Stories by: C.G. Lynch

Here's an interesting strategy for a new software company: create applications that place you squarely in the competitive sights of Google and Microsoft, bypass venture capital funding, and rebuff an acquisition offer from Salesforce.com, the surging software as a service (SaaS) company that delivers its products over the Web.

IBM and Research in Motion (RIM) announced this week at the Wireless Enterprise Symposium in Orlando that a good portion of Big Blue's software can now be served up on a corporate BlackBerry.

IBM and Microsoft are poised to dominate the collaboration technology market for providing applications to the future workplace, says a new report by Forrester Research. But that doesn't mean small vendors in the Web 2.0 space, or a little company called Google, won't have a prominent role as well.

When Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced that the iPhone was ready for enterprise use, the announcement caused a stir that few of the world's iconic businessmen could match. It seemed that everyone from rank-and-file worker-bees to CEOs wanted to get their corporate applications served up on the hot new device. Why? This was Apple-a synonym for awe-inspiring design and coolness-the antithesis to stodgy old corporate technology that burns the eyes red and freezes computers blue.

About half of IT decision makers at companies with 1000 employees or more expect to implement a formal collaboration technology strategy in 2008, according to a year-end survey by Forrester Research. The interest in collaborative technology offerings tips heavily in favour of Microsoft at 55 per cent, which outpaced every other incumbent vendor by at least 40 per cent and clobbered up-and-coming vendors such as Google, which received no interest.