ZDNet Must Read:
SAP: New leadership, same old story?
SAP CEO Leo Apotheker has resigned and two of his former lieutenants---Bill McDermott, head of sales and Jim Hagemann Snabe, head of product development---have become co-CEOs. Are these two executives... Continued »
Category: Enterprise 2.0
February 2nd, 2010
Apple's iPad: A hit with business users?
The history of tablet PCs is littered with products that didn’t deliver, lackluster sales and poor software and hardware integration. It’s not surprising that consumers never went gaga for the tablet PC. Business has been a different story.
Simply put, you can find tablets in industries such as healthcare. And there are business applications for tablet PCs. Vertical industries may be the only place where you’ll find more than a dozen tablet PCs in the wild.
Now Apple’s iPad enters the picture. The iPad’s snazzy design and selection of apps could make it a hit with the enterprise. Will the so-called “consumerization of IT” carry the iPad to a business near you? Like the iPhone, it’s quite possible that workers will bring the iPad to work. The business case is a bit unclear at the moment, but TechRepublic has been putting a lot of thought to the iPad and business implications.
Also: 
Lessons to learn from tablets past (photos)
Here’s a look at a few ideas from TechRepublic’s Erik Eckel and Jason Hiner, the business arguments for the iPad and my take.
Eckel at the 10 Things blog makes the argument for the business user based on the iPad’s features.
Email, Internet access, ease of use, integrated keyboard, apps, iWork and calendaring and contacts make the iPad a no-brainer for traveling business users.
Of Eckel’s points, the biggest one may be the apps. He writes:
The true value of any computing platform is largely dependent upon the number of third-party applications written for it. Programs written for the iPhone will run on the iPad, and upon the release of the iPad SDK, iPad-specific applications will absolutely flood the market. If the iPhone is any barometer, just keeping track of available tools, utilities, and programs will prove mind-boggling. Already some 140,000 applications have been produced for the iPhone and downloaded some three billion times. Expect the same fervent energy to surround the creation and consumption of iPad applications.
What’s the business use here? In a word: Dashboards. Salesforce.com, Oracle and others all have iPhone apps showing sales, dashboards and corporate data. However, the screen is kind of small. With the iPad, you can check out a full dashboard of data, track sales and get your corporate health check on the go. Simply put, screen size matters for corporate dashboards. You can envision multiple business intelligence applications on deck.
Hiner goes with the following business use cases:
- Replace 200-page business documents
- Business reading and audiobooks for road warriors
- “Back of the Napkin” sketches
- Small-scale presentations
- Conference room computing
Among those points I’ll take door numbers 1 and 4. The paperless office has never happened, but if the iPad can search and scan 200-page documents you can see applications in the legal sector. Perhaps lawyers will carry iPads to the court room—of course most trials I’ve been to ban wireless access. And I know of a few Apple sales folks that are pitching legal firms to replace BlackBerries with the iPhone. When I heard this, I was surprised that Apple was devoting time to corporate sales. The iPad is a natural extension for law firms.
As for door no. 4, the iPad is a no-brainer presentation device. You prop it up and the iPad can be your presentation machine. Sure, the folks in the meeting will probably be drooling over the iPad, but at least it’ll look like they are paying attention.
Taking that presentation argument further, the iPad would be a good fit in retail environments. Customer service, inventory checks and mobile kiosks are all potential uses.
Add it up and there are a bevy of vertical industries where the iPad would apply. Watch the health care, retail and legal verticals closely.
January 19th, 2010
Despite China concerns, Google stays on track to push Apps into enterprise in 2010
When Google went public last week to announce that it had been targeted in a cyber attack from within China, it was quick to point out that this was not an attack on the cloud, but rather one on the infrastructure itself. The attackers used a “very sophisticated” piece of malware that relied on an old-school method of infiltration - spoofing e-mail addresses and using phishing scams to get real people to unintentionally launch the malware. It’s something that’s been used on legacy systems for years, but just more complex and harder to detect.
It’s an important detail for the company to emphasize as it continues its push to sell businesses on Google Apps, its cloud-based suite of business software tools. In 2009, conversations with potential customers were largely centered around cost savings. Oh sure, those folks wanted some reassurances about security on the cloud and had questions about the sort of features they’d be giving up by moving away from systems like Exchange or Lotus. But, the economy kept bringing conversations back to cost savings.
Then came China.
December 18th, 2009
Twitter, security and business app integration
Business applications have been rushing to integrate Twitter feeds—it makes them look trendy—but the security situation at the company has to give chief security officers pause.
Yes, Twitter is a fine business tool. However, Twitter’s security approach isn’t fully formed yet. The latest example: This morning Eastern time, Twitter was redirected by the Iranian Cyber Army (image via CNet News).
Twitter as usual didn’t have a lot to say about the incident in a post. The company said:
As we tweeted a bit ago, Twitter’s DNS records were temporarily compromised tonight but have now been fixed. As some noticed, Twitter.com was redirected for a while but API and platform applications were working. We will update with more information and details once we’ve investigated more fully.
There’s a full account of the blow-by-blow via TechCrunch and others. Twitter was defaced, but a lot of other key items—like its fire hose of data—were working.
Nevertheless, Twitter has had security issues before. It’s not inconceivable that some creative hacker could use Twitter to get into a key business application at some juncture. Dennis Howlett had his account hijacked. CNet’s Steven Musil details some of the recent history.
Security has been a thorny issue for Twitter in the past. In January, a hacker hijacked CNN anchor Rick Sanchez’s feed and proclaimed the journalist was “high on crack.” Twitter users have also been the target of a password-stealing phishing scam. Disguising itself as a private message that led to a fake Twitter log-in screen, the scam was widespread enough for Twitter to put a warning message on all members’ home pages alerting them of the issue.
The more Twitter focuses on the business market, the more it will have to focus on security. Simply put, security can’t be some thorny side note to its day-to-day operations. To date, Twitter has been all about scaling. Now it needs to hire a security team and chief security officer if it wants to be connected to businesses and enterprise apps.
December 10th, 2009
IBM: LotusLive paying subscribers go from 0 to 18 million in a year
IBM has 18 million paying client seats for its LotusLive cloud services, a jump that will result in a few double takes among IT industry watchers.
That LotusLive tally at the beginning of the year was nil so the growth is stunning. I double checked with IBM to make sure that those 18 million client seats were actually paying with a price of more than zero. I was told there are no asterisks here.
Now IBM isn’t forking over revenue data on LotusLive cloud services. Customers pay anywhere from $3 a month to $79 a month depending on the service. IBM recently launched iNotes to go after Gmail in the enterprise, but its range of services competes with everything from Microsoft Office to Cisco’s WebEx.
Here’s the menu of LotusLive services:
That menu yields some interesting math. Assuming all 18 million seats are paying $3 a month LotusLive could be bringing in revenue of $648 million a year. If there’s a higher blended price IBM’s cloud services could dwarf the annual revenue of Salesforce.com.
Word of IBM’s 18 million LotusLive client seats comes as the company rolls out a cloud services laboratory in Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Cloud Computing Laboratory is one of 10 cloud computing labs operated by IBM. The Hong Kong outpost will focus on Web 2.0, cloud mail and collaboration. IBM also opened a data center in South Korea with plans for another in New Zealand.
In January, IBM acquired the messaging assets of Outblaze Limited, which focused on email technology and messaging. Outblaze combined with the Hong Kong lab gives IBM a lot of firepower focused on the cloud.
Also: IBM targets Google Apps for business, undercuts pricing and touts reliability
December 9th, 2009
Google exec on Apps uptime, security and enterprise traction
Google Apps is looking to “overachieve” on its 99.9 percent service level agreement to enterprises, according to an executive speaking at an investor conference.
Matthew Glotzbach, director of product management at Google, fielded questions at the Barclays Capital investor conference. Glotzbach noted that Google Apps now has 20 million users.
The message: Google Apps is an enterprise player. Now it may take a revolution brought on by college kids entering the workforce, but Google is an enterprise contender.
Also: Google’s Schmidt makes enterprise app case as consumer, corporate lines blur
Get an email alert on all cloud computing content
Among the key points:
- On the reliability of Google Apps (all resources, webcasts and whitepapers), Glotzbach noted that when “an Exchange server goes down the New York Times doesn’t write about it. We’re held to a higher bar.” Glotzbach argued that Google’s uptime was as good if not better than what on-premise software can provide.
- Nevertheless, Google Apps is looking to “overachieve on three 9s service level agreements. Why? Glotzbach said that Google is helping customers see that “in reality the Google environment significantly better than what they have.”
- Security worries are overblown. Glotzbach added that chief information security officers regularly review Google’s security practices before buying into Apps. “[CISOs] always walk away convinced. I think that will be an education and evolution [on Google Apps security],” said Glotzbach.
- Glotzbach made the distinction between Google Apps for consumers and enterprises. He reiterated that Google doesn’t see data or passwords for enterprise service. “The customers own their data and we have no right to analyze it,” he said.
- On the Chrome OS, Glotzbach indicated that Google may be thinking beyond netbooks. “There’s a long term use for the Chrome OS in the enterprise,” he said.
- As for Google Apps adoption, Glotzbach said that three-quarters of universities are moving to cloud computing and well over half of those have chosen Google. That university adoption bodes well for the future. “New out of school employees are demanding new technology,” said Glotzbach. “That demand will carry over into the business environment.”
December 9th, 2009
Twitter to open fire hose to developers: Here comes the business app deluge
Twitter on Wednesday confirmed its place as a development platform, said it has 50,000 apps and announced plans to open up its fire hose of real-time updates to everyone. Rest assured business app developers will be among the first running to Twitter’s fire hose.
Twitter’s news, revealed at the Le Web conference in Paris, was delivered by Ryan Sarver, Twitter’s director of platform. According to news outlets on scene such as ReadWriteWeb, TechCrunch and VentureBeat, Sarver said all developers will have access to Twitter’s full fire hose in early 2010. Twitter will also launch a developer site and support browser-less applications. As Louis Gray notes, Twitter’s ecosystem is maturing rapidly.
The enterprise hook here is fairly obvious. Everyone from Salesforce to SAP is tapping Twitter as a sentiment measurement tool. SAP had a powwow for “influencers” on Tuesday and I found myself paying more attention to the Twitter-powered sentiment indicator (right) more than the actual keynotes. My hunch is our resident curmudgeon Dennis Howlett may have been skewing the negative sentiment just by watching. Nevertheless, the Twitter-powered analysis from the Enterprise Irregulars was valuable.
Here’s the point: Twitter has become a big sentiment indicator for companies looking to connect with customers and drive sales. Sure, Twitter has a lot of distraction and noise, but in the end it’s a valuable business tool.
Via its APIs and fire hose, Twitter will set off a bevy of monitoring apps and integration with existing enterprise software packages. That integration is well underway—see Salesforce.com’s Chatter and SAP for instance—but opening the fire hose to developers is likely to accelerate the B2B development process.
It’s still a bit fuzzy to me how Twitter will make money. Twitter’s ecosystem and developer program will be huge, but not in an Apple profit center type of way. With Apple’s developer platform and App Store all roads lead to dollar signs via more iPod and iPhone sales. Twitter will quickly have a mature development platform, but the business model will remain immature.
But those business details are for Twitter to figure out. Enterprise types are likely to take Twitter’s fire hose of real-time data and find ROI more quickly.
December 2nd, 2009
Zoho integrates Google Docs: A nice strategy
What do you do when you arguably have a better suite than the big dog on the block yet lack the marketing and distribution heft? You integrate.
In a nutshell, that appears to be Zoho’s plan (Techmeme, Zoho overview). Zoho provides an application suite that includes everything from office applications to CRM to other enterprise tools.
A few key points:
- Google Docs is integrated with Zoho Applications - Zoho CRM, Mail, Docs & Projects.
- This integration is an extension of the Google-Zoho sign-on integration.
- Documents from Google can be integrated into Zoho CRM.
- Attachments between Google Docs and Zoho products such as Mail are seamless.
Now let’s ponder the strategy here.
- By integrating with Google Docs, Zoho can pitch a wider audience on its apps.
- This integration is key as Zoho aims for the stack above its office productivity apps—think CRM.
- And at the very least Zoho is put on Google’s radar. I’ve long argued that Google should scoop up Zoho to advance its enterprise apps strategy.
November 17th, 2009
Riverbed announces plans for virtual appliance to accelerate, optimize cloud
Today at Interop, Riverbed Technology is announcing a new push into network acceleration and optimization for the cloud, a virtual appliance, if you will, that is intended to mirror what’s being done on the private cloud.
When the servers are yours and they’re housed on-site, you can install things to your infrastructure, such as the network optimization appliances that Riverbed has already been offering. Network optimization tools can do a number of things, including re-routing traffic to ensure bandwidth for heavy-duty tasks such as streaming video or using deduplication to transport just changes to a file - instead of the whole file - over the network.
Related coverage: Watching the WAN: Is it time to invest?
Riverbed said it has plans to change that in 2010, initially with a virtual appliance called Steelhead for the cloud. In the simplest terms, it’s a virtual version of the appliance that resides at the gate of the cloud to manage network performance of applications and files. In a statement, Eric Wolford, a senior VP at Riverbed, said:
Our new technology will change the way enterprises and governments think about storage. No longer will storage have to be tethered locally to the server. This frees IT leaders to locate and move storage assets to sites anywhere in the world, even thousands of miles away, to deliver the most cost-effective and intelligent architectures. This capability allows enterprises to bridge the public cloud and the private cloud - allowing them to take advantage of the best of both worlds
November 4th, 2009
Xobni expands to include enterprise but where are Web, Mobile and even Mac versions?
Xobni, the add-on tool that taps into Outlook to unleash contacts, has been smart about its growth, launching an enterprise version this week at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in San Francisco. And for the most part, the reviews of Xobni Enterprise have been pretty favorable. 
I won’t argue that Xobni, the company, hasn’t been smart about the directions it’s taken. Microsoft’s Outlook, after all, is widely used in corporate settings - and I know for sure that my work inbox is far more unruly than my personal one. Unfortunately, I use a Mac, which means my version of Microsoft Office includes Entourage, not Outlook - and that leaves me unable to use Xobni.
But I’m not writing this to whine about products that aren’t available for Mac users (even though Apple has gained share on Windows in recent quarters). Instead, I can’t help but think about the city of Los Angeles, which recently voted to “Go Google” for e-mail services.
Yes, I understand that you can route Web mail into Outlook through POP, but isn’t the whole point of dumping Exchange in favor Google - beyond the cost savings - to use a Web-based interface for access anywhere there’s a Web browser? I like the idea of using Xobni to better manage an out-of-control inbox but not at the expense of being tied to a single tool in a single program on a single computer. Maybe it’s me but that approach feels very 1999.
I know Xobni has a Blackberry version in the works (but nothing yet for Android or the iPhone.) Don’t get me wrong - from what I’ve seen, I think Xobni is a great product. But if it wants to maintain that momentum, it’s going to do more than respond to changing times, it’s going to have to get ahead of the trends. Today, the big trends are a push toward the Web and a push into mobile.
From that perspective, Xobni still has a lot more work to do.
October 26th, 2009
Enterprise IT's trust level of Google will increase
TechRepublic’s CIO Jury finds that IT leaders trust Microsoft more than Google as a technology partner, but tune in next year.
Jason Hiner outlines the latest findings in the TechRepublic CIO Jury. In a nutshell, it looks like this:
So why do I expect Google’s standing to look better next year? Last week, I was at the Gartner IT Symposium and you couldn’t escape chatter about Google and what it may be able to do for the enterprise. And here’s what caught my attention: The audience—not the analysts—were yapping about Google in the enterprise.
October 22nd, 2009
Google's Schmidt: Mimicking Office completely not 'a good use of our time'
Google CEO Eric Schmidt acknowledges that Google Docs lacks workflow features that Microsoft Office has, but isn’t trying to emulate the suite.
In an interview with Stephen Shankland at CNet News, Schmidt continued his courting of the enterprise. Schmidt on Wednesday had a good performance at the Gartner IT Symposium. Schmidt largely focused on the enterprise and courting CIOs. Overall, Schmidt was upfront with enterprise managers, who are increasingly at least considering Google to outsource email.
October 21st, 2009
Google's Schmidt makes enterprise app case as consumer, corporate lines blur
In a room full of chief information officers, Google CEO Eric Schmidt made his case for the search giant’s enterprise products adding that the boundary between a corporate user and a consumer “is becoming less and less.”
Speaking at the Gartner IT Symposium 2009 in Orlando in a Q&A with analysts Whit Andrews and Hung LeHong, Schmidt added the consumer and enterprise application market are increasingly merging.
“We don’t distinguish between enterprise and non-enterprise (customers). We assume that boundary is becoming less and less,” said Schmidt, who added that applications will span consumers and businesses. “We’ll keep coming up with ways to span the bridge between the consumer and business.”
Case in point: Google Wave. Schmidt said he doesn’t think of Google Wave “as a consumer app at all.” Wave is a new way to collaborate, said Schmidt and its features are “applicable to the corporation.”
Schmidt encouraged corporate buyers to be skeptical about Google’s offerings and hold the search giant accountable. He told IT buyers to evaluate the products and if there are problems to let Google know. Schmidt said Google was determined to get where enterprises needed it to go.
Schmidt thinks that the enterprise business for Google can be a multi-billion dollar one—actually “humongous”—just behind the display ad business. That’s some heady growth considering that Gartner calculated that for every dollar Google makes, about 3 cents come from enterprise buyers.
Among other topics:
October 20th, 2009
The business-to-business of Gist
Gist, an online service that integrates your social stream with tools like Microsoft Outlook and Salesforce.com, recently launched its public beta to bring in individual users, but is wasting no time spreading its B2B wings. Gist will ride shotgun with Microsoft’s launch of its new CRM software and tag along with Exchange. And the company is talking with potential partners like SAP and IBM’s Lotus unit in upcoming weeks.
Those tidbits emerged from a conversation I had with Gist CEO T.A. McCann and Robert Pease, vice president of marketing. Gist had a presence at the Gartner IT Symposium as it went about educating CIOs and tech executives about its service.
Gist already has a strong following among sales types because its algorithms can surface important contacts and flag folks they should be in touch with. It’s pretty clear that McCann and Pease get the business market and how it could be a handholding service to enterprises that still aren’t sure what to make of social networking. Gist’s pitch to the CIO types could be: You don’t have to Twitter, but you need to follow it. That’s where Gist comes in.
The Gist service analyzes your activity stream—think Outlook, Twitter and Facebook—and uses its importance algorithm to highlight and organize contacts. There’s an obvious business case if Gist can save people time and help close sales. “Business professionals will trade money for time and insight,” says McCann. Read the rest of this entry »
October 19th, 2009
How did IT fall so far behind the tech curve?
Information technology departments are overloaded, missing the consumerization wave, and failing to use new developments to cut their budgets.
Those are some of the takeaways from a Gartner presentation at the IT Symposium in Orlando. The spiel by Gartner analysts David Mitchell Smith and Tom Austin revolves around the state of IT departments as technology is rapidly being changed by their users. How exactly did IT become so crotchety?
Here’s the scene setter:
October 12th, 2009
With AppSense, making sense of managing the virtual desktop user experience
As more enterprises turn to virtual desktop infrastructure to save money and leverage the infrastructure they already have, managing the user experience has become critical.
But how do you maintain standardization across large organizations while keeping the user happy at each log on?
AppSense might have the answer. The U.K.-based company goes beyond profile management to offer non-persistent, leveraged corporate OS and apps on demand from a central location.
By viewing the desktop in three separate layers — the OS, the applications and user environment management – AppSense tries to allow IT to standardize the corporate desktop and automate the delivery of the user’s working environment, without restricting a user’s choice of screensaver, wallpaper, font size and so forth.
Its technology is used by some of the world’s biggest corporations, including JPMorgan Chase, Lowe’s, United Airlines, Wachovia, Walmart, ESPN and CB Richard Ellis.
I spoke with AppSense’s VP of Strategy, Martin Ingram, about what his company is doing now in the VDI space.
October 8th, 2009
Engine Yard raises $19 million in VC funding
Engine Yard, a Ruby on Rails developer, raised $19 million in a third round of venture capital.
The company, which has raised $37 million to date, received funding from DAG Ventures, Bay Partners and Presidio Ventures. Benchmark Capital, Amazon and New Enterprise Associates—all previous investors—also participated in the latest round.
Engine Yard is worth watching. Ruby on Rails is a rapid development framework that underpins many next generation companies such as Twitter. However, Engine Yard is aiming to take Ruby on Rails deeper into the enterprise. It launched a cloud computing platform and is partners with the likes of Amazon Web Services.
According to a statement, Engine Yard will use the funding to build out its cloud platform to “meet enterprise requirements” and build out its development teams.
Also:
October 7th, 2009
Google: Aiming for 99.99 percent uptime with business Gmail
Google executives addressed recent Gmail outages and noted that the company is currently running at a 99.9 percent reliability rate. The goal: Be at 99.99 percent by the end of the quarter.
Speaking at a powwow with reporters, Google Sergey Brin spent a bit of time talking about the search giant’s enterprise efforts. Last week, IBM launched a rival to Google Apps for business that undercuts Google on pricing and promises more reliability.
Brin said that Google was farther ahead on email and collaborative document editing and is adding features for the enterprise. Brin also added that Google was focusing on not just its outages, but the response to them.
For instance, one outage could have been resolved in five to 10 minutes, but the company made errors that extended recovery time to an hour. Brin said the company is also working to group customers so one outage has a limited impact.
October 6th, 2009
Helpstream aims to be bridge for social CRM, marketing and returns
Helpstream on Tuesday launched a new module that aims to bridge customer service, social media and tangible marketing results.
Helpstream, which is a social CRM software-as-a-service provider, acts as an add-on to what Oracle and Salesforce.com offer. What’s notable about Helpstream’s latest module is that it is trying to quantify the links between customer service, marketing and social media. The main effort: Integrate business processes with social customer service.
October 2nd, 2009
IBM targets Google Apps for business, undercuts pricing and touts reliability
IBM is going after Google Apps Premier hard and has the pricing to show it’s serious. Big Blue is announcing the general availability of LotusLive iNotes, a cloud email, calendar and contact management service, for $36 a year per user. Google Apps Premier runs $50 per user a year.
The LotusLive iNotes launch, set to be announced on Monday, pushes reliability in a big way. Taking a jab at Google’s outages, IBM said it’s imperative that cloud computing “is ready for the enterprise when it’s designed for the enterprise, by the enterprise, and of the enterprise.” Word of IBM’s iNotes move began to surface late Thursday and Big Blue has had a LotusLive iNotes site live for days.
Sean Poulley, vice president of IBM’s online collaboration and cloud services, says the idea behind LotusLive iNotes is to bring more security, reliability and privacy to enterprises that want Webmail. “These things matter a lot to the customer,” says Poulley, who described Google’s Gmail as a “consumer grade service.” “We’re bringing business class services and support with mission critical reliability at a price lower than the competition.”
A few key points on LotusLive iNotes:
- IBM is acknowledging companies want hybrid cloud systems and it isn’t going to cede the online portion of the equation to Google. IBM said that LotusLive iNotes is interoperable with Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange.
- The company is pushing security and reliability as its big pitch, banking on IBM’s reputation as an enterprise service provider. LotusLive iNotes features touted by IBM include secure email via any Web browser, offline capability, mobile mail and cloud centralized calendar and contracts.
- IBM is aiming to get its foot in the door at companies that are looking for “gradual or dramatic migrations to the cloud” while supporting on-premise software. Poulley says that IBM isn’t pushing the market in any one direction. He acknowledged there will be some companies that want all on-premise software and others that want everything in the cloud. The big middle tier will be hybrid.
- The company appears to be setting up Lotus as a cloud brand. When asked whether Lotus could become synonymous with enterprise 2.0, Poulley pointed out Lotus Connections and other Web 2.0 features IBM is embracing. “In the last three years most of the Lotus portfolio has been adapted to be Web 2.0 centric,” says Poulley, who added Connections is the fastest growing Lotus brand IBM has ever had.
- Big Blue sees the Google threat as so serious it’s willing to blow up pricing for share. There are a few notable Google jabs including:
LotusLive iNotes was built for business use. Unlike other Web mail services, LotusLive iNotes accounts are not co-mingled with free, consumer accounts nor are they targeted for advertising spam.
- There are some fine print items to consider. For instance, LotusLive iNotes comes with 1GB of storage per user. Google provides 25GB. Poulley said that IBM focused on the features that businesses really want. “Some enterprise customers don’t want to keep 25 GB online because it’s a compliance and audit issue,” says Poulley.
The big question: Will IBM’s move work? There’s no question that Google may be vulnerable following well-publicized Gmail outages. And large enterprises may think twice about Google. IBM says “there is zero tolerance in the big leagues for frequent outages or doubt about the sanctity of business data.”
What’s also notable here is that IBM may be using the cloud Lotus version to preserve its on-premise business. It’s also interesting that IBM is targeting Google, but doesn’t mention Microsoft, which also plans a cloud version of Office. IBM may be subtly jabbing at Microsoft when it says LotusLive iNotes gives users on-premise functionality “without adding on extra features they do not require.”
September 30th, 2009
Zimbra launches new suite; Hits 50 million paid email accounts
Zimbra on Wednesday launched a new collaboration suite and said it hit the 50 million paid mailbox mark.
The open source email and collaboration software provider, a unit of Yahoo for now, called the Zimbra Collaboration Suite 6.0 its “most significant upgrade” and rolled out a bevy of new features (statement, Zimbra blog, feature list). Zimbra is used by more than 100,000 organizations including companies like Bechtel, Comcast and WebMD and a host of government agencies and colleges and universities.
Given chatter about Yahoo potentially offloading Zimbra the statement provides a few curious tidbits. On one hand, Zimbra plays up its momentum and rapid growth (read: we’re a valuable asset to a buyer) yet notes how its features are integrated into Yahoo Mail’s overhaul (read: we’re not going anywhere).
Among the key features in the latest collaboration suite:
Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Smart Planet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet sister site TechRepublic. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
Follow Larry on Twitter.
Subscribe to Between the Lines via Email alerts or RSS.
SponsoredWhite Papers, Webcasts, and Downloads
- Fundamentals of Volume Activation Microsoft Volume Activation is a set of activation methods applicable to systems ... Download Now
- Connecting to Better Customer Service Qwest Communications Build a robust voice and data network infrastructure, and transform customer information and feedback into actionable results. Download Now
- Business Value of Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and Live Migration Microsoft Today's IT departments are under increasing pressure to manage and support ... Download Now
Recent Entries
- Google Buzz: Forget Twitter, Microsoft’s SharePoint is a bigger target
- Meet Google Buzz: Google goes social [live blog]
- Seagate unveils 600GB, 2.5-inch enterprise hard drive
- RIM’s BlackBerry, Apple iPhone rule smartphone roost
- CIOs: Apple iPad, slate PCs have a business role
Blogs From Our Sponsors
Most Popular Posts
- Dumping my laptop for...a server?
- Meet the iPad: Apple goes aggressive; $499 lowest price point
- Apple iPad: One heat seeking missile aimed at netbooks, e-readers
- Apple's iPad vs. Amazon's Kindle: It's not zero sum
- Apple's tablet: What happens when the tech lust wears off?
- Apple Tablet: Mind share over market share
Top Rated
- Assessing Google's showdown with China: Does it make sense?+64 votes
- IBM's big win: Panasonic dumps Exchange, moves to LotusLive cloud services+29 votes
- Dumping my laptop for...a server?+25 votes
- Post mortem: Our site fail Wednesday and what went wrong+21 votes
- Apple's iPad vs. Amazon's Kindle: It's not zero sum+19 votes
- Obama's $3.8 trillion proposed budget: Parsing the tech priorities+16 votes
- Report: Bad guys go social; Facebook tops security risk list+15 votes
- 10 must-have Android apps+14 votes
Premier Vendor Content Whitepapers, webcasts & resources from our Power Center Sponsors
Archives
Favorite Links
Favorite Sites
- Ars Technica
- Deal Journal
- Engadget
- Enterprise Irregulars
- GigaOm
- Google Blogoscoped
- Horses for Sources
- Mac Rumors
- Mashable
- Official Google Blog
- Read/WriteWeb
- Scobleizer
- Seeking Alpha
- TechCrunch
- Techdirt
- Techmeme
- The Ponderings of Woodrow
- The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)
- Valleywag
- ZDNet: Latest blogs and news
ZDNet Blogs
- A Developer's View
- All About Microsoft
- The Apple Core
- Between the Lines
- BriefingsDirect
- Collaboration 2.0
- Dev Connection
- Digital Cameras & Camcorders
- Ed Bott's Microsoft Report
- Emerging Tech
- Enterprise Web 2.0
- Forrester Research
- Googling Google
- GreenTech Pastures
- Hardware 2.0
- Home Theater
- iGeneration
- Irregular Enterprise
- IT Project Failures
- Laptops & Desktops
- Lawgarithms
- Linux and Open Source
- Managing L'unix
- The Mobile Gadgeteer
- On Sustainability
- The Semantic Web
- Service Oriented
- Smartphones and Cell Phones
- Social Business
- Social CRM: The Conversation
- Software & Services Safari
- Software as Services
- Storage Bits
- Team Think
- Tech Broiler
- Technology and the Global Supply Chain
- Tom Foremski: IMHO
- The ToyBox
- Virtually Speaking
- The Web Life
- ZDNet Education
- ZDNet Government
- ZDNet Healthcare
- Zero Day
White Papers, Webcasts, and Downloads
- Volume Activation Deployment Guide Microsoft This guide describes Microsoft? Volume Activation deployment concepts ... Download Now
- Top 7 Things You Should Know About Activation and Genuine Windows Microsoft As an IT Pro, you should be aware that volume activation is a required ... Download Now
- Connecting to Better Customer Service Qwest Communications Build a robust voice and data network infrastructure, and transform customer information and feedback into actionable results. Download Now
Popular Sanity Saver Videos
