Enterprise 2.0 Conference Touts Social, Product Announcements

Social tools, collaboration and social CRM were hot topics at the Enterprise 2.0 conference this week, which kicked off Monday in Boston. From industry veterans such as Microsoft, IBM and Cisco to startups new on the social scene, more than 40 exhibitors and 100 speakers shared the spotlight to promote and discuss the latest trends and technologies.

Keynote and general session speakers ran the gamut this year, featuring execs from Deloitte & Touche, IBM, Deutsche Bank, Sovos Group and more, including keynote speaker Andrew McAfee, who coined the phrase “Enterprise 2.0” nearly five years ago.

Enterprise 2.0 this year wasn’t without the requisite vendor announcements, either. This year, more than 20 businesses announced new products and releases. Here’s a quick recap of some of the highlights.

Acquia

Acquia, which was founded by Drupal’s creator in 2007, announced Commons 2.0, the next version of its social business software. Commons, an open-source platform, combines social features such as activity streams, social networking, blogs, wikis, badges and events with analytics, support and management services.

Their newest release will give enterprises the freedom to create communities based on their social style and design. Acquia touts easy integration of its SaaS solution, promising deployment in weeks instead of months, and a lower cost than proprietary solutions, the company says.

DoubleDutch

DoubleDutch is a cloud-based provider of geo-social applications. This week at Enterprise 2.0, the company introduced HYVE, a suite of several mobile, social and productivity apps to encourage worker productivity and facilitate collaboration across lines of business.

DoubleDutch build HYVE on the check-in concept: a logging gesture that lets users select from a list of defined projects, customers, locations and other processes. Users and projects, it says, also have social profiles that contain a record of who has interacted with a particular client, and in what context. This data is then used to identify subject matter experts and match impromptu teams around customers, location, project and more.

IGLOO Software

IGLOO, a provider of intranets and extranets, announced its new social workflow module in which “businesses can embrace social networking on their own terms.” IGLOO lets managers approve and reject content prior to publishing, as well as review drafts, assign tasks and approve corporate content, including social interactions.

This is the company’s third major release this year, and includes other enhancements such as file sharing, commenting, rating and discussions.

OpenText

OpenText revealed OpenText Social Workplace yesterday, a people-centric enterprise application that works through SaaS or on-premise deployment to help teams form quickly and collaborate with minimal training or technical support, according to the company. Its suite of apps include tools for creating content using wikis, information feeds and document management.

During a keynote presentation, Tyler Knowlton of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade for Canada demonstrated how Social Workspace is helping the G-20 improve collaboration among delegates from around the world.

Socialtext

Socialtext, a social software company, introduced Socialtasks, a management tool that lets teams visualize and manage tasks in a collaborative work environment. Socialtasks, the company says, consists of three main features.

The first is a page tracker, which allows you to record tasks with various statuses such as new, in progress or complete. Next is the “Page Watcher Bot,” a function that monitors Socialtext workspace pages for changes in the task status, and then posts a message for the group working on the task or the manager of the team. Lastly, the new Form Builder lets users create a new wiki page that provides choices for status, priority, owner and more.