new system. The current list of partners includes Atlius Consulting, Cogent, Echo Lane and Interdyne BMI, which help Xobni integrate SharePoint, Microsoft Dynamics and Salesforce CRM platforms among others.

The new service also comes with an Extensions Software Development Kit (SDK) which allows in-house developers to write their own extensions to integrate other platforms beyond those which are currently available. Xobni suggests this SDK could be used to deliver company news and information from an internal corporate portal, specific business application, or any other web service.

Other Features

Another general enhancement available with this version of the plugin is Xobni's expanded search capabilities that allows users to search calendar appointments, tasks and archived PST files. The search feature includes advanced filters which let users find results by limiting searches to email contents only or the To:, From:, and  or Subject: fields of their email messages. Users can also access their entire contact database from the auto-complete field in Outlook's "Compose" window.

Pricing

The company webpage for Xobni Enterprise does not include any pricing information, only a link to "Request More Info" from the company. This is likely because each Xobni system is being somewhat custom-built in terms of price because there are additional costs to run the pre-defined extensions created by the company. Depending on which extensions a company chooses to deploy and however many users will be using them, the overall cost of the Xobni Enterprise system will vary. However, the company informs us that the system starts at $30 per user per year with volume discounts available.

Xobni has seen over 3 million downloads of their plugin, including both free and paid versions, since their initial debut. This new offering represents the second revenue stream for the company, the first being the launch of Xobni Plus, a premium version of the plugin that sells for $29.95. They also claim to have a presence in 80% of Fortune 500 companies thanks to employee adoption outside of the traditional I.T. infrastructure, a trend known as self-provisioning and one that has steadily increased over the years.

Companies looking to maintain control over what their employees can do on their company computers often end up having no choice but to purchase the enterprise services provided by the startups their employees are already using in order to once again centralize control within I.T. If Xobni's adoption across the enterprise is as strong as they claim, they may soon have several companies looking to implement the Xobni Enterprise Service so they can do just this. Other companies may be tempted to try the product for the first time now that it offers I.T. friendly tools and enterprise level support.

More information about Xobni Enterprise is available here on the company's website.

Should Google be worried? Some analysts think so. "This is trouble for Google," said Matthew Cain of Gartner. Google of course, disagrees.

Google, whose online suite of applications is collectively known as Google Apps, has been making steady inroads in the business world with offerings tailored to schools, nonprofits, SMBs, and the enterprise. The company currently touts 15 million Apps users in nearly 2 million companies worldwide. Marketed as a less expensive and easier-to-manage alternative to on-site systems like Microsoft Exchange, the suite has encouraged many companies to switch to their hosted solution, mainly due to ever-decreasing IT budgets which have left penny-pinching companies scrambling to find ways to cut costs.

However, pitting iNotes against Google Apps isn't exactly a fair "apples to apples" comparison. That's because iNotes' focus is just email, calendaring, and contact management. Google Apps, on the other hand, is a more comprehensive suite that includes Google Docs, an online office suite, an intranet-building tool called Google Sites, and much more. Also, iNotes only provides 1 GB of storage for their product - if you want extra, you'll have to pay. Google, however, starts you off with a 25 GB inbox.

Still, since Lotus is the lower-priced solution, that alone may be enough for them to compete. Google Apps currently charges $50 per user per year but iNotes will be only $36. Those cost savings combined with the brand recognition of the IBM name will help iNotes quickly get in the game.

IBM: iNotes Delivers More Than Cost Savings, it Offers Stability

In addition to IBM's primary focus on price, the company is also taking advantage of some very public recent Gmail outages, including one which locked out corporate customers from their email for 2 hours last month, to prop up their solution as the more stable alternative. According to Poulley, IBM has a long-standing record of running "the world's mission-critical systems for banks, telcos, and utilities...We're bringing business class services and support with mission critical reliability at a price lower than the competition."

Google Responds: iNotes is No Google Apps

Google isn't taking all this lying down, though. Dave Girouard, President of Google's Enterprise division, said that Google will learn the business of selling software more quickly than IBM will adapt to cloud computing.

Andrew Kovacs, a Google spokesperson, also noted that IBM's positioning of their iNotes product seemed to be more of a complement to their on-site solutions than it was a replacement for them. With iNotes, it appears that IBM wants to supplement their current install base of Lotus Notes servers to deliver email to both deskless workers and those who didn't have email accounts already. Google Apps, on the other hand, is designed to be a complete "rip and replace" solution allowing businesses to do away with their on-site systems entirely in favor of a fully hosted cloud product.

He also pointed out that IBM's claims of reliability when it came to their iNotes product were unproven at this point. iNotes, which is based on IBM's acquisition of a Hong Kong company called Outblaze, does not appear to offer any service level agreements (SLAs)... at least it doesn't mention any on its website. IBM confirms that's the case, saying the company "has not made any specific promises regarding uptime" but that the company has a solid history of reliability. Still, without an SLA documented in black-and-white, companies, especially those in the enterprise space, are bound to be wary.

Finally, Kovacs spoke of the various ways in which Google products interoperate with other technologies used by large companies. The Google Apps system works with Microsoft Outlook, mobile phones including iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile, and Blackberry. It even integrates with Blackberry Enterprise Server and directory systems like Microsoft's Active Directory.

In the end, though, Google says they're excited about the iNotes launch as it serves as "further validation that the future of computing is in the cloud." Having a well-respected and trusted organization like IBM offer something like this will bring more visibility to cloud computing and that is something that will be good for everyone.

Examples of Akibot in Use

To understand how Akibot works, imagine the following scenario: you post a message that reads "There will be a meeting next Wednesday morning at 1 PM regarding the new development project." In other enterprise Twitter clones like Yammer and Present.ly, only those others reading the stream of posts would see the message and would then be able to act on it, if need be. In Akibot, however, the system itself would understand the message and would create an appointment on the team calendar for you. It could even send you and your colleagues a reminder in the form of a text message or email when the meeting time drew near.

Another example goes like this: say a colleague posts a message stating "here is the latest Penske file http://xxxxxxxxx," - pointing to the resource hosted on the company's intranet. A week later, another user could ask "Does anyone know where the latest Penske file is?", and Akibot could then respond with a message pointing to the location previously posted.

Akibot can also function as a time-tracking tool. All you would have to do is post a message letting everyone know when you're beginning to work on a particular project and then post another when you're done.

The microblogging service could even update your CRM system with information about customers and your interactions with them. Again, all you'd have to do is post the information to Akibot.

How Does Akibot Work?

In order for Akibot to do what it does, it seeks out various keywords in a post, but not using simple search or in a "brute force" sort of way. Instead, it looks at the sentence structure as a whole to determine meaning. Akibot's main module is called the "preprocessor" which uses common elements of natural language processing (NLP) combined with two proprietary modules: a "contextual analyzer" and a "context>action" dictionary. The contextual analyzer take the results from the NLP module and finds the context using noun/pronoun/verb structures and then the "context>action" dictionary stores the relevant data and takes action on the item (e.g. it sends a reminder, updates your business software, etc.)

Because Akibot understands natural language - that is, the way people naturally speak - end users posting their messages don't have to use any special syntax in order for Akibot to understand them. However, if you do end up posting something Akibot doesn't understand, it will just ask you to explain and then learns from that explanation so it never has to ask again.

Even Simpler Than Twitter?

There are a few things that Akibot does differently than Twitter. For example, there is no "follow" functionality. By default, everyone follows everyone else, but can "opt-out" from following certain other users if they wish. Since Akibot is meant to be used within a single company, this makes sense. The system is also designed to be uncomplicated so there are no groups, no tabs, no browse functionality, and no search.

Like Twitter, though, Akibot supports private messages, but no special syntax is required here, either. To create one of these types of updates, a user simply clicks on "private" when posting.

Still in Private Beta

The company is still brand-new and there are no exact launch dates yet regarding when it will become publicly available. A lot will depend on the feedback provided by the initial crop of beta testers. Also, if Akibot was to receive funding (they have none now), development could proceed at a faster pace, notes Marcel.

At the moment, the company is considering offering Akibot for free for up to three users and then any additional users would cost $1/per user per month.

If your company wants to join the private beta, you can sign up to be considered on Akibot's homepage under the "Signup" option.

Why electronic fax instead of faxing using a good old 'All-in-one' fax/printer/scanner machine? Well for one, it's more convenient for many people to send and receive faxes by email, which is what electronic faxing enables. Also, electronic faxing allows you to get an international fax number. And electronic faxing doesn't tie up your phone line. Bottom line: so many of the basic tasks any business has to deal with these days can be more efficiently done over the Internet; and faxing is no exception.

I asked the friends of RWW on Twitter today which solutions they recommend.

Several people suggested efax.com - and that's the one I signed up for, given that it has a 30-day free trial. It's $12.95 per month from then on, which is a bit of a premium on the other services mentioned in this post. But efax.com appears to be the market leader in this niche.

efax.com is a nice, simple web solution for faxing. There are no real 'web 2.0 frills' to it - no collaborating with other fax users, no rating faxes, no commenting on faxes, etc. It actually sounds a bit silly to suggest those features in this context. Because let's be honest, electronic faxing doesn't need any of the trendy 2.0 features - faxing over the Web is a simple and direct service that people will actually pay for.

$12.95 per month is about half the price of a basic Basecamp project management account. Although you could buy a fax machine for a one-off price of $100, so in reality you are paying a premium for the convenience of faxing over the Web.

What other electronic fax solutions are out there?

salimmitha tweeted that "the best one which i have used for ages is Maxemail - and you can easily get a US fax number - love it"

Dan And Jennifer said that "we've been using RingCentral for a few years, it's inexpensive and it just works; actually it's fax AND voicemail w / call forwarding."

Bill Mitchell suggested Faxzero.

Other options include send2fax.com, FaxMicro, smartFax, Data On Call, TrustFax and FaxItNice.

The pricing of all these services starts at around $10-15. There are a couple of free providers, but they put ads on your faxes - not a good look if you're running a business and using the service to send signed contracts. $10 per month seems reasonable for an electronic fax service and there's definitely still a business need for it.

Do you electronic fax and if so which service do you use?

UPDATE, 19 March 2009: We have updated our post to use the term 'electronic fax', rather than the term that was previously used, due to a legal letter we received.

TimeBridge's stand-out feature is the simplicity with which it gives recipients alternative times and dates for each appointment. The appointment organizer sends out invitations with five optional times, and attendees are requested to select "Yes," "No," or "Best." If a particular time appears to be the "Best" for all attendees, TimeBridge will automatically set it as the time of the appointment. Otherwise, TimeBridge notifies the organizer of the alternatives and awaits confirmation.

We'll go into TimeBridge and other scheduling applications, such as Doodle and Tungle, in more detail in an upcoming post.

We want to spend as little time as possible so that we can get the job done, get off our computers, and have a life. LinkedIn is the most efficient place to hunt for customers and employees. It is the first real change in productivity for those who work on the front lines of business. We have written about how useful it is here and here, and we included LinkedIn in our Top 10 Enterprise Products for 2008.

So, repeat after me: LinkedIn is not a destination site. We thought the Valley intelligentsia long ago proclaimed the end of destination sites. The desire to "get people to spend more time on LinkedIn" is linked to a failed business model around advertising.

LinkedIn should be a "contact graph," accessible via the API tools that you need to get the job done.

Why Emulate Facebook?

When Facebook was nominally valued at $15 billion, envy was understandable. Now, word is that Facebook is worth more like $1 billion. And to prove I am not a recent jumper on the Facebook downward-rolling bandwagon, here is my bear case on Facebook from July 2007.

LinkedIn won't ever beat Facebook on page views. So why try? Beat it by being more useful. And then business people will pay.

SaaS businesses have been the quiet success story of 2008 and will romp home to glory in 2009. It is the perfect disruptive model for a downturn.

LinkedIn could be a great SaaS success story by mixing and integrating the right features to become the place where business people live and pay for services.

Contact Networking

Add a touch of integration with email, a pinch of basic CRM capabilities. Roll it all up into the biggest business contact graph on the planet. Ask $5 of each user per month, the "Google price." Juice up the returns with some transactional services, making money by connecting people.

If there is one company in the tech space I would own shares in if I could, it would be LinkedIn. As long as it stops trying to appeal to college kids.

What's even better is that you can click on the notification in the Activity Stream to see all the relevant details. If the item was an image, for example, you can preview it or download the original. For blog posts and wiki pages, you can click to read the item that was updated. Plus, you can download any files that have been added straight from the Activity Stream to your desktop.

However, the cyn.in desktop client isn't just about automated notifications - it allows for those personal updates, too. But this is the enterprise, mind you, so we're not calling them "tweets" here - they are "status updates" instead. Guided by the prompt "What are you doing?" anyone can quickly set their status update which is then sent into the Activity Stream to update everyone else.

Taking a page from Jaiku's book, the client also includes a threaded discussions feature. Any item in the stream can be commented on whether it's an automated update or a personal status update. The replies can be viewed in a pop-up sidebar to the right of the original Activity Stream, just as with photos, wikis, and blog updates. Like FriendFeed, when someone comments on an item, that item bubbles up to the top so everyone is immediately alerted.

As any Twitter user could tell you, no microblogging product would be complete without search, and cyn.in is no exception. When you need to find something that had been posted before and has since fallen off the page, you can enter in a query straight into the desktop client itself. The results returned are ranked for you according to the percentage match and you can scroll through them just as you can with the Activity Stream.

The cyn.in client is beautiful implementation of how microblogging could (and perhaps should) work for businesses, but it's the client's integration with the cyn.in team collaboration suite that makes it so worthwhile. Of course, the decision to move away from your company's current collaboration suite is not one to be made lightly, so you should review the suite's features before deciding if it's right for you.

Other enterprise microblogging clients include Yammer, Present.ly, and Status, but none offer an integrated collaboration suite, too. Cyn.in is open source, but it can also be purchased as a hosted service or as an enterprise appliance.

The multi-million dollar question of course is: can a virtual world ever be a serious enterprise tool, or is it destined to remain merely a fun thing that powers Coca-Cola's website? Forterra's report at least shows glimpses of how enterprises can use virtual worlds.

Let's quickly explain what Forterra does. Its main product is OLIVE (On-Line Interactive Virtual Environment), which it describes as "an open, distributed client-server platform for building virtual worlds". OLIVE features an API, licensable 3D content, 3rd party system integrations, and tools to create and edit virtual world content.

Virtual Worlds Compared to Web Conferencing

Forterra includes this graph in the report, comparing virtual worlds to audio and video web conferencing:

If the graph is to be believed, and we must remind you that it was created by a virtual worlds vendor, then virtual world technology isn't much more expensive for enterprises to deploy than web conferencing. The last two challenges listed for virtual worlds though are pretty key: "proven effectiveness" and "easy entry for employees". The Forrester report had suggested that usability in particular was an issue. To be fair, Forterra acknowledges those challenges and more in the report.

How ACS Tested Virtual Worlds for Training

The two use cases Forterra conducted, with Accenture and ACS, concluded that there was interest in exploring the technology more for business use. ACS, which is a $6.2 billion FORTUNE 500 consulting company with 63,000 employees, tested Forterra's technology for virtual training with one of their big 4 accounting clients who have extensive global training requirements. One of ACS' testers commented that they "see this [virtual worlds] becoming even more of a viable option for training with the advent of the next generation of network speeds and the continued increase in the capability of computers. The graphics will only become better and the world more immersive -- and with those changes, an even better fit for distance/remote learning."

Another comment from ACS was that "while 3D learning may not completely replicate the effectiveness of a face-to-face experience, companies will be challenged to consider that for some course topics, a slightly reduced effectiveness is worth the savings, risks, and work efficiency gained through deployment of learning in 3D." [emphasis ours]

Conclusion: Watch This Space

So enterprises are becoming more interested in virtual worlds. The pilots showed that there are still challenges deploying the technology, but even so it is seen as a cost-effective future option for training and collaboration.

Although we still aren't seeing major deployments within enterprises - and there is no indication in Forterra's report of this changing in the near future - it's a space to watch in 2009-10.

1. Top 10 Semantic Web Products of 2008
2. Top 10 International Products of 2008
3. Top 10 Consumer Web Apps of 2008
4. Top 10 RSS and Syndication Products of 2008
5. Top 10 Mobile Web Products of 2008

Our Criteria

In no order of importance (all three are critical), we looked for three attributes for the top Enterprise web products:

1. Innovation: This is the time for firms that opened up entirely new market categories through disruptive innovation to reap the rewards.
2. Traction: We cannot put a cool new company whose product is just emerging from beta into our top 10. Winners should already have major traction in the market.
3. Longevity: This is a mix of profitability and deep pockets; an ability to outlast the competition.

The market categories that feature in this post are: platforms (with 2 companies making the list), wiki (2), web office (2), CMS 2.0 (1), project collaboration (1), web conferencing (1), and contact networking (1). Note that we didn't consider micro-blogging, RSS or mash-up products, as we consider those to be features rather than products - in the Enterprise market at least.

Drum Roll... and the List

Note: to avoid ranking them (which is impossible because they compete in different markets), the winners aren't in any particular order.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Who would have thought that a bookseller could have generated such enthusiasm and loyalty in the developer community? Eons ago, Microsoft won big by winning the hearts and minds of developers. Amazon does that today better than any other company.

Platforms will do well in 2009, though not many will. The platforms market is a race for scale, requiring massively deep pockets. We chose two, but they have lots of very strong competitors breathing down their necks.

Basecamp

37Signals, maker of Basecamp, is a lot of peoples favorite start-up (even its competitors feel obliged to say nice things about the company). The way they do project collaboration is almost as important as what they do. Their "less is more" elegance has become the mantra of developers everywhere. The one issue? It keeps its products separate. You have to choose which one to use. Vendors with suites could take advantage of this.

Confluence (Atlassian)

We are seeing major wiki adoption in the enterprise. It is simply a much easier way to collaborate than by putting lots of complex technology under the general umbrella of the Intranet.

It is hard to pick winners here. The space is crowded. In fact, we picked two for this category (MindTouch is the other). Atlassian seems a safe bet for enterprise, having traction and a good breadth of products. It is also nice that a vendor from the southern-hemisphere (Australia) made the top 10.

DimDim

This is our small-vendor recession play. In a recession, companies travel less, so they use web conferencing more. They also cut whatever budgets they can, and web conferencing isn't spared. DimDim's proposition is incredibly simple: web conferencing for less cost. The one issue? It is still a bit raw, and the company will need deep pockets to satisfy what we expect will be a growing demand.

Google Apps

Google Apps is one of Google's more mature offerings outside of search. It's a huge market, and Google has major traction. The move from PC-based office software to web-based "office tools" accelerated in 2008 and became increasingly mainstream.

The one issue? Google may be spreading itself too thin. Unbelievably, its flagship Gmail is still in beta and suffers from reliability issues, and some modules (such as for spreadsheet) still seem a bit raw compared to those of competitors.

Wordpress

This choice may be controversial. We see a big market in the replacement of first-generation content management systems (CMS), with simpler SaaS tools that have blogging at their core. Automattic's Wordpress is growing in reputation as the platform that delivers this the best.

Deciding between Movable Type and WordPress was a really tough call. Movable Type (which we use for ReadWriteWeb) has major traction in Enterprise accounts. In the end, we chose WordPress based on the quality of its continuous innovation. Salesforce, though, has recently entered this market from a totally different angle. We see CMS 2.0 integrating what are currently stand-alone features: social networking, video, and so on.

LinkedIn

This is a controversial pick. We see this as the "contact networking" space, which will be part of next generation CRM. We deliberately avoided the "social networking" label. Enterprises don't care about being social: they care about managing contacts to make money. Most people would not categorize LinkedIn as "enterprise." It would have been easier to include one of the many vendors that sell white-label enterprise social-networking software. We didn't do that for the same reason we didn't consider micro-blogging as a category: its more a feature than a category, much less a product or company.

But contact networking leader LinkedIn has tackled two of the biggest issues for enterprise: acquiring customers and hiring employees. And it has a huge networks-effect advantage over any of its competitors. It could easily create an "internal enterprise LinkedIn." This is LinkedIn's game to win or lose: it holds the cards in the contact graph deck.

MindTouch Deki

This is the other winner in the crowded wiki ++ space. You can tell a market is in the tornado-high growth stage of the market adoption cycle when it has really tough head-to-head competition. In this particular market, MindTouch and SocialText are banging heads. It looks like a close fight, too close to call really, but we had to make a call and went with MindTouch. It also competes with Atlassian, but not head to head.

We added "++" to "wiki" because the leading vendors are rapidly incorporating micro-blogging, social networking, forums, and other collaboration tools. Integration is key, so we see this market moving towards suites, but with wiki at the core.

Force.com (Salesforce)

This company defined the SaaS/cloud space with brilliant marketing and relentless focus. While it is clearly dominant in the SaaS CRM space, it is also a serious contender in the bigger platform space. If we had to pick one reason why Force.com is a major platform winner, it would be because of its focus on making its partner eco-system succeed. The one big issue? Its core CRM market is being undermined by two serious low-cost competors: SugarCRM and Zoho CRM.

Zoho

Zoho has so many apps, that we can't pick just one! But it is our David-vs-Goliath winner, so deserves to be on this list. At the beginning of the year, the web office market looked crowded. It now has Zoho (David) vs. Google (Goliath), with Microsoft, as always, not to be counted out. In fact, Zoho has yet another Goliath on its hands because it also competes with Salesforce in the CRM space, which points to its one big issue: it is spread very thin, and some of its products show it from their lack of depth.

Limiting It to 10 Is Hard!

This being a time of "back to basics," we had to forgo the luxury of an 11-winner list. We certainly did not allow ourselves a list of 100 companies, which would have kept everybody happy. So we know we have almost certainly missed your favorite company: we expect and hope you'll tell us in the comments.

We were looking for companies that would still be considered success stories one year from now, and hoping to avoid the embarrassment of hailing as a great success a company that crashes and burns in the harsh economy of 2009. That means our top 10 winners should be profitable, or very close to profitability, today. These are companies that would attract a big fat premium if they were to be acquired, even in a lousy market, because they would not be desperate for an exit and could afford to wait out the economy until markets and their valuations become healthier.

We're playing it safe with our top 10 list for one reason: because that is what buyers will be doing.

We have some reservations about the findings of the report - and to prove our point in this post we check out a good and bad example of corporate blogging, from Dell and the Walmart blog respectively.

The report stated that regular blog readers and bloggers trust company blogs a little more, and those that trust corporate blogs are more likely to trust other media. Consumers are skeptical, says Forrester, because they view corporate blogs as unbalanced. So their advice is: if you're a company thinking of starting a blog "about your company and its products", you probably shouldn't bother. For those companies that already have blogs, Forrester says that "if your blog generates leads, links, positive reviews, buzz, or PR, it's probably worth keeping." Otherwise shut it down.

The Forrester report was noted by the Blog Council, an organization which is focused on "the business of blogging and social media at the corporate level." The council listed a number of its own member blogs which they (naturally) regard as trustworthy:

• Rubbermaid
• Microsoft
• AccuQuote
• Analog Devices
• Cisco Systems
• Coca-Cola
• Dell
• Direct2Dell
• General Electric
• General Motors
• Graco (Newell Rubbermaid)
• Intel
• Lenovo
• Mayo Clinic
• Molson
• Nokia
• Orange Business Services
• Petro-Canada
• Pitney Bowes
• Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
• Rubbermaid
• SAP
• Sharpie (Newell Rubbermaid)
• Walmart
• Wells Fargo

Our Take

The Forrester report seems to be having its cake and eating it too - if your corporate blog is successful and meets its goals, keep it going; if it doesn't, can it. But that is true of any blog, corporate or not.

To the larger point of whether corporate blogs are trustworthy, it depends on so many things that it's difficult to make a sweeping judgement. For example, I trust some Microsoft blogs more than others - depending on the person blogging and perhaps even the department they work for. It depends on the style of blogging, the content that's published, the way the blog is promoted, and so on.

It also depends on the brand of the company itself. Let's take Walmart as an example. It's one of the corporate blogs listed above by The Blog Council. It's fair to say that Walmart isn't the most loved brand in the U.S., so I'm probably less likely to trust its corporate blog as a result. The style of blogging unfortunately doesn't do any favors to Walmart either. Would you trust the following product recommendation from Walmart's Checkout blog?

"As you know, I am an Apple fanatic, but this deal even has me looking twice. Our computer buyer has put together this!

The Blitz ad says $350 but Santa called and challenged him to do better. So now Sam’s is at new price of $345 and an additional $20 case value is included. This is an 8.9" WSVGA Acer CrystalBrite TFT LCD (1024 x 600) with an Intel Atom Processor, 1GB Memory, 120GB Hard Drive and a Crystal Eye Webcam. WOW. That information tells me that Sam’s really put together a great item for our Members! This unit is great for surfing the net, e-mail and is a nice netbook."

Clearly the above product recommendation is insincere and not to be trusted, which makes it less likely that I'll trust other Walmart blog posts.

But there are much better examples of corporate blogging that I would trust. For example this post at a Dell blog:

Yes it pimps a Dell product, but it's not looking to 'put one over you' as reader. This particular post is recommending a Dell social shopping app that might be useful to its customers, so it's information that readers of the Dell blog probably want to know. Also helpful is its quotation of genuinely interesting and relevant external content, and asking the readers for their suggestions. It's the little things like that which lead to trust. If all Dell blog posts are like that, trust would build pretty quickly among their readers.

Conclusion

The Forrester report in the end is a little unsatisfactory. Trust has to be earned and some corporations are actively making the effort to do that. As a result, there are some corporate blogs that you trust more than others. To claim that corporate blogs are the least trustworthy information source on the planet seems unfair - and untrue in many cases. This is one instance where the stats don't tell the full story, in our view.

If you're a company wanting to find out how to do corporate blogging the right way, there are many great blogs that cover this - a couple of ones we recommend are the blogs of Debbie Weil and Jeremiah Owyang (who happens to work at Forrester and who has a post up on the report).

What do you think? Do you trust corporate blogs?

Image: gtmcknight

A company called FaceTime Communications, based in Belmont, California, recently introduced their new inspection and classification technology called "ACE," which simply stands for Application Control Engine. This patented security technology is capable of scanning a network and identifying more than 1400 Web 2.0 applications and more than 50,000 social networks widgets distributed by sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Orkut.

Scanning for rogue applications on the network is nothing new for I.T., but what's interesting about FaceTime's ACE technology is its focus on scanning for the technologies that often fly under I.T.'s radar: web apps.

The Danger of Web 2.0 Behind the Firewall

As we've mentioned before, I.T.'s failure to adapt to the changing needs of their user base, now younger and more digitally savvy than ever before, has led to a lot of self-provisioning of the easy-to-use applications found on the web. These tools can include anything from Facebook groups to standalone apps like the SharePoint-lite team pages found on Google Sites.

Of course, when users become their own I.T. department, they're unknowingly introducing inherent risks into the previously hardened network infrastructure. Just because a web app is easy to operate, that doesn't make it safe and secure for enterprise use. As users upload and share sensitive files through these unapproved backchannels or have business-related conversations through web-based IM chatrooms, they might not only be putting their company's data at risk, they could also be breaking various compliance laws as well. 

The Difficulty of Monitoring Web Apps in the Enterprise

For I.T., the challenge is keeping up with the barrage of new web apps out there and shutting down those that present a threat. In an independent study commissioned by FaceTime Communications, 62% of I.T. respondents said that there were eight or more Internet applications installed on their enterprise networks - a 300% increase over the first study conducted in 2005. More importantly, the respondents noted that about one-third of their users downloaded the applications they wanted to use - regardless of company policy. Those apps were a mix between apps for business and those used for personal reasons.

I.T. has traditionally struggled to shut down many of today's web applications because they are not all strictly browser-based. Knowing that their adoption rate is dependent on behind-the-back installs on company desktops, many of the apps make sure they can't be blocked by a URL signature. The apps may also masquerade themselves as HTTP, FTP, SMTP and Telnet traffic while exhibiting evasive techniques that help them penetrate the company firewall and escape detection by the current crop of Unified Threat Management systems.

With FaceTime's ACE, though, more than 1,400 of these web applications can be identified and even more social networking widgets can be isolated, too. Those apps can be discovered and shut down regardless of the port, protocol, or evasive technique they use. In addition, the ACE software developers kit (SDK) allows third party solution providers the ability to extend their offerings in order to help their customers manage instant messaging, peer-to-peer file sharing, social networking, Web 2.0, voice-over-IP, anonymizers, IPTV, multimedia, games, virtual worlds, and unified communications. 

What This Means for Enterprise 2.0

If FaceTime's ACE or other similar technologies become a mainstay in the enterprise I.T. toolkit, the explosion of Web 2.0 for business use, a trend typically called Enterprise 2.0, may be dealt quite a blow. The only Enterprise 2.0 apps that will succeed given that scenario will be the ones that worked with the I.T. admins from the very beginning to assure them of their safety. The apps reliant on a slew of the company's rule-breaking users for adoption, however, will be out of luck. Perhaps being sneaky may not have been a great business model after all.

One of the queries I used on Google was "Gmail outage," but "Gmail down" is how most people report problems. You can see past problems reported on blogs and media sites. We have covered the subject before on ReadWriteWeb, and ideally we don't want to focus on failures of Gmail or the cloud.

Twitter Search Scores

Searching "Gmail down" on Twitter gave me much more useful data. And you can see the data in real time (using the layman's version of the query). When I searched, I saw results that were minutes old. But I looked further and got past 36 pages before I stopped.

Twitter is simply a better medium in which to report that "Gmail is down." It takes just a few seconds, and it is clearly not worth going through the trouble of blogging about it.

Twitter search does not have any built-in latency. Google has to index a page before you can search it. A little-known page that has just been updated will get missed. Twitter gives its results to you raw (not filtered by popularity) and immediately.

What was even more powerful was getting replies from people I don't know who had the same problem, or variations of the problem. It was like an instant uber-forum.

Is This an Isolated Case?

Was this just a fluke, an isolated case? Most of the "Twitter-is-useful" stories have centered on the social networking angle: people you know telling you where to get a great cup of coffee in a new city, for example. What was interesting about my usage was that the results did not come from my contacts. It was just like using Google search, but better.

Of course, this does not mean that Twitter search will replace Google. But this is the first time that I have used an alternative to Google for a general search term and found the alternative to be substantively, immediately better. That seems significant.

Is This Where Twitter's Elusive Revenue Lurks?

Most of the commentary on our Help Twitter Find A Revenue Model post focuses on the social aspects of Twitter and uses those as the basis of a revenue model. Those models, though, mostly feel like an intrusion on Twitter's primary function.

But is there potential in search?

The company says that creative professionals like the service because it can handle large files, is compatible with 400 different file formats and doesn't require software to be installed. There's also a mobile version, including for iPhone. The system is most likely to be used as a replacement to email or FTP, given that its main benefit is being able to send and collaborate around large media files.

MuseWorx has a free, entry-level version, a digital asset management tool with 100 MB of storage. It also has a partner network, through which it distributes the product. Museworx runs on Windows, Mac and Linux - the only other technical requirement is Adobe Flash 9.

Our Take

Essentially MuseWorx is an asset management system for creative professionals. We're not so impressed with the term "marketing OS", which seems fairly meaningless. You could argue that using the term "cloud computing" is also nebulous, although founder David Fritsche makes a good case for it in his blog Cloud Computing for Marketing.

MuseWorx claims to be "the first marketing automation system to leverage cloud computing" and in October it reported having more than 250,000 users. So whatever you think of the marketing claims for the product, it seems to be successful so far. Tell us what you think in the comments.

As explained on Google's FAQ:

"Gears is an open-source browser extension that lets developers create web applications that can run offline. Gears provides three key features:

• A local server, to cache and serve application resources (HTML, JavaScript, images, etc.) without needing to contact a server;
• A database, to store and access data from within the browser;
• A worker thread pool, to make web applications more responsive by performing expensive operations in the background."

That is important. The biggest single hurdle to mass adoption of web-based office software is the inability to use it when online access is not possible (in airplanes and other fun places off the grid). Offline access is also reassuring for those times when the cloud platform is having trouble: at least you can work offline for a while. This is not a small feature. It is the big one.

We get the usual beta warnings from Google:

"Gears is currently a beta product; moreover, it is currently considered to be a developer-only release. When the developer community has had a chance to examine, critique, and improve Gears, a final version suitable for use with production applications will be made available."

But we learn to ignore these beta designations from Google. Gmail still says beta.

But in this case, Google really is being shy about fully bringing Gears to its own product line-up.

Zoho Is Using Gears. Why Not Google Apps?

Zoho started using Gears in Writer as early as August 2007, nearly 18 months ago. In October 2008, Zoho Mail went offline with Gears.

On March 31st, 2008, Google announced Gears for Docs. This was a step forward, albeit 8 months after its competition (Zoho) did it.

So, the big question is, "When will Gmail enable offline use via Gears?" I posed this question to Dave Grirouard, President of Google Enterprise. The response was along the lines of, making it work on the scale of Gmail is not a trivial engineering challenge. That sort of made sense. But Gears has been out for a long time; it is a critical feature, and Google has the best software engineering talent on the planet.

Ahem, What About Chrome?

Is Google holding up Gears until Chrome can support Gears? We hope not. That seems contrary to its philosophy to date, which has been to couple them very loosely. So that is probably just coincidence.

Editor's update: we obviously got the above section totally wrong, so it's been struck out. Apologies for that error, but thanks to our commenters for quickly pointing it out!

"Gears for Mobile Is the Holy Grail"

I had a fascinating talk with Vic Gundotra (VP of Engineering) and Sumit Agarwal (Mobile Product Management). They laid out a mobile strategy that clearly shows that Google is thinking bigger and deeper than anyone else about the future of this huge market. They were also frank about the scale of the engineering challenge. Looking globally, there is no dominant mobile device. In fact, it is an extremely fragmented market. That is a problem when each user expects a native interface.

Vic Gundotra described how about a year ago Google bet that the mobile browser would be the unifying force. Specifically, the strategy was to standardize on Webkit-based browsers. That makes sense but still leaves out the all-important offline access question. So, I posed the "What about Gears?" question. I was told that Gears in a mobile browser was, of course, the "holy grail."

The Answer Given Is Probably Correct

Google is confirming that Gears is critically important to both its web apps and its mobile strategy, and that the delay is simply because deploying Gears on the scale that Google operates is a tough engineering challenge. That seems like the best explanation. But we would love to hear from our readers. Have you used Zoho Mail with Gears, and did it work well? Is it simply a scale issue that is delaying Google's more aggressive deployment of Gears?

• Hardware costs: You have to either buy machines or add your software to existing servers and manage them. If it is a mission-critical application, you will probably need dedicated machines and back-ups.
• Additional software costs: You will most likely need an OS, application server software, a database, monitoring software, etc. Many of these products are open source now, but there are still associated costs.
• Implementation costs: In my experience, the implementation costs associated with a behind-the-firewall solution are always higher than those of a SaaS application. There is simply more to do. You will either pay consultants or use your own valuable resources and time to worry about installing software, integrating it, building servers, configuration, etc.
• Maintenance labor: If you have in-house software, there is going to be some level of effort required to keep it happy. Your IT people will need to take care of it, which will keep them from doing more value-added activities.

Another huge factor here is the ability to get the latest and greatest technology. Once you install software in a data center, it becomes more difficult to upgrade and maintain it (especially if you customize it). In such a case, you will be stuck with old software that you will have to replace in the same time frame described above. In other words, unless you are absolutely sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that your licensed software is going to meet your business needs for 5 years or more, then SaaS might make financial sense.

Let's look at a real-world example. A 100-person company has been sharing files via email and internal servers. The executives have finally concluded they need to join the 21st century and put a solution in place. One option is to implement SharePoint. Here is a rough estimate of what that might cost:

Year 1
MOSS server = $4,500
User client access license = $90
Hosting and maintenance = $5,000
Implementation and developer support = $20,000
Total = $29,590

Year 2 and on
Hosting and maintenance = $5,000
Developer support = $3,000
Total = $8,000

I know of a SaaS solution that has 80% of the file-collaboration functionality of SharePoint but charges $850 per month for 100 users.

Year 1
SaaS fees = $10,200
Implementation support = $10,000
Total = $20,200

Year 2 and on
SaaS fees = $10,200
Total = $10,200

It would take over 4 and a half years before the licensed software became cheaper. By that time, I'm quite sure there would be another solution that could replace SharePoint, and the cycle would start again. We can quibble about the numbers, but you get the point. Plus, the numbers don't reflect that the SaaS solution is likely to improve and innovate faster than the licensed software by a significant amount.

What do you think? Have you done this analysis, and what did you conclude?