Enterprise Web 2.0 in Your Pocket
Near-Time, a Web 2.0 software company that makes wikis, blogs and discussion forums for businesses, can now push those collaborative technologies to mobile devices in the form of widgets.
I caught up today by phone with the North Carolina-based Near-Time's co-founders, CEO Reid Conrad and CTO Lee Buck. They said they were able to offer this capability largely by focusing on being compatible with the web-browser on mobile phones, which have become more sophisticated and closer to the capability you'd get on your computer, especially with the iPhone.
"Modern browsers are more available on mobile phones and devices," Conrad said. "If you’re running Safari in an iPod touch or iPhone, you can access your Near-Time community."
Focusing on the browser for mobile makes sense for Near-Time given it's a pure SaaS (software as a service) vendor. Its web-based portal allows groups to collaborate on key projects using Web 2.0 technologies such as wikis and blogs.
A large portion of Near-Time’s customers, who pay $50 per user per year, use the tools to collaborate with external customers and business partners on projects and partnerships.
Since Near-Time hosts the data, only a web-browser, login and password for each user is required to get up and running. With the widget capability, users can push their company blog or wiki as a widget to the page of their choice, such as an iGoogle page, and view it there on their mobile browser.
Sort of off-topic (well, off-topic for this blog post, but not a for a couple stories I'm working on), I asked Conrad if he found his customers were line-of-business heads circumventing their IT departments by purchasing his service with a corporate credit card.
His reply: When he and Buck started Near-Time in 2003, they dealt with a lot of line of business heads going around IT and buying their product, especially if their collaboration needs were at the bottom of the IT project list.
Now, he says, the happy medium rests in working with both business users (to hear their needs in collaboration software) and IT (to know what administrative capabilities they want).
"IT needs platforms, but they also need the control and security," he said. "Line of business and IT are starting to work together. The maturity for everybody has kicked in."
Previous Post: Are We Seeing a More Enterprise Apple (For Real This Time)?Next Post: New Privacy Features in Facebook Make It Easier to Manage Identity
Most Discussed Posts
Cloud computing has emerged as one of the most significant game changers to hit the technology landscape in the past 20 years. With this massive expansion of the cloud, the perception of the IT organization is shifting from a utility player to a change agent. This eBook breaks down five ways progressive organizations are using cloud-based IT Management solutions to help drive innovation and become more strategic, including: adding visibility and analytics, speeding up time-to-value, lowering costs, improving prioritization, and providing a blueprint for future cloud deployments.
Read the white paper to see how IBM helped Citigroup deliver new services and enhancements to their 200 million customers faster.
There are 3 ways to modernize legacy applications: rewrite completely, acquire packaged solutions or migrate existing code. This paper explains why it's best to migrate and how IBM® Rational® software can help.
Accommodating specific lines of business can result in a hybrid ecosystem of applications and servers. The resulting complexity of this architecture makes for an environment that is costly to maintain and difficult to change when addressing new challenges.
This whitepaper will help you to define a mobile device passcode policy. Security managers must attempt to reconcile two opposing goals. They must: 1) create a passcode policy that is strong enough to protect the device if it is lost or stolen, while: 2) not annoying users with needless length or complexity.
This whitepaper, authored by The Radicati Group, looks at the key reasons organizations should consider moving to a cloud-based archiving solution. Email archiving solutions enable organizations to store, monitor, and collect electronic data exchanged by their users to comply with internal policies and regulations.
ATERNITY will showcase a 30-minute demo on how Fortune 500 companies are leveraging its award-winning FPI Platform to deliver a user-centric approach to Proactive IT Management.
For businesses to move forward and tap into the ever-expanding universe of Internet users and network-enabled devices, it's critical to learn how to make the transition to IPv6. Learn the critical steps your organization must take to make a seamless transition-and keep your business world connected.
Learn how IT teams can protect against spear phishing tactics. Harry Sverdlove, chief technology officer of Bit9 offers a frank discussion about spear phishing - the most common technique used in today's advanced attacks.
Learn how to build a solid business case for your migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux so you can run leaner, innovate faster, be more flexible and own the New Now.
Social media isn't about you; it's about everything around you. As you consider how your customers want to communicate with you, social media is something that can't be ignored. But what should your strategy be? Is social media "just another channel?" What kind of a plan makes sense for your contact center and for your customers? Join our experts as they share their insight and research results.
Hardware tokens were a popular method of strong authentication in past years but the cumbersome provisioning and distribution tasks, high support requirements and replacement costs have limited their growth. The additional log-in steps that hardware tokens require and the resulting user frustrations have limited adoption and make them impractical for larger scale partner and customer applications.
Sponsored Links
