ReadWriteEnterprise

We're seeing a lot more discussion on the topic of single-sign on for SaaS environments. The issue is becoming more important as security emerges as a top concern for companies considering making the move to cloud-based environments.

OneLogin is a new company that offers single sign-on, cloud-based service that allows for small and mid-sized companies to enjoy the same level of security as large enterprise companies.

Microsoft Outlook has historically been at the heart of document-based environments that for many years have ruled the enterprise.

But the walls that have guarded this document-based world are crumbling fast. Outlook is now more than a message center. It is becoming a collaborative space where the lines between Google Docs and other social applications start to blur.

Socialtext is one of the smarter companies we cover in the enterprise space. The people there have an intellectual bent. Co-Founder Ross Mayfield is a thought leader and one of the original pioneers of the social Web. He's one of the thought leaders. And the CEO, Eugene Lee, is one of the more eloquent people we run across in the interviews we do.

Socialtext came into the market in 2002, long before blogs bloomed and years ahead of what we know of as the real-time web.

As a result, they have an established client base. They were one of the first, if not the very first, to offer wiki technology as an enterprise product.

Socialcast is launching a brand new activity stream, an Outlook plugin, an on-premise offering and a private cloud environment. The offerings represents a new effort by enterprise vendors to reach deeper into the enterprise and integrate more fully with email systems.

It also represents the reality that many large companies want a service that is not entirely in the cloud.

Socialcast originally developed a real-time service that provided a sophisticated service for building teams, collaborating and analysis.

Yammer is opening up its microbogging platform. In "Yammer Community" people may now create a community without the requirement that an email address be associated with a particular domain.

This is a big change for Yammer. Many companies do not have their own domains. Opening up the platform means that the service is open to a much larger audience - and has created a much wider place for itself in the enterprise.

Samsung is taking aggressive steps to reach deep into the enterprise with plans for a suite of mobile collaboration applications and partnerships with the likes of Cisco, Microsoft, Oracle and a host of others.

The collaborative tools including enterprise email, instant messaging security, mobile device management, unified communications, customer relationship management, salesforce automation and business intelligence.

Samsung is working with its channel partners to provide the applications. It's another form of bundling, really, providing options for what products an enterprise customer may want to include on devices for its employees.

The Windows Phone 7 received a lot of praise after its launch at the Mobile World Congress today for its elegant, minimalist interface. From what we've seen, it does look striking.

What we also find to be crystal clear: Microsoft is putting far more emphasis on the consumer market than its productivity features for the enterprise.

Fujitsu has integrated MindTouch technology into its scanner technology. The service means that people can feed documents through a Fujitsu scanner and then automatically post them to the MindTouch cloud-based collaboration service. Documents will be uploaded, stored, shared and processed into a web-oriented environment.

It's the cloud factor that makes this interesting. Scanning documents into a cloud-based environment has a number of implications for markets that still rely on antiquated storage practices. For example, this is the kind of application that would seem to be applicable for law firms that now use warehouses to store millions of paper documents.

Google Buzz is headed for the enterprise. According to the Google Enterprise blog, Google Buzz will become a part of Google Apps within the next few months.

Google Buzz applies as much to the enterprise as it does to the consumer market. The real-time application creates an extension for communication that adds a threaded context to a conversation, a critical component for an enterprise application.

SAP is experimenting with augmented reality to show it can be used with its business applications.

On the SAP Web 2.0 blog, Timo Elliott calls it "Augmented Corporate Reality." The AR application is so far is only a concept, but it clearly demonstrates how SAP Business Objects could fit with Layar, an augmented reality browser. For those new to the AR world, Layar is installed on a smartphone. You point the camera at an object or location. Information is layered on top of the real-world image you see on the screen, based on what the smartphone camera is capturing.