Salesforce.com has launched its Chatter enterprise collaboration to 100 beta customers as part of a private test roll-out.
The Cloud sales force automation firm is positioning Chatter as an alternative to Microsoft SharePoint and IBM Lotus Notes. Chatter provides a range of collaboration capabilities including user profiles, status updates, real-time feeds, document sharing, updates from other applications and links to other social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.
Participants in the beta programme include Reed Exhibitions, Schumacher Group, and TransUnion, all of whom were chosen as existing Salesforce.com customers. “Salesforce Chatter is the killer app we've been waiting for,” said Dominic Shine, group chief information officer for Reed Exhibitions, adding that with Salesforce Chatter, the company can empower employees with real-time collaboration to know it now and be more productive.
"We are on the precipice of a move from Cloud 1 to Cloud 2. Cloud used to be all about speed and ease of access. Cloud 2 is different," said Salesforce.com CEM Marc Benioff. "We will re-engineer new types of productivity and collaboration software. Consumers are already trained in it and they are going to demand it."
Chatter is also attracting interest from Salesforce.com partners. One such firm is Appirio which has built Chatter into a new version of its professional services application called "Social PS Enterprise" and will make that available once Chatter is released. "We think the collaboration will be a huge benefit for our customers," said Narinder Singh, chief marketing officer at Appirio.
Salesforce.com alo announced new mobile capabilities for Chatter. Participants' employees will be able to access the service's real-time feeds via Research in Motion's BlackBerry or Apple's iPhone. The feeds provide updates on people, applications, and documents.
Benioff was speaking at the start of a 20-stop worldwide promotion of Chatter. Salesforce.com plans to make Chatter generally available this year. The platform will be included at no additional charge to paid editions of Salesforce CRM and Force.com. For $50 per user per month, new customers will be able to get Salesforce Chatter, Salesforce Content, and Force.com.
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