One advantage over SharePoint is that Google Sites does not require users to maintain software on PCs. Google Sites builds on the company's already well-established strengths - including cloud-based office tools and impeccable search. With the new API, if users choose to switch from SharePoint to Google Sites, they've now got an easy way to migrate their content.

How CC:Betty Works

What makes cc:Betty interesting is the simplicity involved in the creation of these online collaborative "mailspaces." CC'ing (short for carbon copying) is a common task for email users, which makes adding this one extra step to your workflow neither time-consuming nor difficult. And beyond adding the cc: information (Betty@ccbetty.com), no additional action is necessary on the user's part in the workspace creation process.

It's the cc:Betty service that does all the heavy lifting on the back end. Using smart technology, "Betty" pulls out the email threads and posts them into a single, tabbed view. Addresses found within the emails are mapped out in Google Maps, dates are placed into a workspace calendar, and attachments like photos, videos, documents, and audio files are also retrieved and given their own tabs within the workspace, as are links. The people involved in the email conversation are listed in their own tab as well.

With cc:Betty, all members are sent an email with a link to the online workspace when you add "Betty" into the cc: field upon replying to an email. The other participants can then click the link and visit the web site without having to create an account at cc:Betty or download any additional software. If they want to participate by viewing the content or downloading files, they can then set up an account and validate their email. However, some people may find the service's auto-responder a bit spammy, so be aware of that. An option to turn that setting off would be a good addition. 

Why You'll Want This

A service like cc:Betty makes the process of creating a collaborative space - such as one for a project you're working on - faster and more efficient than what's possible when using similar tools. Although cc:Betty might not include all the features of a SharePoint site, for example, it's far more efficient. For that reason alone, it could almost become disruptive in the workplace for creating sites around short-term projects. CC:Betty dramatically cuts down on the time it takes to create an online workspace - a process often so time-consuming that workers often don't bother doing so, opting to work out of their email instead.

CC: Betty's CEO and co-founder is Michael Cerda, who also created Jangl, an internet phone company which unfortunately had to close its doors in spring of 2008. 

CC:Betty is open to the public today - you can get started by simply adding Betty@ccbetty.com into the cc: field of an email.

• 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?

Qtask Overview

Like SharePoint, Qtask offers a number of features for team collaboration including discussion boards, wikis, file sharing, form creation tools, RSS, calendaring, and full contextual search. With its comprehensive tool set, projects can be created, managed, maintained, and tracked. Because all the information relating to various tasks is online, new team members can get up-to-date quickly on the status of various projects just by signing into Qtask.

Getting Started

When you first sign into Qtask, you're presented with a global dashboard from which you can see an overview of all the most important items, including tasks and their status, meetings you've been invited to and those you're scheduled to attend, recently updated wikis and files, your schedule, team members and other important top-level items. The layout of these items is similar to that of iGoogle and its widgets, which makes it easy to see at a glance everything that you need to focus on.

Global Dashboard

At the top of this dashboard is navigation that can take you deeper into the site - to discussion boards, team calendars, project homepages, and more. Like the global dashboard, each project's homepage focuses on just the key items (meetings, tasks, files, etc.) for that specific project.

It's All In The Details

Although there are many portals for team collaboration like this available today, it's the little details in Qtask that make it worth a look. For example, in the discussion threads, discussions can be set to public or private, unread items appear in a different color, and you can flag items as "hot" to draw attention to them. Team calendars feature thumbnails of the members faces and discussion areas where members can work out details, discuss agendas, etc.

Editing the Meeting Deatails

Other great features include version control for uploaded files and syndication (via RSS) of file shares and wikis - and both of which can even be shared with those outside the company. A site-wide search box lets you perform searches and also offers a number of advanced options to help you find just what you need:

Other Features

Built-in tools for form creation are also included with Qtask as is a mail feature which can be used for internal communications. Outside email like that from Gmail or Yahoo can be integrated with Qtask via IMAP support.

However, one of the most useful features in Qtask is its ability to track changes. File history can be tracked as to who uploaded, downloaded, or accessed a file and when. Tasks, meetings, wikis, and discussions can be tracked as well. This feature has made Qtask so popular with lawyers, that the company will soon be releasing a customized version just for them. (Out of Qtask's initial crop of 2000 users, many are lawyers).

Keeping Track of Changes

Finally, Qtask is available via a mobile browser - a must have for today's on-the-go workforce and remote workers. Whether you use a Blackberry, iPhone, or a standard mobile of some sort, you have access to everything on the site.

On The Horizon

In addition to the upcoming version of Qtask customized for lawyers offices, the company also hopes to create more customized versions for several different types of companies, including perhaps doctors or real estate offices, as those are other popular users of their program.

They also plan to release an enterprise version later on which can be implemented on a company's own servers as an alternative to the SaaS solution they have today.

Affordable And Feature-Rich

Qtask offers plenty of features which will appeal to the SMB market looking for a project-focused web-based tool for team collaboration. The service is very affordable, too: free for 5 users for the first year and comes with 5 hours of free training. Additional users are $50/each per month. Prices include the ability to create unlimited projects, access to online training and online technical support.

At launch time, Qtask is offering a special: charter accounts will only be charged $25/year for additional users.

You can learn more about Qtask from visiting their web site, available at www.qtask.com.

Also, with the addition of the SharePoint connector, Microsoft's well-known collaboration and document sharing platform gets a big dose of Enterprise 2.0 goodness, which is sure to please the end users. However, Confluence makes I.T. happy too, thanks to their inclusion of tools - like LDAP integration and administratively controlled permissions - that are designed just for the needs of the enterprise.

The Confluence Office Connector provides seamless integration between their enterprise wiki and Microsoft Office. Users can now edit the wiki in Microsoft Word...and even Microsoft Excel or PowerPoint, too. The experience for the end user is intuitive; they simply open a document, make a change, and click "Save" just like they already know how to do. There's no big learning curve here which means users are more likely to adopt the technology instead of relying on their old methods of managing and sharing files. And since those older methods are likely to have been either via network file shares or as inbox-clogging emails, the Confluence solution can help I.T. transition everyone to SharePoint while also helping in the fight against email overload.

With the Connector deployed within Team Sites, wiki editing is finally easy and that alone make it a vast improvement upon the wiki that's provided with SharePoint out of the box.

SharePoint Connector

Originally released in beta form to a limited number of testers back in 2007, today Confluence's SharePoint Connector is officially available to everyone. Although the company offers a hosted solution as well, most I.T. departments are more likely to integrate the Confluence deployable software with SharePoint server instead (or other systems via the API) to build upon the solutions they already use in house.

The companies that have already adopted Confluence include several big names that you're sure to have heard of: Bank of America, Sun, Adobe, Cisco, IBM, SAP, Intel, Seagate, E*Trade, Citigroup, Microsoft, EMC - the list goes on and on, a veritable "who's who" of the world's top enterprises. In total, there are over 6000 enterprises currently using Confluence today, yet the pricing still makes it easy enough for even smaller companies to consider the software, with solutions that begin at $1200 for 25 users (or $600 for academic institutions.)

Learn More

To learn more about the new Office Connector and see it action, check out this video from Atlassian:

If there's one thing that any I.T. pro knows it's the value of "maximizing their investment" in whatever servers they run, technology they use, or services they've signed up for. With strict budgets in place, no I.T. purchases are bought on a whim. Instead, each decision is researched, tested, thoughtfully considered, and, if worthy, purchased, then rolled out to become a part of the I.T. infrastructure. SharePoint is no exception.

One of the Microsoft Server products that businesses worldwide run is SharePoint. For those not from the I.T. community, SharePoint is thought of as a more robust version of Google Sites, but that's a poor comparison. Yes, both tools allow for team site creation and collaboration, however the similarities start and stop there.

For many companies, SharePoint is the portal for all their business data - and not just docs, spreadsheets, presentations, and PDFs, but also browser-based forms that interact with built-in workflow technologies which add business logic to sophisticated online applications.

Other tools allow for the addition of business intelligence enabled dashboards and reporting centers, enterprise search, and application templates that can be downloaded and customized to quickly set up internal web sites and services that provide everything from online help desks, to groupboard workspaces, to knowledge libraries, vacation scheduling tools, project tracking workspaces, sales pipelines, and much more.

In other words, businesses won't necessarily be ditching SharePoint anytime soon just to run the latest and greatest "Enterprise 2.0" technologies. However, that doesn't mean they're not interested in running Enterprise 2.0 apps - it just means that they'll be more likely to "maximize their investment" in SharePoint in order to do so.

This week at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference, several vendors are demonstrating their social-computing business tools, and a good many of them are tools that integrate with SharePoint technologies. Here's a look at who these companies are and what they offer:

Awareness Inc.

Just yesterday, Awareness announced their new platform that allows for the creation of Web 2.0 communities that connect people and content through social networking technologies and Awareness-powered widgets that can be ported to any third-party services from Facebook to MySpace.

With the new platform from Awareness, Microsoft SharePoint integration is built-in, letting I.T. admins use SharePoint's scalable and searchable back end to tie together internally-facing SharePoint environments with externally-facing social networking/Web 2.0 communities.

This integration also includes the packaging of Awareness's Web 2.0 widgets as SharePoint Web Parts that let users monitor and contribute content, display user details and status, search content, and view metrics. Awareness also integrates with SharePoint's Identity Management to allow for SSO (single sign-on), which makes using both platforms together a seamless experience.

NewsGator Technologies

Yesterday, NewsGator announced the launch of their new SharePoint add-on, Social Sites 2.0. This tool brings new social capabilities to SharePoint Server 2007 including community pages, which are ad hoc communities formed around projects, interests, or locations, and social networking capabilities that let employees better collaborate and share knowledge. Social Sites also includes tools for tagging, search, customized recommendations, and a discussion component that includes email integration. Users are provided with social graphs based on both explicit and implied connections, making it easier for them to find their colleagues and content in an easier way than before.

Atlassian

Atlassian, makers of Confluence, an enterprise wiki creation tool, announced its integration with SharePoint through an embedding function that lets the Confluence wiki appear to be a part of the SharePoint site, complete with an edit button for making changes. The wiki lets users add charts, diagrams, image galleries, maps and database content within their pages.

WorkLight Inc.

Yesterday, WorkLight announced its new WorkLight for SharePoint, which lets SharePoint Server users securely view and update information from SharePoint Server through familiar consumer tools like Windows Vista gadgets, Facebook applications, personalized homepage gadgets, RSS, mobile devices, and more.

blueKiwi Software

Last month, blueKiwi Software announced their integration with both Microsoft Office and SharePoint. With their new SharePoint connector and blueKiwi OfficeAssistant, their social software suite easily integrates with a company's SharePoint Server to provide social networking tools and capabilities that include blogging, user profiles, conversation trackers, tagging, social search, and more.

Connectbeam

Yesterday, Connectbeam announced their new Spotlight Connect for SharePoint, a bookmarking and tagging add-on module for their enterprise social search-and-discovery application that brings social content, collaboration, and bookmarking tools into SharePoint via a special add-on module available this July.

Telligent Systems

Telligent's Community Server Evolution platform uses its REST API, mail gateway, shared authentication and single sign-on, to integrate with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, Microsoft Exchange Server, and Microsoft Active Directory. Their social-computing platform offers enterprise blogging tools, social networking, social streams, forums, media galleries, and business analytics through detailed reporting.

Leverage Software

Leverage Software announced integration with SharePoint Server, enabling users to interact with external-facing internet communities of their partners, customers, or corporate alumni, while maintaining the security needs of an enterprise.

Tomoye Corp.

Tomoye's Ecco software, which lets you get answers, network, and collaborate across the enterprise, is now offering a SharePoint-ready solution. This capability lets users publish documents from SharePoint to Ecco and supports SSO between applications.

Technical specialists can today develop any number of applications for Sharepoint and port those apps around to different places in the enterprise. Kivati's graphic user interface aims to make that easy for anyone to do and could save developers themselves a substantial amount of time.

Users can chose between more than 400 different functions, each with multiple properties, to process incoming information and offer new types of functionality for end users. The company says that the end result of using Kivati is a robust Sharepoint script that can be run as an executable in any number of different locations.

For a video demonstration of Kivati, click on the screenshot below.

The development environment is downloaded and run locally. At launch there's a free 7 day demonstration on the company site and an initial price of $600 per user. Regular price after June will be $1k per user.

I really like the idea of a locally stored Pipes-like GUI to build simple executables. Sharepoint may be beside the point for me personally, but something with this kind of functionality and free of the flakiness of so many web applications would be great to have. Many of our readers will likely find this desirable for Sharepoint. If you try out the 7 day free trial of Kivati, let us know how it performs.

Young gives three reasons he things deployment of web 2.0 will sneak onto enterprise agendas in 2008:

1. IT guys are already using web 2.0 - According to Young, many IT departments and shops have been using web 2.0 tools for internal tasks like project management and support ticketing. The utility of these deployments will encourage them to push web 2.0 tools out more broadly in the enterprise.
2. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em - When big business is unable to stem the use of Software as a Service tools and things like social networks by employees, rather than allow untested software and services on their networks, they will "mitigate risk by deploying enterprise-class tools in their stead."
3. They make you look cool - "For IT departments aspiring to be more relevant to the business," writes Young, "enterprise web 2.0 tools will be a high-impact, low-cost method to show leadership and innovation."

RSS Will Lead the Way

Forrester predicts that RSS will be the most popularly deployed web 2.0 tool in the enterprise over the coming year. "Forrester expects 2008 to be a banner year for RSS and specifically enterprise RSS," says Young, concluding that many of the companies that discovered utility in blogs and wikis last year will realize that RSS is necessary to push that content to users. "While 9% of enterprise firms expect to consider the use of RSS in 2008, we believe that number will be close to 20% by year-end."

But while RSS might be the most important driver of enterprise web 2.0 adoption in 2008, Forrester expects social networking to still be the buzz word du jour. "Expect the adoption of social networking solutions for business to accelerate dramatically in 2008 with many firms looking for internal social networking solutions," predicts the research firm.

While Forrester expects the big boys -- IBM, Jive, etc. -- to rule the roost, they note that "nearly any vendor that uses the term 'social networking' will get at least some consideration." Though, Forrester also expects Microsoft SharePoint to "steamroll" the market, and will reap the most rewards from a shift toward web 2.0 thinking in the enterprise market.

Though the report puts a lot of stock in RSS and social networking, according to their enterprise survey, the technologies that more enterprises are actually planning to invest in over the next 12 months are discussion boards and wikis. Forrester, though, expects that it is these technologies that will drive the further adoption of RSS.

What do you think? Is the enterprise ready for web 2.0? Has web 2.0 already arrived in the enterprise? Lets us know in the comments below.