Collaboration Breaking News

Google solves long Gmail outage, but questions remain
Late Friday night Google solved the third Gmail outage of the past two weeks, but questions remain about the stability of the Webmail service, which is affecting the Google Apps hosted software suite. More..

Covergence bridges IBM, Microsoft unified communications
Covergence, best known for controlling, securing and managing real-time services with its Covergence Session Manager, announced Monday that it is upgrading its Covergence Collaboration Gateway (CCG) to support interoperability between IBM Sametime 8.0 and Microsoft's unified communications platforms. The company also introduced a subscription-based pricing alternative to its CCG customers. More..

IBM bundles middleware on Linux systems
IBM on Tuesday said it wants to free desktops from Microsoft software, announcing an alliance with Linux vendors to preload its middleware on Linux distributions. More..

Jericho Forum: Visionaries with a visibility problem
Now in its forth year, the Jericho Forum has held the course in its role as a user forum advocating security alternatives to the perimeter firewall, arguing for its vision of "de-perimeterization" in an Internet-connected world of e-commerce and business collaboration. The group, though it's grown in membership, is gaining credibility but still manages to irk some critics who claim it's achieving little with its rhetoric. More..

Google Apps goes to school at Notre Dame
The University of Notre Dame has joined a number of other schools that are using Google Apps Education Edition to provide e-mail and other collaboration tools to its students. More..

Firm builds a social network with SharePoint, NewsGator RSS
When Jason Harrison joined global communications firm Universal McCann as its CIO in 2006, he was asked by the company's executives to find a way to better connect the 3,000 employees spread out across more than 60 locations around the world. The usual tools, mainly email and telephone, hadn't yielded the results the company wanted in terms of building a common company culture. More..

IBM counters Microsoft's software seat-stealing boast
IBM/Lotus Thursday hit back at Microsoft's boast that it plans to steal 5 million Notes customers this year by detailing a new 300,000-seat licensing deal with an Asian company and strong interest in Notes from emerging markets.  More..

Defense Department broadens PKI policy
The U.S. Department of Defense has taken the step of broadening its public-key-infrastructure policy to recognize hardware-based digital credentials from civilian agencies, foreign allies and some corporations associated with the DoD.  More..

McKinsey report: Enterprise Web 2.0 adoption still growing
A new McKinsey report found that many companies have adopted Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs, wikis, social networks and mashups during the past year, with companies on average adding three Web 2.0 tools to their companies technology offerings. More..

Envysion adds collaboration to managed video service
Envysion, a Louisville, Colo.-based video software-as-a-service company, announced a new, collaborative Web-based broadcast service that corporations can use for making video clips available as a kind of private YouTube. The firm also says this month it passed a Level 1 Payment Card Industry compliance audit of its network operations. More..

Microsoft wants to steal five million Notes customers
Microsoft is seeking to get five million Lotus Notes customers to make the switch to Microsoft's collaboration tools in its fiscal 2009 year, according to Kevin Turner, COO for the software giant. More..

IBM/Lotus sharpens weapon for unified communications battle
IBM/Lotus is banking on the integration of its Sametime platform and collaboration software with tools from telephony partners to fuel its climb up the ranks of unified communications contenders.  More..

Major Web hosting provider launches low-cost groupware in U.S.
Giant Web hosting provider 1&1 Internet is now offering U.S. customers a push e-mail and collaboration service based on the open-source groupware made by Open-Xchange. More..

Social Networks for Business: Leading to Success
When the folks at travel company Sabre Holdings saw how people were using their new Bambora travel advisor, it got them to thinking. More..

Microsoft reveals service bundles, pricing
Microsoft Tuesday finally showed how it will price online services, including Exchange and SharePoint, and how it will share revenue with partners. More..

Microsoft SharePoint popularity comes with issues
Microsoft's SharePoint Server 2007 may be taking off in the enterprise, but the software doesn't come without holes, warts and a variety of other issues that need to be addressed in any corporate deployment. More..

Cisco's new CTO talks first impressions
It's been three months since Padmasree Warrior left Motorola to become Cisco's CTO. Since then, she's not been available for interviews - until now. Network World Managing Editor Jim Duffy caught up with her at the Cisco Live! customer conference in Orlando. More..

What your team can learn about innovation from The Simpsons
Probably the only technical qualification to put Joel Cohen, a writer and associate producer of The Simpsons, in front of the keynote crowd at the Red Hat Summit in June was that Red Hat Enterprise 5 was used to render some of the animation in The Simpsons movie. But Cohen had surprisingly deep-and quite entertaining-advice about innovation and the creative process to offer the conference attendees. More..

Verizon expands global unified communications services
Verizon Business is expanding its unified communications services to several European countries in move that the company says will help "advance global collaboration." More..

Web 2.0: How Wachovia justified wikis, blogs, others
Having trouble justifying to your company's top brass why you should make investments in internal Web 2.0 tools such as blogs, wikis and social networks? If so, take notes from Pete Fields, senior vice president of the Charleston, N.C-based bank's e-commerce division. More..

Momentum, some confusion mark 'Enterprise 2.0'
About 1,200 people are expected to attend this year's Enterprise 2.0 show, set to begin Monday in Boston, a rise of about 20 percent, according to the conference's organizer, Steve Wylie. More..

Understanding what Google Apps is (and isn't)
When Google launched its Web-based e-mail service ( Gmail) on April 1, 2004, many people thought it was an April Fool's Day joke, and perhaps with good reason. That same day, the company had posted plans to open a research facility on the moon. More..

The importance of SOA for business intelligence
Business intelligence tools have become mission-critical and, as a result, there is growing demand for wider accessibility across the organization.  More..

Adobe shows off hosted collaboration tools, Flash integration in Acrobat 9
Adobe Monday introduced Acrobat.com, a palette of hosted collaboration tools, and unveiled Acrobat 9, which features the first built-in integration with Flash.  More..

CIOs look beyond Web 2.0
Panelists chewing over the role of Web 2.0 in the enterprise, at MIT’s annual CIO Symposium, said it’s already a thing of the past. What’s happening now is being built atop the early Web 2.0 technologies. More..