Outlook News & Articles

Email isn't dead right? Enterprise collaboration vendor Huddle acknowledges this and has provided a way for organizations to manage their email by integrating it with its collaboration platform.

Google's (news, site) fledgling social service app shoots to the top of the iPhone chart while the web version can now scour your Outlook contacts for friends.

Thanks to the folks at harmon.ie, intergrating SharePoint and other enterprise collaboration platforms got easier. They've released harmon.ie for SharePoint, version 2.2, which continues to let users transform clunky, cumbersome email clients (from Lotus Notes to Outlook) into a collaboration and social workspace with a few added perks and fixes.

CRM no longer simply involves an address book or phone list. Social mediums are blurring professional and personal lives. Managing your contacts, conversations and communities will require a more powerful solution than just your email inbox and smartphone contact list. You're no longer even limited to a desktop computer or browser with today's mobile-oriented tools. I tried out Gist recently and got a pleasant experience using the service via Web and mobile.

99% of the time, my response when asked a question is: "google it". The 1% is reserved for when someone asks how they can quickly schedule a meeting over the web. My response? Doodle it.

This week, a number of companies have started taking the SMB cloud market seriously, with Parallels launching an aggressive campaign to corner a market that will be worth US$ 50 billion, KnowlegeTree offering Outlook access in the cloud and Motive expanding its partner channel with US Analytics. Twitter also appears to be doing better in this space, but not as well as Facebook.

Google continues to develop its Google Docs offering this week with the addition of mobile editing capabilities in 45 languages, SharePoint gets an Outlook integrator, metadata use and misuse explained, while AuraPortal offers integrated BPM and document management.

Since the launch of Microsoft SharePoint 2010 last May, many companies have released complementary products that extend it or make it easier to use. This week, document collaboration software vendor Workshare (news, site) released Point, which enables users find and file SharePoint 2010 content from inside Microsoft Office applications.

Before I begin, I promise that you won’t have to trudge through a few paragraphs of marketing jargon to get to my point. I realize the title is very salesy. It’s that way on purpose because I believe there to be some credence to this mantra. The only downside to this challenge is that unlike Purina, you will not be receiving a free bag of dog food or a credit to your software assurance agreement if you’re unhappy. 

If you thought our coverage of Americans remaining over-worked straight through the holiday season was disturbing, then brace yourself. LexisNexis has helped bring to light a much more unnerving reality: professionals from coast to coast are so overwhelmed by the amount of daily information, they're going as far as deleting it before it's even read. In other words, we're on a beeline to a complete meltdown. 

Enterprise news was all over the board this week, ranging from the once again delayed release of ChromeOS to social e-mail à la Facebook and Mainsoft. 

If you were one of the few involved in the beta for Mainsoft's (news, site) Enterprise version of Harmon.ie, then you already know how to make your email more social. For the rest of you, it's time to find out.

In a further example of everyone trying to get along nicely, Google (news, site) can now work in harmony with your Outlook 2010 calendars.

See, Google may not be that evil after all. If not for some caveats...

Microsoft is getting all kinds of social this week, first with the general release of Docs.com, and now with an update to Outlook's Social Connector that integrates Facebook and Windows Live Messenger.

When Brad Wilson, GM for Microsoft Dynamics said the upcoming release of Dynamics CRM 2011 will raise the bar in the CRM market, he could be accused of being a tad presumptuous. However, the new release due for public beta in September looks set to challenge Salesforce.com's (news, site) dominance in this space.