Enterprise Collaboration News, Reviews

It has been almost a year and a half since we looked into the land of the zombie apocalypse, and the infection is spreading. At the last briefing, the focus was on the endangered species known as enterprise CMS vendors. Current events reveal that the paid software industry as a whole is experiencing an accelerating disruption causing a litany of existential questions.

Creating iOS and Android apps with Dropbox functionality built right in has been simplified due to the company releasing its Sync API -- allowing apps to work as if Dropbox was a local file system right on the device itself.

Gartner issued a prediction last week that until 2015, “80 percent of social business efforts will not achieve the intended benefits due to inadequate leadership and an overemphasis on technology." Some thought leaders have also said that because organizations have tried and failed, we have now entered into the “Trough of Disillusionment" phase in the Hype Cycle.

Microsoft market research indicates that 78 percent of Fortune 500 companies are SharePoint users. Every day for the past five years, 20,000 workers have joined the ranks of SharePoint users. One in every five knowledge workers now has access to SharePoint, but that doesn’t mean these workers are properly trained in how to use SharePoint.

Enterprise middleware specialist TIBCO is releasing Nimbus Control 9. The latest iteration of TIBCO’s business process improvement solution includes, what the vendor calls, an intuitive Web user interface for a “purpose-driven” user experience.

Enterprise communication and collaboration technology vendor HyperOffice is releasing a new version of its cloud-based SaaS communication suite that combines social and collaboration technologies and capabilities.

Box had a really good year last year. And it's aiming for an even better one this year. Given that Box is planning an IPO next year, this is hardly surprising. To create business and boost company value in the run up to the IPO, it has announced the creation of Box Partner Network.

We have been struggling with the downside of email for quite a while -- it's high time to act. 

Rarely do you see forces at work in the software market that are truly disruptive. The introduction of the Internet was one. It pretty much changed how all applications are designed while introducing entire classes of new applications to the market. Even rarer is to find three disruptive forces at the same time that work together to truly change the landscape of the software industry. 

Social tools and cloud computing are emerging as key strengths for talent management, while learning compliance is an Achilles heel for many organizations. Those are some of the key takeaways from a new report.

I read a good quote on Twitter last week posted by Pauli Kongas (@pkongas). He said "Intranets are not built -- they are grown. More like plants, not like buildings."

Unless you are hiding under a rock, then over the past few months you have probably been slammed with the idea of Social in the Workplace. If you are like me, you like to review the demos and look at the concepts but then chuckle a little inside when you have to look at how you actually implement something like the demo in your workplace. Everything sounds great, but how in the world does it all just happen? 

You’re a Dropbox user. Or a Box user. Or you use Google Drive. Which is great. But don’t you want to do more with your files than just share them? Enter Kerio's Samepage.

There's a lot of discussion about creating great customer experiences, but it's time we take some of the ideas and methodologies learned in that realm and apply them to creating a great employee experience, specifically, to the intranet. 

Wednesday's opening keynote at IBM Connect 2013 came in three parts, which continued to reinforced the idea of purposeful application of social in a business environment.