Full RSS Feed
Receive
the Free CMSWire NewsletterFor SMB’s this week there were a number of new releases that should make it easier to work while mobile. Apart from a mobile Business By Design from SAP, Skype is now available to a limited extent on Android v2.1 and above. IBM has also been busy with online tax filing and hosted e-mail.
SAP Goes Mobile with Business ByDesign
It took SAP (news, site) almost three years to release the SaaS version of Business ByDesign, which it did in July. Now, less than two months later, it has released a mobile app available on the iTunes Store that puts it on the road. The new version — Version 2.5 — included three starter packs to encourage its deployment and appeal particularly to the SMB sector.
This new mobile version is for midsized companies and, SAP says, is easy to use and available for free to all the users of feature packs in v2.5.
SAP is not stopping there though. With the next version of SAP Business ByDesign, SAP plans to make additional functionality available and to support further mobile devices, including BlackBerry, Android and Windows Phone 7. The company also aims to enable partners to create supplemental content, which can then become an incremental part of the application.
The application is available for the iPhone, with a minimal requirement of version 3.1.3 of the Mac-OS operating system. Access to the application is granted via a secure https connection.
IBM Offers Hosted E-mail
Over the past week, IBM (news, site) has introduced a new hosted e-mail offering, LotusLive Notes that is priced at US$ 5 per user per month and offered as an alternative to Exchange.
This new addition to the LotusLive family will provide e-mail, calendaring and instant messaging, while the entire package, which includes the previously released web conferencing, social networking and collaboration and is available for US$ 10 per user per month.
Worth noting is that only last year Microsoft (news, site) cut the price of its hosted services so that Exchange Online costs US$ 5 per user per month, and its integrated Business Productivity Online Services (BPOS) bundle to US$ 10 per user per month.
IBM says it aims to accelerate the adoption of cloud collaboration services to increase productivity, collaboration and innovation in today's global enterprises. All very noble, but with the pricing the way it is, it looks more like an attempt to eat into Microsoft’s Exchange services market.
Furthermore, it is also introducing a feature within LotusLive called Communities to help advance an organization's ability to work together both inside and outside their enterprise.
IBM, ADP Launch Cloud Tax Service For SMBs
Big Blue is also now offering SMBs a cloud-based tax filing system which can be integrated with SMB enterprise resource planning sources.
It’s not really IBM that is offering it, but providing ADP (Automatic Data Processing) the ability to offer it to its SMB clients using the connector software that IBM acquired when it bought Cast Iron in May.
Continue reading this article:
Email It
