On-premise applications like Sharepoint are becoming a target for cloud-based services. Up to now, customers could either start with Sharepoint, or an online alternative like Google Sites.
But now we are seeing the emergence of services that help you migrate Sharepoint to Google Apps. LTech announced today that it is offering LTech CloudMove, a tool that automates moving documents to the cloud.
Larry Ellison completed Oracle's purchase of Sun this week. Now he is making it clear he wants a professional basketball team.
There have been rumors for months that Ellison wanted to purchase the beleaguered Golden State Warriors, a National Basketball Association team out of the San Francisco Bay area.
The iPad is clearly one of those universal technologies that will be as useful in the home as in the office. Much like the iPhone, people will want it for work simply because it will be useful for getting work completed. Like any Apple product, it's easy to use. It's lightweight. And it's mobile. Plus, this baby is as sleek as it gets.
We expect to see a similar trajectory for the iPad in the enterprise as the iPhone has had in recent months.
Apple reported its earnings earlier this week. The company reported that iPhone usage doubled since last summer after the introduction of the 3GS. The iPad with 3GS service will be available in 90 days. Our bet is that by next fall we will be reporting similar news about the iPad as we have about the iPhone.
iPhone use has doubled in the enterprise since last summer when Apple released the 3GS. The big bump in sales helped Apple post $3.38 billion in profits this past quarter. More than 70% of Fortune 100 companies are now testing the iPhone as their smartphone of choice. A big driver is iPhone's support for Microsoft Exchange.
The news highlights why Google is planning to launch its next Nexus One as an enterprise device: The corporate market has smartphone fever.
The optimism for cloud computing is ebullient. But a problem is brewing in the fevered boil.
Customers need better ways to monitor performance. Deploying to the cloud is one matter. Monitoring in a way that optimizes deployment is a whole other issue. Every cloud service provider has a different dashboard. Deploying to multiple cloud service providers means monitoring multiple dashboards.
Cloudkick is a Y Combinator startup that has developed a Web application to help monitor performance so a customer may receive a unified view of its deployment.
We have not been writing too much as of late about Enterprise 2.0. Perhaps that's in part because it seems like the phrase is getting a bit tired.
Perhaps also it is because it feels like so much of the discussion centers around the technology that Enterprise 2.0 is all about.
In any case, we found this post on Tech IT Easy. It goes through five elevator pitches to make for Enterprise 2.0.
We spent a lot of time at Lotusphere talking with vendors about how they are moving forward with IBM, and their views about IBM's collaboration strategy.
In particular, we looked at companies that are integrating with IBM collaboration software products: Alfresco Software, Tungle and FewClix.
These companies are examples of how the enterprise is transforming into an environment where third-party products will integrate with existing collaboration technologies. The result is a loosely coupled ecosystem based upon Web-oriented architectures, Web services and API's.
Box.net acquired a young company last October called Increo Solutions. The company allows users to view content of most any file and the ability to share and embed files across the Web.
Today, Box.net is announcing the integration of these features. Users will be able to upload and view most any file inside the Box.net environment. This is a feature similar to what Google Docs provides.
What appears to be a bit different is the embedded viewer, which allows people to share and embed all types of files anywhere on the Web.That feature will be available over the next few weeks.
If you are building a SaaS (Software as a Service) venture, you should be thinking hard about your pricing strategy. It may be the single most critical decision you make. Pricing impacts your marketing, financial and organizational strategy. Are you selling an expensive, complex enterprise solution? Or a simple impulse purchase that an individual can make with a credit card? Will you offer a free, a.k.a.freemium, option?
You cannot fudge these decisions, you have to tell customers how much it will cost before they can commit. To provide input into this decision, it is good to learn what your peers are doing. So I researched 103 SaaS vendors to see how they handled pricing.
Newsgator has acquired Tomoye, a social networking platform for Sharepoint. The acqusition makes Newagator one of the largest enterprise collaboration companies in the Enterprise 2.0 space and positions it as a vendor with the deepest ties to the Sharepoint environment.
Details of the deal were not disclosed. The acquisition buoys Newsgator's reputation as an enterprise collaboration provider, almost exclusively for the Sharepoint platform.