Social Computing News & Articles

The knowledge management site KMWorld has produced its list of the outfits making waves in the world of data awareness. Is anyone you know on the list? The answer is a resounding yes.

Being selected as a finalist in the 2010 CODiE awards wasn't enough for Coveo (news, site), they just had to go out and make some more improvements to their enterprise search engine? What's new? A little bit of Enterprise 2.0, Outlook and Analytics.

A solid 2009 behind them, Jive Software (news, site) has elected to accelerate their investment in SBS, starting with a new module for Innovation Management called Ideation.

It seems like just about everyone offers some type of solution that integrates with SharePoint (news, site). But for every potential integration, it seems like there's another vendor out there that offers a solution designed to replace SharePoint.

And there are a number of alternative solutions to SharePoint on the market today. Not all are identical in capabilities, not all claim to be SharePoint alternatives -- even though they are.

We took a look at some of these "SharePoint Alternatives" and let you know what SharePoint functionality they replace. Here's what we found.

What to watch this year when it comes to the enterprise? The ever-wise Dion Hinchcliffe of ZDNet has his money on the growth of SaaS and Social Computing, but he's not holding his breath. 

With the release of SharePoint 2010 (news, site) getting closer, people are getting either a) excited, b) nervous or c) all of the above. Whatever your mindset, here are 5 changes coming with SharePoint 2010 which you should take note of.

Web content management got a lot of attention in 2009. The old way of doing things was declared over and a new way of thinking declared necessary. Many things changed, from the economic environment to the way Web CMS products are being built and deployed.

What we started seeing is that systems can't just slide by with basic functionality, or traditional deployment models. And one of the things we did before skipping out for our holiday break was to talk about the current trends in web content management.

Here's a recap:

• Platform vs Specialization: We are seeing the division of WCM platforms and vendors offering specialized WCM point solutions. We are also having great discussions on the beloved WCM acronym and where its future lies.
• Integration of Web Analytics: The needs to provide engaging user experiences is more important than ever before. But do we really need our analytics solutions to be tightly integrated? The debate is on.
• Tightly Integrated Search: We've always had some kind of search within our WCMs -- or at least we should have -- whether it was part of the solution or third party. But now the move towards tighter integration is upon us.
• Cloud Hosted vs SaaS: The battle for the cloud: is the best approach cloud hosted or SaaS? Some vendors will straddle the fence, while others will stand their ground.
• Integration of Social Media: Lots of social media functionality in WCM systems, a little bit of WCM in social computing apps. Are the two converging? Or just battling for prime time real estate?

You can read the full article Emerging Trends in Web Content Management to get more detail, but we are curious to know:

Earlier this week, Salesforce.com (news, site) announced the closing of private placement funding in the amount of US$ 575 million. It comes in the form of convertible senior notes due 2015.

Salesforce.com says these notes are unsecured, unsubordinated obligations, with interest being paid semi-annually at a rate of 0.75% per year.

According to the company, they expect to use some of the funds for general purposes which could include an acquisition or two, maybe a joint venture or something similar.

Tom Foremski, of ZDNet, sees social media as a prime acquisition market for Salesforce.com. He mentioned SocialText, Six Apart and BrightIdea as potential acquisition targets. All are already in the enterprise arena, so it may not take as much work to get them integrated and into the hands of Salesforce.com customers.

And social media does make sense. Many enterprise content management vendors are integrating social media capabilities into their solutions, many social computing vendors are talking more and more about the integration of business and social networking and social media capabilities.

With Salesforce.com offering a host of cloud based business services, integrating the much in demand social media capabilities seem almost a requirement to stay competitive. And they have already started with their own Salesforce Chatter service offering, but they could go much further.

But what will they actually do with the money? We'll be watching to see what they do next.

One of the most well-known SharePoint-based social computing vendors, NewsGator (news, site) has just announced an acquisition deal with Tomoye (news, site) that expands their solution offering and markets, and could just put them above the rest for an end-to-end Enterprise 2.0 platform.

A lot of people are waiting for the arrival of SharePoint 2010 (news, site) so they can officially get to work developing sites and applications. But along with a new version you can install and work with locally, the arrival of SharePoint 2010 also means changes for SharePoint Online.

Yes, we all know web content management (WCM) 1.0 is dead. But we still seem to be having a hard time defining exactly what 2.0 is about. We will continue to grapple with the emerging definition. In the mean time there are emerging trends shaping web content management and the vendors that provide it. Here's a look at what's on our radar.

We know there's a growing need within organizations to provide collaboration tools to project teams and areas like marketing and sales. But development teams also want and need collaboration capabilities, just not in a separate tool, but rather in the tools they already use daily.

And Mainsoft has striven to provide those collaboration capabilities to development teams using Rational Jazz. In the past, they have connected SharePoint and Lotus Quickr to Rational Jazz for document collaboration.

Now they add new social capabilities to the development platform from IBM Lotus Connections. Currently a technology preview and developed in collaboration with IBM Lotus and IBM Rational, users of Rational Jazz now have direct access to Lotus Connections capabilities like blogs, wikis, profiles, activities and more.

Team Concert and Lotus Connections Integration

The integration also enables Team Concert users to directly micro-blog, provide status updates and search profiles.

Says Michael Loria, vice president of business development, IBM Rational Software:

By working closely with Mainsoft, IBM Rational and IBM Lotus are making it easy for developers to exchange experiences, thoughts, and ideas with technical and business experts throughout the enterprise – boosting collaboration and agility in the software delivery process.

And there you have it. Developers go forth and collaborate.

It has been a very good year for social computing solutions in the enterprise. For NewsGator (news, site), the tightly integrated relationship with SharePoint has likely proved a smart move and will continue to do so into 2010.

Atlassian (news, site) comes to the table with the latest release of the Confluence enterprise wiki. Version 3.1's support for OpenSocial Gadgets makes it easy to add new functionality to Confluence and Confluence to other applications.

The afternoon session entitled, “Topic 4: Leveraging the Open Web” at the Defrag 2009 Conference compared neo-industrialization to practical application of content creation.

Following their separate presentations, moderator Mr. Ben Kepes asked the speakers, “How do we rebuild without making mistakes?” (a timely question for this particular event whose attendees have pondered continuously the challenge of productivity and automation in a jobless recovery).

Panel member Peter Sweeney of Primal Fusion responded, “The truth is, if you’re doing something formulaic, computer science will model it and explore automation. This should not be feared. It’s a far more participatory, far more transparent thing.”

Mr. Kepes commended the next speaker, Mr. Svein-Magnus Sorensen of ObjectWare for his use of GoldCorp as an example of crowd sourcing but asked, “isn’t this more an example of outsourcing?”

“Yes,” Mr. Sorensen replied. “But it’s also an early example where the possibility of truly open data works in the commercial environment.”

Mr. Paul Miller of Cloud of Data expanded upon his premise of research improved by open data, adding that this is most often discussed in the public sector for the public good.

When the questions were opened up to the floor, Mr. Rob Reich of OneRiot asked, ‘Is there confusion between openness and standardizing? Which is more important?”

Although the panel acknowledged that seemingly the smallest issues can become huge ones, openness is more important.