Information Week on Software

Judging by the investments that developers -- both well-established and start-ups -- are making in the collaboration market, software vendors are paying more than lip service to the adage that no man is an island. Certainly, businesses are investigating -- and investing in -- tools that help employees brainstorm, locate each other, schedule meetings, and communicate via social networks. Collaboration technology itself covers a broad spectrum of devices, from instant messaging and email, to cell phones and videoconferencing equipment. The cloud empowers individuals to use these tools practically anywhere, further boosting corporate productivity and spurring investment. Here's 15 of the leading cloud collaboration applications.

Broadvision is providing a free, stripped-down version of its enterprise product for businesses looking for a simple way to offer social networking functionality to employees.

Broadvision has introduced Clearvale Express, a SaaS-based social networking/enterprise 2.0 application that makes it possible for a company to provide workers with a Twitter-like activity stream that lets you know what your colleagues are working on, collaborate on files and tasks, and build collaborative communities. Workers can follow other users and view a simple Facebook-like profile wall on each user of the company network within Clearvale Express. The application is a stripped down version of Broadvision's full enterprise-class Clearvale. For small businesses or departments looking for a way to add a social element to business interactions, it can be an effective tool. Businesses and organizations using Clearvale Express that want to invite users with different email domains to collaborate with their employees need to make sure at sign-up that they use the link for membership organizations, as the default sign-up for Clearvale Express works only if all member of the network have the same email domain.

Workspace is a standard SharePoint-based user interface that ties together Infor business applications such as enterprise resource planning, business intelligence, and collaboration.

Taleo Learn is being used by employee groups within the operator of retirement communities to train and educate each other.

The beta version of the company's community software includes presence, chat, VoIP, and the capability to initiate videoconferences from inside Lync.

Teradata and SAP will be attractive targets if Oracle's rivals believe Larry Ellison is going to keep his best software to himself.

Jeff Schick, IBM's vice president of social software, gives a tour of the company's various social media applications and how he uses activity streams and communities throughout the day.

Feature provides more ways for developers to make money, combats piracy, and reduces the number of apps in the online store.

The addition of a service catalog and self-service portal will make Cisco into more of a private cloud supplier.

Moffitt Cancer Center is using Oracle technology to build a scalable, secure data analysis platform to support personalized cancer care and research.

Radian6 makes tools to monitor and analyze comments from 150 million websites, social media sites, blogs, and discussion forums.

Customers should opt to keep the vendor that's keeping their interests in mind.

Still dealing with fallout from a 2009 fraud scandal, the offshore outsourcer insists it has sufficient cash on hand to continue operations.

The browser wars are back and bigger than ever. Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, and Opera are all providing innovative, fast, and streamlined experiences for surfing the Web. And now, with the release of Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft joins in with arguably the best Web browser the company has ever released. With a revamped interface, improved security and privacy options, and much better performance, IE 9 compares well with competing browsers. Traditionally a laggard in performance tests, IE 9's new Web and JavaScript engines put it back among the pack in general performance tests and even slightly in the lead for JavaScript performance. IE 9 has also added many long missing features, such as a download manager and integrated search.

Facebook, Twitter, and other social channels are changing the way companies interact with customers, says Alex Dayon, executive VP of customer relationship management at Salesforce.com.

Forcing customers to buy Sun hardware if they want to run Oracle apps may be the only way to justify a $7.4 billion acquisition, but such a move could alienate customers and deliver them straight to rivals.

Software revenue increased 19% from a year ago, reaching $6 billion, and gross margins for the hardware business Oracle acquired when it bought Sun Microsystems reached 55% in the most recent quarter.