WebProNews

Salesforce's "Facebook for the Enterprise"

Salesforce.com has introduced a new enterprise collaboration application called Salesforce Chatter. A representative for the company bills it as a "Facebook for the Enterprise."

L.A. Approves $7.25 Million Google Apps Contract

The City of Angels has shown a great deal of faith in Google.  Late yesterday, the Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved a $7.25 million contract that'll have all branches of the city's government adopting Google Apps over the next eight or so months.

Google and Bing Increase Share of Enterprise Search Traffic

iCrossing has shared the findings from its Enterprise Natural Search Share Index. This is a look at natural search traffic to enterprise level sites, based on a large sample of Fortune 1000 companies across all major verticals.

Schmidt Labels Enterprise "The Next Big Billion-Dollar Opportunity"

Never mind the latest developments relating to real-time search and the mobile market.  Google intends to make its next serious buck off the software and services that businesses require, with the company's CEO talking up the outlook at a conference yesterday. 

Google Search Appliance Gets New Algorithm

Google has introduced some new features for the Google Search Appliance (GSA). There are about ten of them, but the one the company is really touting is one that allows the GSA to learn the habits of searchers and use that information to fine-tune its information retrieval process to increase relevancy.

Most Enterprises Taking Social Media Seriously

Deloitte, Beeline Labs and the Society for New Communications Research have released findings from a study of companies sponsoring online communities. The study found that enterprises are continuing to invest in social media tools and online communities.

Google Sends Partners to Search Appliance Customers

Google is giving new Enterprise Search Appliance customers an "ROI JumpStart". What this means is they're sending people to help you deploy it for two days. These people come from "select Google enterprise partners." New customers who license a GSA covering one million documents or more by September 30 are eligible.

Adopting Social Media For Internal Use

Results from an interesting study with a different spin on social media were released by Nielsen Norman Group. These things often look at social media adoption by businesses, but this one looks specifically at social media adoption within enterprise intranets. The study found that many of the most successful social media initiatives on company intranets began as underground, grassroots efforts by front-line employees. They were later adopted and sanctioned by higher-level executives.

Google Announces Apps Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server

Google has announced the upcoming release of the Google Apps Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server. The goal is to make it easier for mobile users to use Google Apps on BlackBerry smartphones.

Google Continues to Take Other Languages More Seriously

About a month ago, Google announced some things it was doing that would improve the way sites rank across different language versions of its search engine, in an effort that would clearly make Google more useful on a global scale. In what seems to be a continuation of this tradition, Google has announced a couple more language-based improvements to its products.