Mobile access is becoming an increasingly important element to just about all web/software services. It’s going to continue to be an important for services to stay competitive. That goes for CRM products. Just a couple weeks ago, for example, at MacWorld iWorld, Elements CRM announced an iPad version.

Microsoft says Dynamics CRM will be available for “virtually any device with a new cloud-based, cross-platform, native mobile client service for Windows Phone 7, iPad, iPhone, Android and BlackBerry mobile devices.” That’s access to complete functionality of the product, mind you.

“In today’s hyperconnected world, customers need to be able to access their business-critical data on the device of their choice from wherever they are,” said Dennis Michalis, GM of the product. “These advancements, combined with the strength of the Microsoft platform, make Microsoft Dynamics CRM an obvious choice for any business.”

The update will also include enhanced social functionality and new enterprise-class features, as well as multiple web browser options (IE, Chrome, Firefox, Safari), the company says.

Pricing will start at $30 per user, per month. That includes support of up to three devices per user.

A preview is available here.

The update, as we reported yesterday, brings new features to the browser, but nothing worth celebrating over.

The update features extension improvements with most extensions that work on Firefox 4 working on Firefox 10. It includes support for full-screen Web apps and anti-aliasing for WebGL applications.

Firefox 10 also debuts the new “Extended Support Release” for businesses. This allows the browser to only download necessary security updates so businesses no longer have to deal with a new browser update every six weeks. The ESR version will change every seven releases, so November will be the next update for those users.

For those unaware, Firefox changing versions so rapidly is due to Chrome being on the same release schedule. While Internet Explorer is still the most used browser on the Web, Chrome and Firefox are battling neck-and-neck for the number two spot. The sped up release schedule is helping Firefox remain competitive.

Firefox 10 will be released as a silent update to current users today. If you haven’t used Firefox yet, now is a good time to try it out. It’s available for Windows, Mac and Linux today.

The main software product is IBM Connections for analytics, real-time data monitoring, and collaborative networks through IBM’s SmartCloud services. Included in the new offerings, as described by the company, are:

• New social analytics software that integrates wikis, blogs, activity streams, email, calendaring and more, and flags relevant data for action. It allows for instant collaboration with one simple click and the ability to build social communities both inside and outside the organization to increase customer loyalty and speed business results.
• New software that integrates social networking capabilities with enterprise content management to better connect people with information so they can make informed decisions and act quickly.
• The new IBM SmartCloud for Social Business simplifies access to business-grade file sharing, social networking, communities, online meetings, instant messaging, email and calendar. In addition, IBM SmartCloud for Social Business will deliver a cloud-based productivity suite allowing users to co-edit documents in real-time.
• New messaging and collaboration software that brings the power of embedded experiences to the Web and mobile devices providing a single point of entry for all business processes.

“There is boundless opportunity for social business to transform how we connect people and processes, and increase the speed and flexibility of business,” said Alistair Rennie, GM, Social Business at IBM. “A successful social business can break down barriers to collaboration and put social networking in the context of everyday work, from the device or delivery vehicle of your choice, to improve productivity and speed decision-making.”

IBM also announced the beta release of IBM Lotus Notes and Domino, Social Edition for “acting on any work flow process directly within the email inbox.”

The company says it intends to support mail, calendaring and contacts in a beta release of IBM Lotus Notes Traveler for Microsoft Windows Phone on Nokia and HTC devices within the first half of the year.

WhisperCore integrates with Android to provide disk encryption, network security tools, encrypted backup, selective permissions, and basic platform management tools. WhisperMonitor works with WhisperCore to provide a firewall. Flashback stores encrypted backups of devices in the cloud. RedPhone provides end-to-end call encryption, and TextSecure is for encrypted texting.

Twitter’s Ryan Sarver tweeted:

In a message on the company blog, Whisper Systems says:

We started Whisper Systems with the goal of improving security and privacy for mobile devices. We were attracted to this not only because we saw it as an opportunity to reinvent the security solutions that never really worked in the PC environment to begin with, but also because the stakes are much higher — due to the nature of mobile devices themselves — and we didn’t like the way that things were looking.

Now that we’re joining Twitter, we’re looking forward to bringing our technology and our expertise into Twitter’s products and services.

Whisper Systems’ software will remain available for users, but the products will be taken offline temporarily during the transition period.

Terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed.

Well, what if your business secrets could end up on the web just as quickly and as easily? Possibly without your even knowing about it until it’s too late?

Should businesses fear personal mobile devices in the workplace? Share your thoughts on the subject.

A lot of businesses have secrets that they don’t want getting out, whether that be plans, competitive strategy, private conversations, or any number of things. Now consider all of the things you can do with a smartphone or a tablet. There are apps for all kinds of things that have possibly never even crossed your mind, but the obvious features are cameras microphones, coupled with the fact that it’s just become so common for people to carry these things around.

The likelihood that you will have to deal with some malicious act related to these capabilities is pretty slim, but there are other security issues that can come into play, when businesses allow employees to work from their personal mobile devices.

Paranoid yet?

The reality is that these devices are a part of life now, and a part of business, for that matter. There are so many ways mobile devices can help your business, it would take a lengthy book to really cover it all.

But research shows a lot of businesses are hesitant to implement policies for employees to work remotely via their own personal devices.

SecureData commissioned a survey by Vanson Bourne Omnibus, asking 100 IT managers (in large UK enterprises of more than 1,000 employees) of financial services, manufacturing, retail, distribution/transport and commercial companies about the security risks of “Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) schemes.”

Granted, while this survey is geared toward the enterprise, it’s a subject that can really apply to any size business.

Here’s one of several interesting graphs from the report:

Note the levels of those who appear to have no intention of implementing a policy for employees to work from their personal devices.

Here are some key stats from the survey:

• The survey revealed that 25 percent of organisations do not have a policy in place for employees to work remotely via their own personal mobile devices (such as a smartphone or a tablet device) and don’t think it is a priority at the moment.
• A further 41 percent don’t currently have a policy in place for employees to work remotely via their
  own personal devices, but have said that it is on their agenda to implement.
• A massive 96 percent of those surveyed selected security risk as one of the top four most important considerations when implementing a policy for employees to work remotely via their own personal mobile device.
• A total of 49 percent selected security risk as the top concern overall.
• After security, compliance is the second most important consideration, with 70 percent of respondents ranking it in their top four concerns and 26 percent ranking it the second most important consideration.
• In total, 69 percent of those surveyed use smartphones and tablet devices not supplied by the company to work remotely at home or whilst on the move (44 percent smartphones and 25 percent tablet devices).
• A huge 92 percent of employees in the financial sector use their own laptops to work remotely at home or whilst on the move.
• In total, 37 percent of respondents allow their children (or other members of their household) to use their work device e.g. laptop, smartphone and tablet device.
• In total 43 percent of respondents state that security concerns would be the main reason for them not allowing children or other household members using their work devices.

There is a great deal more analysis (and as mentioned, more graphs) in the report. You can read it in its entirety here (pdf).

Clearly security is a concern. And frankly, even though workers using their personal devices for work can greatly increase productivity (Think about it. Their smartphones are within reach nearly all the time.), it is still possible that their devices are not secure, or that they’re connecting to WiFi networks that are not secure. There’s also the possibility that their device can get lost or stolen, or simply left behind at a bar. Ask Apple about that one.

Should businesses be worried about employees using their personal smartphones and/or tablets? Tell us what you think.

The companies compete in eBooks. They compete in online retail. Google product search has the ability to send consumers to a lot of sellers of products that Amazon no doubt would rather have people searching for on Amazon.com.

Google has Google Offers, Amazon has Amazon Local deals, and apparently that’s doing quite well.

Amazon is now in the tablet market. It runs Android, but Amazon’s version of Android. Amazon even has its own version of the Android Market. In terms of operating systems, the competition might soon even get more fierce as it’s rumored that Amazon wants to buy WebOS from HP.

With the Amazon Kindle Fire, the company’s tablet, Amazon appears to be going straight for Google’s Chrome jugular. Google has always touted Chrome’s speed, perhaps more than any other feature, but Amazon’s Silk browser, could give it a big run for its money, as it taps into Amazon’s EC2 Elastic Compute Cloud) to optimize the page loading experience. Amazon talks about this here:

Silk is only for the Kindle Fire for now, but how long do you think that will last? It’s not hard to envision this becoming a straight up competitor to Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari, etc.

This week, Google announced some new storage and App Engine offerings that will help it compete with Amazon Web Services. Specifically, Google’s bundle of announcements includes: new enterprise level services and support option for Google App Engine, Google Cloud SQL, Google Cloud Storage with new features and a lower price, and new features for the Google Prediction API.

Google gives more details about each of these in a post on the Google Enterprise blog. “We are enabling our enterprise customers to build business solutions that take advantage of the computing power and scalability of Google’s cloud services without all the hassles of deployment of applications,” says Group Product Manager Jessie Jiang. “We have been making great progress on Google App Engine, Cloud Storage, and Prediction API. There is more to come, stay tuned.”

Suffice it to say, that while Google seemingly takes on every major tech and Internet company in one way or another (there may be a few exceptions….so far), it appears that Amazon and Google are well on their way to becoming bigger rivals than ever. It’s going to be fun to watch the different ways in which this competition manifests itself.

Hopefully businesses and consumers will ultimately be the biggest winners.

Update: Even as I was writing this, Google announced the Google Commerce Search Partner Program. It’s offering a reseller program to enable tech partners to roll Google Commerce Search into their solutions easily. Resellers will be expected to seek out opportunities to bring Google Commerce Search to existing or new retail clients, Google says. More on this here.

Update 2: Also some very interesting comments on Amazon vs. Google from a guy who used to work at Amazon and currently works at Google.

“Using location-based intelligence, customers can slice-and-dice large volumes of information against Google Maps/Earth to get a better understanding of the ‘when’ and ‘where’ of their business,” a representative for SAP tells WebProNews. “For example, with SAP StreamWork, a team of customer support representatives in a consumer packaged goods company could collaborate and pinpoint the location of consumer complaints within specific geographies and make a decision regarding how to address and prioritize resolution.

“We’re excited to work with SAP to help enterprise customers use Google’s cloud mapping tools with SAP software,” said Dave Girouard, president of Google Enterprise. “This integration will allow our customers to more easily visualize geographic data and make better business decisions.”

“Today, more and more information is being geo-tagged, and it is unlocking an entirely new dimension for enterprise data,” said Sanjay Poonen, president, Global Solutions at SAP. “SAP’s work with Google marries powerful enterprise software with the world’s most popular mapping platform to create entirely new ways for people to understand and interact with business information. We aim to provide our customers the opportunity to tap into the power of business analytics combined with location intelligence through a geographic view and use rich, interactive analytics to respond to events as they unfold in real time.”

Running down some examples of how organizations might be able to take advantage of the partnership between these two companies, SAP suggests that a telecom operator could use Google Earth and SAP BusinessObjects Explorer to perform dropped-call analysis and pinpoint geo-coordinates of faulty towers. A state department of revenue might overlay household tax income info on a map and group it al the country level to track the highest/lowest tax bases. A mortgage bank might perform risk assessment on its portfolio by overlaying foreclosure and default data with the location of loans on Google Maps. You get the idea.

Rene Schimmer, the Offering Manager for Social Software for IBM Collaboration Solutions, told us that shunning social media might not be a long-term option.

“Avoiding it is not going to be an option for much longer,” he said. “We [IBM] see these tools as a fundamental instrument to work.”

Is social media becoming a necessity in business? Let us know your thoughts.

It is completely understandable that businesses are concerned about the risks, but, as Schimmer said, social media is becoming fundamental in just about everything. People today that are hired are not going to be able to abandon all their social media practices and rely solely on telephones and email.

IBM is very aware of these potential risks, as well as the benefits, and recently expanded its social software portfolio in an effort to better meet business needs. The platform is called IBM Connections and is an offering for social collaboration within a business.

The main focus of this platform is to help businesses with compliance concerns. For this reason, IBM partnered with Actiance, to bring logging and archiving to the offering. Together, the companies provide a social networking platform with real-time compliance capabilities.

For example, if someone comments on a wiki, the action is logged. If that same person goes back 5 minutes later and deletes the comment, that action is also logged. In other words, there is always a trace, which is very beneficial when it comes to auditing.

Schimmer told us that platforms such as this help businesses feel comfortable about using social media. Every business knows there are risks involved, but having a way to manage those risks is comforting.

“If we can provide a solution that allows organizations to know that their employees cannot circumvent the system, either by intent or just not knowing how to do it properly, that creates that comfort level, so they are able to roll out social systems and work with them,” he said.

Do you believe that brands are pushing too much noisy content? Let us know.

Although there are many tools and tactics for cutting through the noise, Prosodic, a new startup based in Seattle, recently launched with the goal of helping enterprises with this predicament. The tool is a predictive intelligence platform for brands that need to manage and analyze social media content.

Leigh Fatzinger, the company’s CEO, told WebProNews that he realized the need for a platform like Prosodic through his work at social media agency Nology Media. As he explained, Nology Media published thousands of Facebook posts for its clients, which made it difficult to manage. He also found that other community managers had this same problem, which is how Prosodic began.

“Prosodic really is the result of analyzing this space of content and interactions and finding out how you can create… a workflow of an algorithm that helps enterprises make better publishing decisions based on all the content that they’ve published previously,” said Fatzinger.

“It’s really based on the premise that there are no averages in social media. When a brand should publish and how much they should publish, and what they should publish is dictated by their audience alone… that’s the problem that Prosodic solves.”

One of the biggest advantages of Prosodic is that it has the ability to predict how the content will perform before it is published. It does this by looking at the brand’s past publishing habits and how the audience interacts with the content based on areas such as comments, @replies on Twitter, and “Likes” on Facebook. The tool also analyzes the audience’s reaction to the time of day the content was pushed out and the type of content whether it be text, video, images, etc. From this information, the algorithm reports a potential outcome.

Prosodic, additionally, has a permission feature that allows brands to approve content before it is published. Many brands are fearful of social media disasters especially after Marc Jacobs and Chrysler’s Twitter incidents.

“We don’t want to stifle creativity or slow anything down,” said Fatzinger. “We just want to give enterprises the ability to create a set of rules and standards and then let them develop the processes themselves.”

He also pointed out that Prosodic was “complimentary” to social monitoring tools such as Radian6 and not a competitor.

Organizations can scale services for traffic spikes, reduce server costs, and control source data and attribution, according to the company.

“Whether you have terabytes of imagery or just a few basemap layers, now you can create multiple map layers from your data, such as shapefiles of demographic data, spreadsheets of worldwide customer locations and files of your recently acquired imagery for a new development,” says Tarun Bhatnager, Google’s Head of Geo Enterprise Sales. “You can also integrate the map layers with our own imagery basemap, road data, Google Street View, Terrain View, or Directions in order to find your next best store location.”

“In the enterprise a lot of geospatial data remains trapped on costly servers and inaccessible to those who need it,” Bhatnager says. “We’d like to help free that data and bring the same benefits that consumers have enjoyed for years to businesses and government agencies.”

If you’re interested in seeing how businesses and government organizations are already using Google Earth and Google Maps, Google has page full of case studies here. Organizations include the Air Force Weather Agency, Toyota Motor Europe, The City and County of Washington DC, Dell, and Apple, to name a few.

On a related note, Google Earth has been downloaded over 700 million times.

Earlier this week, Google launched Map Maker in the U.S. This lets users from around the world add and update locations to Google Maps.