Taking aim at Microsoft SharePoint and IBM's Lotus technology, Salesforce.com has launched a private beta of its Salesforce Chatter enterprise real-time enterprise collaboration application and platform.
Taking aim at Microsoft SharePoint and IBM's Lotus technology,
Salesforce.com has launched a private beta of its Salesforce Chatter
enterprise real-time enterprise collaboration application and
platform.
Salesforce.com introduced its Salesforce Chatter
solution at the company's annual Dreamforce '09 developer conference in
November 2009. Since then the company's customer base has requested
access to the enterprise collaboration and social networking
technology. And this private beta includes 100 of Salesforce.com's
leading customers, including Reed Exhibitions, Schumacher Group, and
TransUnion. In the private beta, customers will also be able to have
anytime, anywhere access to Chatter's real-time feeds via BlackBerry or
iPhone mobile devices.
Salesforce.com officials said Salesforce Chatter is scheduled to be
generally available in 2010. Moreover, Salesforce Chatter will be
included in all paid editions of Salesforce CRM and Force.com. And a
new Chatter Edition is expected to be available for $50 per user per
month and will include Salesforce Chatter, Salesforce Content and
Force.com.
"Salesforce Chatter is the killer app we've been waiting for," said
Dominic Shine, group CIO at Reed Exhibitions, in a statement. "With
Salesforce Chatter, we can empower our employees with real-time
collaboration to know it now and be more productive."
Indeed, Salesforce.com officials said Chatter is easy to use and
delivers relevant information to each user based on the people,
documents, and applications they decide to follow. While similar to the
look of popular consumer social networking sites, Chatter targets the
enterprise and enables companies to collaborate in real time through
profiles, feeds and status updates.
"The end of legacy collaboration software like Microsoft SharePoint
and IBM Lotus Notes is here," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of
Salesforce.com, in a statement. "Consumer Internet services like
Facebook and Twitter have shown us better ways to collaborate. Using
the same social features and real-time feeds popularized by these
consumer services, Salesforce Chatter changes the game for
collaboration in the enterprise - all without the cost and complexity
of software."
Salesforce Chatter features include support for profiles, status
updates, chatter feeds, application updates, document sharing, security
and social sharing, access to social networks such as Facebook and
Twitter, support for Salesforce.com's AppExchange, and support for
mobile and desktop platforms.
Moreover, according to Salesforce.com, with the release of Chatter,
the more than 135,000 custom applications built on the company's
Force.com application development platform may become social and
collaborative. And all of the social features of Chatter will also be
available as part of the Chatter collaboration platform. This includes
Chatter feeds, status updates, custom app updates, profiles, and
content sharing, the company said.
"Salesforce Chatter enables a new level of collaboration for our
sales and service reps, and real-time awareness for TransUnion
leadership," said Matthew Brady, director of sales automation at
TransUnion, in a statement. "We view Salesforce Chatter as a potential
game changer because it presents great promise in our drive toward
deeper customer engagement and 360-degree visibility into those
relationships."
Darryl K. Taft covers the development tools and developer-related issues beat from his office in Baltimore. He has more than 10 years of experience in the business and is always looking for the next scoop. Taft is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and was named 'one of the most active middleware reporters in the world' by The Middleware Co. He also has his own card in the 'Who's Who in Enterprise Java' deck.
Email
Print
