5 Reasons Google+ Could Win the Social Enterprise Battle

Mashable

Last Thursday, Google announced that Google+ will be available for Google Apps users. This means that the millions of people using Google Apps for their businesses will now have access to the Google+ social collaboration platform.

With Google+’s unique features for search, selective sharing and rich communication, it offers consumers a very different user experience than the established social networks. For individuals, Google+ has quickly become a great place to build your interest graph — that is, find the latest content and people related to topics you’re interested in.

With its seamless integration with Google Apps, Google+ promises a very different type of social enterprise experience. In fact, Google+ has five unique advantages over other social business platforms...

Enterprise IT and megavendors: Cloud players angle in on bad marriages

ZDNet

...Nelson wasn’t the only one introducing himself to CIOs. Appirio Narinder Singh, chief strategy officer, was also making the rounds. I caught up with Singh, who was introducing Appirio, a cloud integration services outfit, to CIOs. Appirio, which doesn’t have any servers in its internal operations, may seem a bit extreme to CIOs who still think that buying hardware somehow relates to cloud computing (the private variety). But Singh noted it’s a marathon not a sprint. These CIOs may come around—they may have no choice.

These introductions to CIOs at large enterprises are seeding ventures today. At Gartner’s 2010 confab, Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff finished his keynote and roamed the halls talking to CIOs for 8 hours. Gartner obviously noted since many of its themes could have doubled as a Benioff keynote...

Transformational change revolves around information: Lessons from Dreamforce 2011

SearchHealthIT

...The social enterprise, according to Benioff, is the weaving of social context into business. Social media is changing how we connect and share things in our personal lives and-increasingly-in business. Work is more productive when colleagues and customers can collaborate with each other online. This is one reason why Salesforce has made a push for private, internal collaboration with its Chatter initiative - a real-time collaborative tool that applies some of the same concepts from Facebook and Twitter.

As a Dreamforce attendee, I spent my time onsite thinking about how the social enterprise should be translated into the health care industry. Having worked for a large health care organization, it was easy to apply the takeaways to today’s medical world. For health care, the social enterprise translates into delivering information to patients more efficiently. By doing this, both health care organizations and patients will save time and be better equipped with data for better decision making. Here are a few things to consider...

Integrator Appirio creating waves

CloudPro

...From what I have seen, they appear to have a good appreciation of local needs. That's a good start and is supported by a pre-existing presence by both Salesforce.com and Workday, both of which are key partners for Appirio.

Oh and did I mention? The POC I saw of the merchandising app took ideas from Salesforce.com, Google maps, heat mapping, location aware photos all wrapped up in a simple process that works on a tablet device. It looks beautiful and its value is self evident. How often do we get to say that about enterprise grade apps? With that kind of 'stuff' in the works I can see Appirio scoring heavily in the UK. They will open up opportunities that cannot be matched by those working in the on-premise world.

Their progress will be a disrupting force in the enterprise consulting arena which I encourage others to watch closely. I wish them well because I see Appirio as closely aligned to customer success. Not in some fluffy PR way but by showing examples, asking questions and being good partners to their communities of interest...