Switchfast Blog: The Future of IT
New Collaboration Tool From Salesforce Pushes Notion of Social Enterprise
Tuesday, June 22, 2010 by Matt Hymel
We have seen social media grow up on a large consumer scale
while businesses struggle to adapt the platform to workplace
performance and efficiency. Today, Salesforce.com has paved a new
direction in social networking for companies. Introducing their
product, cleverly named Chatter, to the public, the
Facebook-lookalike aims to improve enterprise communication and
collaboration.
Chatter spent the last four months in a private beta after being
announced last November. In February, the beta was extended to
around 100 companies at first, but eventually expanded to more than
5,000 employees due to "overwhelming demand", according to an article from Networkworld.com.
According to TechCrunchIT.com, Salesforce CEO and
co-founder, Marc Benioff, the product leverages "Cloud 2", his term
designated to "realtime access to data and information, using
social sources, such as YouTube and Twitter." Early statistics show
that 90% of the text customers said they would recommend Chatter to
others, while 22% of the beta customers saw on average an increase
in productivity.
CNET.com points out that "Chatter works on PCs, Macs,
iPads, iPhones, Blackberrys, and soon Android -while users can
update their status messages for other followers to see, Salesforce
is not planning on building any instant messaging program, although
it would be a natural extension down the line."
Besides improving collaboration methods, Benioff has more ambitious goals for Chatter and
Salesforce. Integrating a social enterprise tool would allow
communication to expand beyond sales and customer service
departments, forcing more users to adapt the new network. Benioff
has previously stated that "Chatter should be Salesforce's first
'enterprise-wide app'".
The new program will be free to existing Salesforce users and
$15 per user per month for everyone else.
Will Chatter tap into a revolutionary, innovative niche market?
Doubtful. With Quad from Cisco taking on enterprise social
networking and HP launching 48Upper as a
"Social Collaborative IT Management Solution," companies small and
large recognize the power of enterprise networking. Soon we will
see an explosion of applications and executions aimed at unifying
enterprise endeavors into one collective effort, similar to
Facebook or Twitter summarizing all the necessary, important
information for a user's personal life.
Until Next Time -
Matthew Hymel
Switchfast Technologies
Chicago IT Support &
Consulting
Rochester
IT Support & Consulting
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