Entries Tagged 'SaaS' ↓

Open-Xchange began its life as a hosted email service but has since evolved with a twist: its engineers have figured out a relatively simple process to extract your contacts from Facebook and LinkedIn. It is based on the SaaS pay hosted service, but there is a free service you can use for your contact extraction.

So if you are trying to migrate a bunch of your contacts into Google+, or move from Facebook to someplace else, you might have found that this isn't an easy process.

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There are a few products that can do this now, including MyOtherDrive.com, Nimble.com and Plaxo's Pulse. But these only create yet another proprietary Web service that you are locked into using, and can't easily extract your data if you don't want to use the service any longer.

Here are the step-by-step directions how to do the export and bring them into your free OX.IO account. You can see the broad range of accounts that it will handle from the screenshot below.

Read the instructions carefully and realize that this export won't happen immediately -- mine took several days but that was a few years ago when they were just starting this service.

Once your export is finished (you'll get an email notification), you can merge your contacts and further export them to a Web page or CSV file for further analysis or your own use. And the service is free.

Disclosure: I did some custom consulting work for the company several years ago.

Security vendor StillSecure has announced a new cloud security service for network penetration testing this week. This complements their existing panoply of cloud-based services including including firewall, IDS/IPS, VPN, e-mail security, multi-factor authentication, vulnerability scanning and log management.

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The service is focused on simulating a hacker's approach to penetrating the network, and mirrors what has been available from a wide variety of vendors with a packaged software and consulting practice in the past. The StillSecure Penetration Testing Service provides evidence of vulnerability points and pathways where an attacker can potentially breach the network and pose organizational threats.Included are the following services:

• Exposing vulnerabilities found by the vulnerability scanning service
  
• Proving the existence of critical vulnerabilities
  
• External penetration testing of IPv4 and IPv6 exploits
  
• Exploit tunneling that allows organizations to run penetration tests from an exploited target
  

The service is available now with a minimum fee of $1500 which includes tests from 10 different IP addresses. Additional addresses will cost $150 each. There is no other costs and no software to download.

Many of you are familiar with the packet capture tools Ethereal, Netscout's Snifffer or Wireshark. All of these are very useful for debugging network-related problems. The problem is that you have to run one of these tools on a computer with special drivers to enable the capture, and sharing the reports isn't always easy, especially on mobile devices. What if you could put the captures up in the cloud? Enter the idea behind CloudShark from QA Cafe.

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QA has deep expertise in developing test software that is used by some of the largest ISPs around the world, and they have used this experience with CloudShark. (Great name, BTW.) So now network techs and product testers can run captures using a virtual (or real) PCA-1000 appliance on their network, upload it to a private cloud, and then share the results with management. All the reports are viewed in an ordinary Web browser.

The upload process is very flexible: you can provide a URL, email the file, or upload it manually. The CloudShark analysis site has been around for about a year, but the appliance part of the equation is brand new. This is a private cloud solution, so your captures - which often contain very sensitive information such as login credentials and email traffic - aren't shared with anyone else. Only authorized users are allowed access to the capture files.

The appliance costs $10,000 for a virtual edition or $12,000 for a real piece of hardware. That seems pricey, but not when you think about the time saved with your network engineers, and especially if you do a lot of packet capture analyses. The appliance comes with 90 days of technical support and eventually you will be able to purchase it online. You can try out their analysis service by uploading a test Wireshark file here for no charge.

Turning live chats with your customers into actionable leads just got a tad easier thanks to Olark's intgration with SaaS CRM Salesforce.com.

Olark is a customer service live chat app that plugs into your preferred chat client and lets you engage visitors to your company's Website in real time.

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Rather than letting those conversations and their potential value disappear into the ether of cyberspace, Olark lets you push conversations into other Web apps like Zendesk, Assistly and now Salesforce.com.

The Salesforce.com integration is now available to all paid customers of Olark.

Today Google announced a new tool for Apps Script, the scripting language for Google Apps: Apps Script GUI Builder. Apps Script lets admins automate tasks and extend the functionality Google Apps (see our coverage). The new GUI Builder tool will make it easier to build forms and other interactive elements into Google Apps.

You can find the new feature in the Apps Script Editor by clicking on File and then "Build a user interface."

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According to the announcement, you can use the interfaces built with GUI builder in "a Spreadsheets dialog, on a Sites page, or as a standalone web service at its own URL." Once an app is completed, it can be published to users through the Share menu or in a spread sheet using the sheet.show() method.

A limited subset of UiApp widgets are currently supported, but Google promises to expand the list soon.

Google notes that some users have created extremely complex applications using App Script in the past, so we expect to see even more use now.

Dropbox Reader is a set of Python scripts for forensic investigators. The scripts provide investigators with information about a particular Dropbox user's account and activities, such as the registration e-mail, Dropbox identifier and most recently changed files.

Dropbox Reader was created by Cybermarshal, the computer forensics wing of ATC-NY.

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Here's a list and description of the tools from the product website:

• read_config script outputs the contents of the Dropbox config.db file in human-readable form. This includes the user's registered e-mail address and Dropbox identifier, software version information, and a list of the most-recently-changed files.
• read_filecache_config script outputs configuration information from the Dropbox filecache.db file. This includes information about shared directories that are attached to the user's Dropbox account.
• read_filejournal script outputs information about Dropbox synchronized files stored in the filecache.db file. This includes local and server-side metadata and a list of block hashes for each Dropbox-synchronized file.
• read_sigstore script outputs information from the Dropbox sigstore.db file, which is an additional source of block hashes.
• hash_blocks script produces a block hash list for any file. This block hash list can be compared to the block hashes from read_filejournal or read_sigstore.
• dropbox_contains_file script hashes one or more files (as per hash_blocks) and compares the resulting block hash list to the files listed in filecache.db (as per read_filejournal) and reports whether the files are partially or exactly the same as any Dropbox-synchronized files.

There were a few updates to Google Docs last week. Discussions, a new feature we covered previously, received some improvements - most notably, the ability to see how many times a document has been viewed. Google Docs also added a new font, made it easier to restore deleted sites and the spell checker gained an additional feature.

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Document Statistics

You can now view document statistics. Clicking the "Discussions" button and then the "Document stats" link will reveal graphs of views and discussions in the past seven days.

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Discussions got a few tweaks:

• Each comment thread now shows the the selected text for that particular thread.
• E-mail notifications no longer use reverse chronological ordering. Instead the selected. and most recent comments are included at the top of the e-mail, and the other comments are included below that in chronological order.
• Long discussions are automatically collapsed to reduce clutter.

Ubuntu

The Ubuntu font was commissioned by Canonical for inclusion in its Linux distribution Ubuntu. It was designed by Dalton Maag. According to Google's announcement, the font is designed to be used in many sizes, ranging from small captions to document body text to larger poster headlines.

Ignore All in Spell-Check

This is a minor but useful update: when using the Google Docs spell checker, you now have the option to ignore all instances of a word. Previously you could add a word to your own dictionary, but that would mean it would be ignored in every document you opened in Google Docs. Ignore all works on a per-document basis, so you don't have to commit to adding a word to the dictionary in order to temporarily ignore it.

Restore Deleted Sites

Google already offered the ability to restore a deleted Google Site, but you needed to know the URL of the site you wanted to restore. As of last week, you can now view a list of your deleted sites from the My Sites dashboard. Sites will appear here for 30 days before being deleted permanently. From this list you can choose to restore a site, or to delete it permanently.

In a refreshingly bitter post at Tech Target, Carl Brooks wrote: "Apple iCloud is not cloud computing."

Brooks went on: "You know what iCloud is? Streaming media. In other words, it's a Web service. Not relevant to cloud; not even in the ballpark."

But there are certainly some cloudy elements to iCloud. At the very least, it's a software-as-a-service. It fulfills the cloud promise of providing anytime, anywhere access to data.

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And what about the architecture? GigaOM's Derrick Harris took a look at what we know so far. It's interesting, but it's hard to say at this point whether there's anything particularly "cloudy" about it - how well it makes of use of virtualization, elastic provisioning resources.

Brooks, who is obviously suffering from a bit of cloud fatigue, wrote:

And you, IT person, grumpily reading this over your grumpy coffee and your grumpy keyboard, you have Apple to thank for turning the gas back on under the hype balloon. Now, when you talk about cloud to your CIO, CXO, manager or whomever, and their strange little face slowly lights up while they say, "Cloud? You mean like that Apple thing? My daughter has that..." and you have to explain it all over again, you will hate the words "cloud computing" even more.

So what do you think? Is iCloud actually cloud computing?

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Salesforce.com Pays Over $1.5 Million for Data.com Domain Name

June 8th, 2011 — Improve Life, News, SaaS

Salesforce.com is the new owner of the data.com domain name. Domain Name Newswire cited a press release from domain name auctioneer Moniker stating that Salesforce.com purchased the domain name "for an amount that significantly exceeds the $1.5 million reserve."

According to the Business Insider there are three domains tied for 18th most expensive domain names ever sold, each of which sold for $1.5 million. This list might not be accurate, as Most Expensive names several high dollar domain names not included in Business Insider's list. Regardless, this is steep price and may put data.com into the top 20 most expensive domains ever sold.

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Salesforce.com declined to comment on its plans for the domain. At the time of this writing the domain name does not redirect to any other site. It's possible that it will redirect to Database.com, or perhaps it will become a new brand for Radian6. It could also be the name of a new service. Or Salesforce.com could just sit on it.

Salesforce.com and its CEO Marc Benioff are no strangers to the buying and selling of expensive domains. The company purchased the Force.com domain in 2007 for an undisclosed sum according to eWeek. Last year, it unveiled its Database.com service, and it's unknown when it was acquired and how much was paid.

According to Domain Name Newswire, Benioff sold the domain name bill.com to CashView. CashView founder René Lacerte told Domain Name Wire that the purchase price was "nothing like the $500,000 or $1,000,000" that other four letter domain names sold for.

Salesforce.com has been on something of a spending splurge lately. It's building a new headquarters in San Francisco, and last year it bought Chatter ads during the Superbowl. The spending has been criticized by some analysts. For example, Constellation Research CEO and principal analyst R "Ray" Wang wrote on Twitter that the Super Bowl ads were a waste of shareholder money.

It has also acquired several companies in the past 12 months, including Heroku and Radian6.

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VMware Acquires Enterprise Microblogging Company Socialcast

May 31st, 2011 — Improve Life, News, SaaS

VMware announced today that it will acquire Socialcast, an enterprise microblogging and social network software-as-a-service. The move expands VMware's software-as-a-service portfolio, which also includes Zimbra, Mozy and SlideRocket. VMware is owned by EMC.

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VMware has been expanding expanding its product line-up beyond virtualization in the past 18 months. It acquired the Web-based e-mail and office suite Zimbra from Yahoo in January of 2010. In April of this year it took control of Mozy and announced its cloud computing platform CloudFoundry. Later that month it acquired SlideRocket. This month it launched Horizon App Manager, a single sign-on service for various Web applications. App Manager is just one part of Project Horizon, VMware's cloud identity initiative.

"We're realizing there's a new way to work using cloud applications," says Brian Byun, VP of VMware's Cloud Applications business unit.He says Project Horizon is at the core of VMware's strategy for enterprise applications, but it's about more than just connecting companies to existing applications. It's about creating a whole new way of working.

When asked whether Socialcast and SlideRocket would become part of the Zimbra office suite, Byun said that VMware believes in the "Modular Web" and therefore the three services will remain distinct. However, he expects integrations will come soon. Socialcast wasn't one of the apps initially supported by Horizon App Manager, but he does expect Socialcast support to be added in the near future.

Earlier this month Gary Orenstein wrote at GigaOM that VMware is "new Microsoft" but without an operating system. Robert Scoble agreed. It's been a bit easy to forget Zimbra in the Google Apps vs. Microsoft Office 365 slugfest. Zimbra has been a bit quiet since VMware acquired it. But we have the feeling we'll be seeing more action coming from VMware's stable of Web applications in the near future.

It may not be as visible as competitors like Yammer and Salesforce.com Chatter, but Socialcast is one of the most successful enterprise microblogging companies out there, having landed companies like GM, NASA and Nokia as customers. Byun points out that even without a strong enterprise brand behind it Socialcast has built an impressive customer base. He expects that momentum to be even stronger thanks to VMware.

Socialcast has long been one of our favorite enterprise social software offerings. We called Socialcast one of our Top 10 Enterprise Products of 2009, and looked at how the company knocked it out of the park in 2010.

Socialcast is based in San Francisco and was founded in 2005. It was funded by True Ventures and Menlo Ventures.

Disclosure: VMware is a ReadWriteWeb sponsor

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