In a move analysts have expected for some time, Salesforce.com is taking Chatter to the smartphone world to drive deeper social, mobile and real-time collaboration in the enterprise. Chatter Mobile lets users monitor Chatter feeds, including posts from colleagues and app alerts. Users can also post status updates and comment on conversations from their mobile device.
Salesforce.com did its homework before taking Chatter mobile. The company points to IDC research that reveals mobile devices are becoming the new enterprise desktop for more than 50 percent of the workforce. Chatter Mobile for Apple iPad, iPhone and the new iPod touch, Google Android and RIM BlackBerry devices looks to leverage that trend in effort to woo enterprises to its platform.
“Chatter Mobile means you can know what is happening in your entire enterprise, wherever you are,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of Salesforce.com. “The combination of devices like the iPad or the new iPod touch with mobile apps like Chatter that push information to you in real-time are making the desktop obsolete.”
Chatter Mobile is a Cloud 2 play. Cloud 2 is the next generation of cloud computing, which is more social, more collaborative and real-time. Again pointing to IDC research, Salesforce.com is looking to tap into the more than 500 million people who access the Internet using a mobile device with Chatter Mobile.
“Like a chess game, you know what the first six moves are going to be. Every vendor who has any sort of collaboration platform, particularly those that cater to social networking or anything that has the potential to do geolocation services, has to have a strong mobile platform road map,” said Brad Shimmin, an analyst at Current Analysis. “Taking Chatter mobile was an inevitable move.”
Salesforce.com is also banking on IDC research that predicts the use of mobile apps…