ReadWriteWeb

I started using my first content management system around 1997, when things were crude and clumsy. You would think in the past 15 or so years time would heal all and improvements would be made, but you would be wrong. The modern CMS is still in a state of flux.

In the early days of the CMS we had major players such as OpenText (which didn't really have true CMS functionality until around 2002), Vignette (which was a separate company before being acquired by OpenText in 2009), and Fatwire (which was acquired by Oracle this past summer), among others. Note a trend here? These were gigantic software installations, requiring six figure PO's and a phalanx of consultants to care for and feed these beasts. They were and still are the exclusive domain of the IT department, who treated them like other big-ticket software installations. If you wanted to build a corporate website, you need plenty of time to plan your requirements and implement the code.

Companies everywhere pay for Microsoft's collaboration and document management service SharePoint, but research and anecdote both indicate that a lot of people dislike using it. What if using SharePoint was fun, though? Imagine all the money invested that would feel more worthwhile and all the collaborative work that could be done.

That's the theory behind a new product announced tonight from Mindjet, a nearly two decade old company that is best known for its mind mapping software but is extending itself into a larger corporate collaboration market. The company's new product, Mindjet SP, is a Mindjet plug-in for SharePoint - it takes SharePoint document trees and collaboration and displays them in mind map format. As mind maps go, Mindjet looks good (the company's free iPad app is a joy to use) - but not everyone loves mind maps in general. Can Mindjet save your company's SharePoint investment?

The theory goes like this: There is a certain class of mid-range enterprise customer -- less than a Fortune 500, more than a rented garage -- for whom "the cloud" is essentially about one thing and one-thing only: the self-service aspect. They see cloud architecture as enabling them to move everything -- their storage, their processing, their applications, their IT management -- off-premise.

They see the cloud as having a turnkey. Twist the wrist, and it just works.

Of all the software technologies that are least suited to getting a makeover that's "about the experience," you'd think databases would rank pretty far down. The database experience, if there is one, is typically about accuracy, reliability, and speed. Certainly Oracle's frequent measurements ("5x," "10x," "20x" and so on) are all about those metrics.

But Microsoft has found an angle with respect to SQL Server 2012, the second round of announcements for which came this morning in Seattle. The new angle starts with multitouch, but then it runs deeper, touching on the larger problem of data getting fragmented and redundantly duplicated as it gets used and visualized.

Atlassian announced today a new version 4 of its Confluence team collaboration software tool.

We covered version 2.9 here several years ago and since then they have been busy adding all sorts of features, including improving the wiki markup and editing tools, using Twitter-like @mentions to notify users with new content, a collection of macros and other automated content tools, and the ability to paste screenshots, videos and graphics directly into the editing tool.

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.

We have written about the rise of mobile apps that can connect you to your corporate documents previously such as Rover and MobilEcho. Starting this week, there is a free app called Coaxion from Moprise which can access your Sharepoint, Dropbox and Office365 file repositories as well as easily perform real-time threaded conversations.

Having grown up during the transition from mainframes to PCs and worked in IT when we were first installing PCs, I find it amusing to see how people return now and then to the topic of collaboration in the Internet and SaaS era. Last month media pundit Jeff Jarvis weighed in with his comments here. Notably, he says:

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 week we look at the newly released Adobe Photoshop Touch apps, a couple tools for managing your tasks and more.

Project Barcelona, a new project in the works from Microsoft, will give enterprises Web crawler-like tools for searching and storing information. The crawlers will search Microsoft products such as SQL Server, Excel and SharePoint and extra metadata. Barcelona Index Server will then serve-up the metadata, making it easier to find and access business information across the enterprise. There will also be Barcelona tools designed specifically for database administrators.

According to the project's FAQ: "Project Barcelona however is not a centrally controlled metadata repository in the traditional sense in that the overall design embraces the decentralized and web-like nature of the modern enterprise."