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Quick review of different sync-share-store services, starting with DropBox and ending with three Open Source services. Very interesting. Things have progressed since I last worked on the SurDocs project for Sursen. No mention in this review of file formats, conversion or viewing issues. I do know that CrocoDoc is used by near every sync-share-store service to convert documents to either pdf or html formats for viewing. No servie however has been able to hit the "native document" sweet spot. Not even SurDocs - which was the whole purpose behind the project!!! "Native Documents" means that the document is in it's native / original application format. That format is needed for the round tripping and reloading of the document. Although most sync-share-store services work with MSOffice OXML formatted documents, only Microsoft provides a true "native" format viewer (Office 365). Office 365 enables direct edit, view and collaboration on native documents. Which is an enormous advantage given that conversion of any sort is guaranteed to "break" a native document and disrupt any related business processes or round tripping need. It was here that SurDoc was to provide a break-through technology. Sadly, we're still waiting :( excerpt: The availability of cheap, easy-to-use and accessible cloud file-sharing services means users have more freedom and choice than ever before. Dropbox pioneered simplicity and ease of use, and so quickly picked up users inside the enterprise. Similar services have followed Dropbox's lead and now there are dozens, including well-known ones such as Google Drive, SkyDrive and Ubuntu One. cloud.jpg Valdis Filks , research director at analyst firm Gartner explained the appeal of cloud file-sharing services. Filks said: "Enterprise employees use Dropbox and Google because they are consumer products that are simple to use, can be purchased without officially requesting new infrastructure or budget expenditure, and can be installed qu

Odd that the reporter mentions the importance of security near the top of the article but gives that topic such short shrift in his evaluation of the services. For example, "secured by 256-bit AES encryption" is meaningless without discussing other factors such as: [i] who creates the encryption keys and on which side of the server/client divide; and [ii] the service's ability to decrypt the customer's content. Encrypt/decryt must be done on the client side using unique keys that are unknown to the service, else security is broken and if the service does business in the U.S. or any of its territories or possessions, it is subject to gagged orders to turn over the decrypted customer information. My wisdom so far is to avoid file sync services to the extent you can, boycott U.S. services until the spy agencies are encaged, and reward services that provide good security from nations with more respect for digital privacy, to give U.S.-based services an incentive to lobby *effectively* on behalf of their customer's privacy in Congress. The proof that they are not doing so is the complete absence of bills in Congress that would deal effectively with the abuse by U.S. spy agencies. From that standpoint, the Switzerland-based http://wuala.com/ file sync service is looking pretty good so far. I'm using it.

One of the "Lessons of Massachusetts" is that the key lock-in point for Microsoft's monopoly is their iron fisted control of the productivity environment, anchored by MSOffice and the Windows local workgroup client/server system.  Key to office productivity is the compound document model that fuels every business process and business productivity system.  It's the embedded logic and database connectivity (OLE, ODBC, MAPI and COM ActiveX controls) that juice the compound document model.   Convert a compound document to another format (or PDF), and you BREAK the both the document, AND THE BUSINESS PROCESS!!!! It was the breaking of the business process that stopped Massachusetts from moving to the Open Document Format !!!! So now comes a story with consumer sales vs enterprise sales numbers that seemingly shatter the Lessons of Massachusetts.  How is that? My take is that the numbers Microsoft touts are true.  Consumers are making new purchases - NOT enterprises.  The simple truth is that, as Microsoft introduces new OS and Application Services geared to Mobile / Cloud Computing, these new systems BREAK legacy business systems.  It's still way too costly for businesses to transition to the new models. Eventually though, businesses will replace those legacy business productivity systems with Mobile / Cloud Computing systems.  And it will be a rip-out-and-replace transition; not the gradual "value-added" transition everyone hopes Microsoft will provide.   Interesting stuff. excerpt: "If Microsoft is an enterprise company, then why is it spending so much time and money on stuff like Bing, Xbox, Windows Phone, and the Surface RT? It should be going all-in on cloud computing and services. If you were to ask Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer, his answer would probably be: It's a dumb question, we're both. In an interview with Jason Pontin at MIT Technology Review, he said: ""Our number-one thing is supplying products to consumers. That's kind of what we do.

Note that rip-out-and-replace to get to the cloud is a very risky strategy for MSFT because the company forfeits its vendor lock-in advantage; the question for the enterprise then becomes "replace with what?" The answer in many cases will be non-Microsoft services. And traditionally, what the enterprise uses has driven what enterprise workers use at home far more than vice versa.

Good overview of 2010 products and trends. This post is part of our ReadWriteEnterprise channel, which is a resource and guide for IT managers and technologists in the Enterprise. As you're exploring solutions for your enterprise, check out this helpful ReadWriteWeb report provided for FREE courtesy of HP: The Age of Exabytes This year enterprise 2.0 went from being a fringe idea to being mainstream as CIOs started asking "how?" instead of "why?" Big name vendors entered the marketplace with new products and existing vendors released new versions with innovative new features. We chose to break up the enterprise products of the year up into categories: new product, e-mail, mobile, development tool, database, social software suite, social CRM, microblogging, conferencing and CMS. Products were evaluated based on market performance, innovation, utility, impact on the spa

"Startup Numecent has come out of stealth mode today with some of the most impressive enterprise technology we've seen in a decade. Plus the company is interesting for other reasons, like its business model and its founder. Numecent offers something it calls "cloud paging" and, if successful, it could be a game-changer for enterprise software, video gaming, and smartphone apps. Red Hat thinks so. It has already partnered with the company to help it offer Windows software to Linux users. "Cloud paging" instantly "cloudifies" any software, even an operating system like Windows itself, says founder and CEO Osman Kent. It lets any software, with no modification, be delivered from the cloud and run as fast or faster than if the app was on your desktop. Lots of so-called "desktop virtualization" services work fast. But cloud-paging can even operate the cloud software if the PC gets disconnected from the network or Internet. It can also turn a smartphone into a server. That means a bunch of devices like tablets can run the software -- like a game -- off of the smartphone. Imagine showing up to a party and letting all your friends play the latest version of Halo from your phone. That's crazy cool. Cloudpaging can do all this because it doesn't use "pixel-streaming" technology like other virtualization tech. Instead it temporarily downloads bits of the application itself (instructions) and runs them on the device. It can almost magically predict which parts of the app the user will need, and downloads only those parts. For business owners, that's not even the best part. It also helps enterprises sidestep extra licensing fees associated with the cloud. For instance, Microsoft licenses its software by the device, not by the user, and, in many cases, charges a "Virtual Desktop Access" fee for each device using a virtual version of Windows. (For a bit of light reading, check out the Microsoft virtual desktop licensing white paper: PDF) Cloudpaging has what Kent calls "f

Prepare to be blown away. I viewed a demo of Numecent today and then did some research. There is no doubt in my mind that this is the end of the shrink wrapped- Microsoft business model. It's also perhaps the end of software application design and construction as we know it. Mobile apps in particular will get blasted by the Numecent "Cloud - Paging" concept. Extraordinary stuff. I'll leave a few useful links on Diigo "Open Web". "Numecent, a company that has a new kind of cloud computing technology that could potentially completely reorganize the way software is delivered and handled - upending the business as we know it - has another big feather in its cap. The company is showing how enterprises can use this technology to instantly put all of their enterprise software in the cloud, without renegotiating contracts and licenses with their software vendors. It signed $3 billion engineering construction company Parsons as a customer. Parsons is using Numecent's tech to deliver 4 million huge computer-aided design (CAD) files to its nearly 12,000 employees around the world. CAD drawings are bigger than video files and they can only be opened and edited by specific CAD apps like AutoCAD. Numecent offers a tech called "cloud paging" which instantly "cloudifies" any Windows app. Instead of being installed on a PC, the enterprise setup can deliver the app over the cloud. Unlike similar cloud technologies (called virtualization), this makes the app run faster and continue working even when the Internet connection goes down. "It's offers a 95% reduction in download times and 95% in download network usage," CEO Osman Kent told Business Insider. "It makes 8G of memory work like 800G." It also lets enterprises check in and check out software, like a library book, so more PCs can legally share software without violating licensing terms, saving money on software license fees, Kent says. Parson is using it to let employees share over 700 huge applications such as Au

Sounds like Microsoft must-buy-or-kill technology.

Google "Innovation Nation" Conference in Washington, DC had an interesting conversation thread; that the move to Cloud Computing embraces a move for individual productivity to group productivity.  Not sure i agree with that.  The Windows Desktop-WorkGroup Productivity environment has dominated business since 1992.  Maybe Google might instead focus on the limited access of desktop workgroups and the fact that productivity was horribly crippled by the the PC's lack of communication.  The Web/Cloud magically combines and integrates communication with content and computation.  This is what makes cloud collaboration a genuine leap in productivity - no matter what the discipline.  Here's a question for Google: What's the productivity difference between desktop collaboration and cloud-collaboration? excerpt:  The meeting is the staple of corporate life. The whole day revolves around when a meeting will be, who will be there and what needs to be discussed. Yet, is this rote practice may have become counter-productive in today's world of the always on, always connected workplace. Google's enterprise vision is to leverage mobility and the cloud to change the fundamental way people work. Workforce productivity used to be about how you can optimize individual output. Take all those individuals, put their output together and have a meeting to sort it all out. Google thinks that by putting all that functionality into a cloud environment, workers can use whatever device they want and always be working as a group towards on the mission. A faster, more secure, more cost efficient workplace will be the result. "The main message is that to be an effective [enterprise], we need to change from individual productivity to group productivity,"

Dion Hinchcliffe has an excellent article casting Google Wave as an Enterprise game-changer. He walks through Wave first, and then through some important enterprise features: ".....to fully understand Google Wave, one should appreciate the separation of concerns between the product Google is offering and the protocols and technologies behind it, which are open to the Web community: Google Wave has three layers: the product, the platform, and the protocol: The Google Wave product (available as a developer preview) is the web application people will use to access and edit waves. It's an HTML 5 app, built on Google Web Toolkit. It includes a rich text editor and other functions like desktop drag-and-drop (which, for example, lets you drag a set of photos right into a wave). Google Wave can also be considered a platform with a rich set of open APIs that allow developers to embed waves in other web services, and to build new extensions that work inside waves. The Google Wave protocol is the underlying format for storing and the means of sharing waves, and includes the "live" concurrency control, which allows edits to be reflected instantly across users and services. The protocol is designed for open federation, such that anyone's Wave services can interoperate with each other and with the Google Wave service. To encourage adoption of the protocol, we intend to open source the code behind Google Wave.

Document Management Article: HyperOffice Expands SaaS Collaboration Suite Reach to EMEA. CMSWire focuses on Document Management as well as enterprise content management topics, document managment, Enterprise CMS, DAM, enterprise 2.0 and related topics.

1. ESBaaS Will Emerge in Enterprise Clouds.  (enterprise service bus as a service for internal messaging and exchange between apps) 2. Enterprise Cloud Computing will Accelerate Data Center Consolidation. 3. Desktop Virtualization.    4. SME Data Center Outsourcing into Public Clouds 5. Cloud Computing and Cloud Storage will Look to PODs and Containers.

Quick LinksGet a TrialEnterprise On DemandEnterprise On PremiseFAQHelpContact UsWhy Adeptol?Document SupportSupport for more than 300 document types out of boxNot a Virtual PrinterMultitenant platform for high end document viewingNo SoftwaresNo need to install any additional softwares on serverNo ActiveX/PluginsNo plugins or active x or applets need to be downloaded on client side.Fully customizableAdvanced API offers full customization and UI changes.Any OS/Any Prog LanguageInstall Adeptol Server on any OS and integrate with any programming language.AwardsAdeptol products receive industry awards and accolades year after year  View a DemoAttend a WebcastContact AdeptolView a Success StoryNo ActiveX, No Plug-in, No Software's to download. Any OS, Any Browser, Any Programming Language. That is the Power of Adeptol. Adeptol can help you retain your customers and streamline your content integration efforts. Leverage Web 2.0 technologies to get a completely scalable content viewer that easily handles any type of content in virtually unlimited volume, with additional capabilities to support high-volume transaction and archive environments. Our enterprise-class infrastructure was built to meet the needs of the world's most demanding global enterprises. Based on AJAX technology you can easily integrate the viewer into your application with complete ease. Support for all Server PlatformsCan be installed on Windows   (32bit/64bit) Server and Linux   (32bit/64bit) Server. Click here to see technical specifications.Integrate with any programming languageWhether you work in .net, c#, php, cold fusion or JSP. Adeptol Viewer can be integrated easily in any programming language using the easy API set. It also comes with sample code for all languages to get you started.Compatibility with more than 99% of the browsersTested & verified for compatibility with 99% of the various browsers on different platforms. Click here to see browser compatibility report.More than 300 Document T

PALO ALTO, Calif - Box.net unveiled a redesign of its cloud-based content management (CMS) and collaboration system at a press event here today at company headquarters. The new interface, features and partnership announcements with NetSuite, Samsung and VMware are all part of the company's strategy to win over more enterprise customers. "This is an all new version of Box, remade for the enterprise, enabling a new set of workflows and features," Box CEO Aaron Levie said in opening remarks. Storage in the free version of Box has been upgraded to five gigabytes (up from one) and is unlimited for enterprise users of the paid version. Box has also increased the viewing area for content by 30 percent, added real-time updates of content including new comments, edits or deletions of a document. Updates are also ranked and collated to present the user with the most important information. Another improvement is a simplified administrative console designed to improve readability and organization. Overall, Box said it has developed a much more scalable framework for its user interface that makes it easier to roll out new features.

In taking this next step Box are closing some acquisition doors in electing to attempt to become a core piece of enterprise infrastructure rather than be swallowed up into someone else's larger offering. It's a brave and interesting move that will see them attempting to penetrate on-premise document and project management opportunities that are currently dominated by entrenched vendors, notably Sharepoint. Box's collaboration and work flow tools are currently adequate but unremarkable, and while the user interfaces are well done and unintimidating, they are now attempting to enter the areas of business steeped in document versioning and email inefficiencies that have been so lucrative to Microsoft, who can't be blamed for not cannibalizing their licensing golden geese of Office, Sharepoint and Exchange yet, and probably made 48 million as you read this sentence. Addressing the inefficiencies of these old ways of working are at the core of the modern collaborative enterprise, and it is primarily focusing on business purpose and performance from participants that ultimately unlocks the greater efficiencies possible with 2.0 technologies. The challenge for Box will be to avoid becoming a larger document and content graveyard while providing greater business agility, and this requires some cultural shifts in their offerings to target customers.

Another HTML5 Application Platform for Cloud Computing.  Provides secure data connections to existing business systems and workflows.  Not an Open Web Platform. summary: Mobile Helix is an enterprise application and data security platform provider focused on enabling unrestricted enterprise productivity. We are redefining endpoint computing by evolving and extending existing IT infrastructure and standards rather than reinventing them. At our core are three fundamental principles that are at the center of everything that we do: 1) we are application- and data-centric - we embrace the blurring lines between phones, tablets and laptops, permitting IT to relinquish control of the endpoint device entirely and embrace a bring-your-own-anything policy; 2) we provide unmatched yet unobtrusive security for sensitive corporate data by intelligently securing the data rather than the devices; and 3) simplicity is embedded into the DNA of our products, our designs and our communications. Our solution, Mobile Helix Link, is the industry's first pure HTML5 platform that combines unparalleled data security, a unique HTML5 application development and delivery platform, and breakthrough patent-pending performance enhancement technology. 

According to a new Forrester report, though Microsoft Office continues to be a mainstay both in the enterprise and at home, developing concerns about productivity as they relate to mobile, cloud, and collaboration may bring a shift in enterprise behaviors.

Digital Daily is carrying John Paczkowski's point-by-point twitter stream of the Google Apps Event. Fascinating stuff. Especially Dave Girouard's comments comparing Google Apps to MSOffice. One highlight of the event seems to be the announcement of a Google OutLook integration app. Sounds like something similar to what Zimbra did a few years ago prior to the $350 million acquisition by Yahoo! Zimbra perfected an integration into desktop Outlook comparable to the Exchange - Outlook channel. If Google Apps Sync for Outlook integration is a s good as the event demo, they would still have to crack into MSOffice to compete with the MSOffice-SharePoint-MOSS integration channel. Some interesting comments from Google Enterprise customers, Genentech, Morgans Hotel Group, and Avago ....... At an event in San Francisco, Google is expected to discuss the future of its productivity suite and some enhancements that may begin to close the gap with Microsoft (MSFT) Office, something the company desperately needs to do if it wants to make deeper inroads in the enterprise area. As Girouard himself admitted last week, Apps still has a ways to go. "Gmail is really the best email application in the world for consumers or business users, and we can prove that very well," he said. "Calendar is also very good, and probably almost at the level of Gmail. But the word processing, spreadsheets and other products are much less mature. They're a couple of years old at the most, and we still have a lot of work to do."

Excellent report on Crocodoc and their ability to convert MANY different document file types to HTML5.  Including all MSOffice formats - OOXML, ODF, and PDF. " Crocodoc, and took on the much larger problem of allowing groups to collaborate on editing a document online, no matter what the document type: PowerPoint, PDF, Word, Photoshop, JPEG, or PNG. In the process, they had to build an embeddable viewer that could take apart any document and reassemble it accurately within a Web browser. And as soon as they'd finished that, they had to tear their own system apart and rebuild it around HTML5 rather than Flash, the Adobe multimedia format that's edging closer and closer to extinction. The result of all that iterating is what's probably the world's most flexible and faithful HTML5-based document viewer: when you open a PDF, PowerPoint, or Word document in Crocodoc, the Web version looks exactly like the native version, even though it's basically been stripped down and re-rendered from scratch. When I talked with Damico in February of 2011, the startup had visions of building on this technology to become a kind of central, Web-based clearinghouse for everyone's documents-a cross between Scribd, Dropbox, and Google Docs, but with a focus on consumers, and with prettier viewing tools. In the last year, though, Crocodoc's direction has changed dramatically. Damico and his colleagues realized that it would be smarter to partner with the fastest growing providers of document-sharing services and social business-tool providers than to try to compete with them. "The massive, seismic change for us is that we had a huge opportunity to partner with Dropbox and LinkedIn and SAP and Yammer, and let them build on top of Crocodoc and make it into a core piece of their own products," Damico says. In other words, every time an office worker opens a document from within a Web app like Dropbox or Yammer, they're activating a white-label version

FeedHenry provides a cloud Mobile Application Platform that simplifies the development, integration, deployment and management of secure mobile apps for business. This mobile platform-as-a-service (PaaS) allows apps to be developed in HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS and deployed to multiple mobile devices from a single code base. The node.js backend service offers a complete range of APIs designed to simplify and secure the connectivity of mobile apps to backend and third party systems. The platform can be deployed to private, public or hybrid clouds. FeedHenry's PaaS offers developers speed of development, instant scalability, device and cloud independence, and the ability to easily integrate to backend information. ................................ If, say, a company uses both Sharepoint and Salesforce inside a mobile app, to get that data into one app they need multiple levels of API integration. Because of the enormous boom in mobile and tablet apps, so-called 'back-end as a service' (BaaS) platforms like FeedHenry - which solve these problems - are hugely expanding. Thus, today FeedHenry has secured $9M (€7M) in a funding round led by Intel Capital, alongside a "seven figure" investment from existing investor Kernel Capital. Other existing investors VMware Inc., Enterprise Ireland and private investors also participated and were joined by new investment from ACT Venture Capital. The funds will be used on an international roll out. FeedHenry's mobile application platform - built between Ireland and the U.S. - helps businesses build mobile apps that integrate securely to their business through the cloud. This is a competitive market that includes StackMob, Usergrid, Appcelerator, Sencha.io, Applicasa ,Parse, CloudMine , CloudyRec , iKnode, yorAPI, Buddy and ScottyApp.

Not surprisingly, Microsoft is going to pound on "productivity" as the key differential between their desktop-cloud-mobile computing products, and those of mobile-productivity platform challengers, Apple and Google. There are three platform contenders, and this article points out that it is Google Apps that is keeping Apple in the business productivity game. Very interesting insight. Especially since a recent Forrester Report has the Apple platform capturing 65% of all mobile business application development. And Microsoft with only 1%. Google weighs in with 13%. This is a stunning setback for Microsoft. The MS monopolist empire is built on business productivity, with 98% of clinet/server marketshare. excerpt: "Over time, Microsoft has tried to tilt the marketing message to position Surface as a "productivity tablet". Now that Surface 2 is out, the "productivity tablet" message is coming across loud and clear. But can what people use tablets at work for actually be described as "productive"? Surface might be new, but the idea of using tablets in business is not. Although Microsoft would like us to believe that a tablet that doesn't run Office and doesn't have a good solution for a keyboard can't be used in business, the iPad has been used in business since its release in April 2010. Mobile device management (MDM) allows enterprises to control which apps are available on both on BYOD and enterprise-supplied tablets. Some MDM vendors publish reports and surveys on what their customers' allow and disallow. This information can provide some insight into what apps people are typically using. Back in June, my ZDNet colleague Adrian Kingsley-Hughes reported on a report put out by one such vendor. Fiberlink gave this list of iOS apps that are commonly whitelisted: iBooks Adobe Reader Google Citrix Receiver Numbers Dropbox Pages iTunes U Keynote WebEx Along with those apps, you also need to add that apps that come with the device - namely web browsing, email,

Good title.  Nice to see that some of the tech media are starting to figure this out.  It's about time. excerpt: While Microsoft has struggled with its mobile operating system, it still occupies a dominant stake of the server operating system, desktop operating system, business productivity software, messaging, and Web browser markets. Bells and whistles aside, it's hard to argue with the potential of a smartphone platform that can seamlessly tie in with the platforms and tools that businesses rely on. RIM, Apple, Palm, and now Google, all recognize and respect Microsoft's presence in the enterprise. These other mobile platforms realize that integration with Microsoft backend tools--particularly Exchange Server--is imperative to success in the enterprise. No matter how hard they try, though, the solutions are often clumsy or cumbersome, and have a sort of "square peg in the round hole" feel to them. The core appeal of a Microsoft mobile operating system is the inclusion of native tools that naturally integrate with the existing server, desktop, and office productivity environment. Windows Mobile is uniquely suited to deliver a seamless and familiar experience for business professionals. Expecting Microsoft to introduce unique innovations or raise the bar in any way for mobile operating systems is probably a recipe for disappointment. Assuming that Microsoft can at least improve Windows Mobile to the point that Windows Phones are more or less on par with next-generation smartphones like the iPhone or Droid will be enough, though, for Microsoft to get the ship pointed in the right direction and begin to reclaim some of its lost mobile platform market share. Microsoft has a built-in audience and the game is Microsoft's to lose.