ReadWriteWeb

Way back in 1984, a company called Applied Business Technology Corp. produced a partly open source project management tool called Open Workbench. After it became part of a company called Niku in 2000, its resource management features had become leveraged for use for inventory of business applications. Big businesses - especially ones formed through mergers and acquisitions - ended up with more software than they knew what to do with.

By the time the former Computer Associates - now just CA Technologies - acquired Niku and made it into its Clarity division, application portfolio management had become one of Niku's top selling points. This morning, as Clarity now officially enters version 13, it's being offered for the first time as a service. But even with a cloud-based option, Clarity should not be thought of specifically as a cloud migration tool for business resources, but rather as a tool for first evaluating whether such a migration is necessary. This from CA's own vice president for marketing, in an interview with ReadWriteWeb.

GetApp.com, an independent marketplace for online business software has released an infographic comparing online project management software solutions to help businesses choose the right product. There are some interesting trends and data on the chart, including their age and size, their emphasis on social media, and whether they offer integration with Google, Intuit and Salesforce products and have their own API as well. There is also information about whether Android or iOS versions of each app are available.

In a very short period of time - just the last 18 months - Salesforce.com has risen from "up-and-comer," straight through "challenger" status, to the potential out-and-out leader in workforce software. Every move it has made so far, including the December 2010 purchase of open cloud platform Heroku, has been part of a well-played strategy thus far to build leveraged platforms in cloud-based services the way Microsoft leveraged its platforms for office applications... only somewhat faster.

This morning, Salesforce has fired a volley straight at the heart of Microsoft's leveraged tower. Do.com - a free, Heroku-based service coupled with Gmail, but enabled for all e-mail users - is a cloud-based, socially-oriented task management and collaboration platform aimed not just at Salesforce's typical office user, but the general public. It serves not only as a group planning tool for any scale of project, including the smallest scale (e.g., remembering to pick up groceries), but as a kind of cloud desktop for collaborating around Google Docs.

The iPad isn't just a hot new consumer device, it's also an increasingly popular tool for business. Each week we take a look at the new or updated business apps for the iPad, and highlight trends in how tablets are being used in the enterprise.

This week we look at a new presentation app, a new project management app and the new version of Google Plus for iOS.

For small and medium-sized businesses, there's no shortage of Web-based software out there designed to help them collaborate, market themselves and get things done. In fact, the selection can be a little overwhelming. This comparison chart on Wikipedia, for example, breaks down 132 project management software options for businesses. And that's just project management.

Recognizing that smaller operations seldom have the time or patience to sift through hundreds of options, serial entrepreneur Rachel Blankstein launched Comparz, a site that combines expert and user reviews for an variety of Web-based tools for SMBs.

Microsoft Office 365, the cloud-based service from Microsoft (read our take on it here), already supports Outlook/Exchange, SharePoint, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Lync. We've reported that BlackBerry Enterprise Server is coming to 365 as well. What else can you expect to see in Microsoft's cloud in the future?

According to Mary Jo Foley, Dynamics CRM Online and Windows Intune have already confirmed. And Microsoft Business Solutions Corporate Vice President Michael Park let slip that Project and Visio are on the way as well.

The iPad isn't just a hot new consumer device, it's also an increasingly popular tool for business. Each week we take a look at the new or updated business apps for the iPad, and highlight trends in how tablets are being used in the enterprise.

This week we look at a new ERP client, a new project management, a whole new way to look at your enterprise activity stream and more.

Online project management tool LiquidPlanner has come out this week with a complete makeover for its latest v3. The goal was to motivate users to actually have fun while managing their workflows. The company took design elements from Facebook and iOS and redid their entire user interface, adding the ability to drag and drop entire projects to reorder them and easily create to-do lists. You can quickly zoom in to a particular project element to focus exactly on what you care about and create templates to make it easier to get started with new projects. They also came up with a new dashboard and better search algorithms.

The iPad isn't just a hot new consumer device, it's also an increasingly popular tool for business. Each week we take a look at the new or updated business apps for the iPad, and highlight trends in how tablets are being used in the enterprise.

This week we look at a new SIP-based softphone, Dropbox integration and Apple's potential enterprise trojan horse.

Chatbox is a free OSX application that adds project collaboration features to Dropbox. It adds the ability to leave comments on or chat in real-time about about particular files and folders in Dropbox. Everything is stored in Dropbox, so you don't need to register an account with Chatbox.