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Nimsoft is launching a benchmarking service today for enterprise customers that will help them define and measure the actual costs of cloud computing and monitor the performance of IT infrastructure.

The benchmarking service monitors the multiple systems of an enterprise and pulls them into a unified view. These include internal systems, managed service providers, and cloud-based and Software-as-a-Service investments.

At the end of his keynote on Monday at Sharepoint 2009, an interviewer asked Steve Ballmer about social computing. Ballmer recounted a story about a friend of his, a CEO for a Fortune 50 company. He said the guy is adamant in his opposition to social computing in his company. But if he had assurances that corporate data would be safe, then it might be a different story.

On this day 30 years ago, Dan Bricklin's VisiCalc spreadsheet program changed the way people thought about computers and how they applied to business.

Bricklin remains a leader in the field and on this anniversary date is seeing his SocialCalc technology come out of beta and become a fully developed product from Socialtext, the company he has collaborated with since 2006.

On the eve of Microsoft's Sharepoint conference in Las Vegas, Google is launching the international phase of an advertising campaign that is the largest ever for its push into the enterprise and one of the most extensive in the company's history.

The "Gone Google" campaign is significant in a number of ways.

Sharepoint is one of Microsoft's crown jewels. It's a huge business. The technology generates a cool $1 billion in revenues. The technology is at the heart of Microsoft's strategy to remain king of the enterprise. Steve Ballmer says Sharepoint will surpass 1 million developers in the next year.

Microblogging represents the first wave in the enterprise. Now the questions is what represents the second wave and how adoption will occur.

The issue of the second wave came back up again and again in "Applying The Real-Time Web in the Enterprise," at the ReadWrite Real-Time Web Summit today.

The other day, National Public Radio (NPR) featured a tech worker who has been out of work for some time. He spends his days in San Francisco coffee shops looking for work.

His job search may improve if the "Elance Work Index," proves true. Elance reports that they are seeing a 46% increase in hiring for contract work, compared to a year ago.

Disclosure: I didn't get an early invitation, so this is not a first-hand review of Google Wave. But from what I know now, I don't want an invitation anymore. It looks like too much of a productivity suck. But I do use Google Spreadsheet all the time. It is the de facto real-time, online, distributed collaboration tool for serious GTD business. It is the best tool for an agile, networked business.

But it could be way, way better. Excel is still the best spreadsheet; it has just fallen behind on collaboration (and collaboration is a show-stopper). But Microsoft could catch up there, and a lot of really sharp startups are gunning for the same space.

Several months ago, the federal government drafted definitions for cloud computing. It was generally recognized as doing some excellent work.

The definitions are a work in progress. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) last updated the definitions on October 7. The latest version is available for download. It's free.

The wiki market space has transformed over the past few years, with a number of existing players adding social features to stay competitive and be more fully dimensional for users.

But we are starting to wonder how many wiki providers can play in the more established spaces of the market. Perhaps the best potential for emerging vendors is in the small-business market, which is increasingly open to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) environments.

Vodafone is launching a cloud-based service designed for business people and consumers who are looking for a way to back up the data on their desktops, laptops and netbooks. The move is significant as Vodafone is making another move beyond the mobile market and is using cloud-based services to get there.

Vodafone's service is built upon Decho's Mozy platform, the popular backup service, which consistently receives ringing endorsements. Mozy has been on a tear as of late, closing deals with China Telecomm and McAfee.