Collaboration News & Articles

There have been some interesting moves in the SMB voice technology market this week with Google making Google Voice freely available and the release of eVocie’s Blackberry App. From a security point of view, research from CDW indicates that many companies are not going secure their data until the very worst happens.

Could the direction we've been so sure of for the last handful of years be leading us down a path of distraction and dysfunction? That's what the latest word on the street is. Social computing and collaboration aren't paying any mind to the negative criticism, however, as new solutions continue to arrive by the virtual truckload. This week's additions to the pool include Salesforce's Chatter, Social CRM news, and upgrades to the sharing capabilities in Google Docs.

There has been a lot made this week of the announcement that Google is to offer a new PDF reader with Google Chrome that will add web-like functionality to documents. Appian integrates with AnyDoc to combine on-demand BPM with automated document capture.

After roughly half a year of waiting and squirming and teasing and such, Salesforce (news, site) has finally taken Chatter, a collaboration platform commonly referred to as "Facebook for the enterprise," out of beta. 

 If you don't want to go down the SharePoint route, Atlassian (news, site) could be the alternative you're looking for

We mentioned Google's slew of June updates for Google Docs earlier this week, but the team rolled out new sharing capabilities yesterday, so here's a closer look:

The focus of this year's Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston can be summed up in one word: Collaboration. The event was teeming with solutions of similar structure, each with an aim to enhance the same concept. And while that might've been a let down for attendees hoping to see some variation, it certainly serves as an undeniable indicator of the future of business. Here are some of the highlights:

Always with its eye on the prize, IBM (news, site) this week has made no secret that it intends to move into the mobile market the same way it has moved into the business analytics market.

Over the course of a few days, Big Blue has launched the beta of business collaboration software for the Android operating system, as well as a number of background support services for mobile enterprises including a new a software development laboratory in Mass.

This week's Enterprise 2.0 conference is bubbling over with interesting tidbits, and not just from well-known players. Cisco Systems revealed a slew of new products, including a collaboration platform poised to stiffen the competition with giants like Microsoft and Google. Meanwhile, our fine-feathered, 140 character friend acquired some analytics tools for commercial partners.  

Sitrof Technologies and Content Circles (news, site) recently combined forces and kicked out a tool that packs both peer-to-peer sharing and compliance solutions. Aptly named DocExchange, the solution enables users to securely share large amounts of information across firewalls.  

Last week Oracle) announced a major upgrade to its enterprise content management suite. This week it has announced it is upgrading its Business Process Management suite.

This week Google rolled out a new editor for documents and spreadsheets said to be faster, better at real-time collaboration, have higher quality import action, and offer more control over a document’s layout. This Docs update is the first in a string due out over the course of June.  

Cisco (news, site) has officially unveiled its enterprise-level collaboration platform, Cisco Quad. Named after a college quad -- a place of learning -- Cisco's mixture of key business apps and the trappings of social networking goes up against the likes of Microsoft and Google with communal bravado.  

This week, with the general release of Office 2010, Google challenges with updates to Docs, and gets some added support from other companies like OpenDrop. On the BPM front, Oracle followed its ECM Suite 11g release with an upgraded BPM 11g.

Collaboration is becoming a major trend this year and BlackBerry users won't be left out thanks to Huddle's (news, site) dedicated teamworking app.