Salesforce Chatter is officially live
Chatter, Salesforce.com's cloud-based social application, is now in general availability, but real-world reactions from users are mixed at best.
Salesforce.com launches Chatter
Salesforce.com's "enterprise Facebook killer" is now officially in general availability. The firm claims 5,000 customers have been beta testing the add-in, which adds a personal profile for each Salesforce.com user that can be updated, followed and organized, and broadcasts your status to your entire Salesforce.com organization.
"Chatter and our company really hinges on his shift in industry," said Al Falcione, director of product marketing. He said it was past time for business applications to replicate the self-publishing, always-on nature of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. He said Salesforce.com users want to both collaborate and share everything they feel is relevant with the their team, and that it's a great way for users to raise their profile within an organization, since anyone interested can see what they're doing without having to ask.
Real world reactions, however, were mixed -- a comment on Salesforce.com's IdeaExchange forum had a blunt suggestion for Chatter: "I suggest you remove [it]."
"Chatter gets in the way…and is a distraction to staff," said the irate anonymous note, calling the new functionality "irrelevant" and annoying, especially as most staff already use other social media platforms. Chatter also has an AppExchange where the likes of Cast Iron and CA are waiting to turn Chatter to more specific uses, like agile software development.
Makara opens JBoss platform
Cloud management/application stack provider Makara has launched a JBoss-friendly platform service that lets developers pick and go with a stack of servers that can be configured through the Makara portal.
The move is a refinement on Makara's original offering of a vCloud Express-centric management portal, where users brought their own virtual machines and appliances -- this is an out-of-the-box JBoss stack ready to go.
NASDAQ launches tick-compare cloud
Storied technology stock index NASDAQ is using Xignite data distribution servicesto provide a service called Data-on-Demand, which boils down to historical ticker information hosted on Xignite's systems. NASDAQ claims it will allow analysts to cherry-pick datasets rather than dig through a mass of data for analytical purposes.
It's a telling example of the place of cloud computing in the modern IT world -- too slow for real-time high finance, but convenient enough to have value for somebody after the fact.
