As the General Services Administration (GSA) migrates to a work-anywhere, work-anytime strategy, the real estate arm of the U.S. federal government is discovering that having an iron-clad security strategy is critical to its adoption of cloud-based applications.

Increasing use of social networking is creating a fundamental shift in cloud computing, according to Salesforce.com

Salesforce.com on Tuesday announced Chatter Free, a version of its social collaboration software that includes a Facebook-like "invite" feature that enables paying users to invite anyone, even non-Salesforce.com customers, to use Chatter.

Salesforce.com is working on a series of native mobile applications for its Chatter collaboration software, the company announced Wednesday. Supported platforms include Apple's iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, Google Android and Reseach in Motion's BlackBerry.

Salesforce.com on Wednesday announced a private beta program for Chatter, the enterprise collaboration platform first announced last year, positioning it as an alternative to Microsoft SharePoint and IBM Lotus Notes.

Salesforce.com's soon-to-be-launched Chatter application will help firms meet their collaboration needs, and is aimed at becoming the "Facebook for the enterprise", according to chief executive Marc Benioff.