Chapter 10

Social Collaboration in the Cloud

In This Chapter

arrow Distinguishing between cloud and application hosting

arrow Knowing the advantages of a cloud solution

arrow Meeting the needs of your organization

arrow Understanding contract negotiation

Some of the most prominent social collaboration tools were born in the cloud, meaning they are offered as software as a service (SaaS), delivered over the web, rather than software you download or get shipped to you on a stack of CDs in a box. For example, no one besides Yammer runs its own server for social collaboration on Yammer: You get it as a cloud service or not at all.

Some products originally marketed as traditional enterprise software, such as Jive and IBM Connections, are also available in cloud editions and various other forms of application hosting.

In many ways, social collaboration is a perfect match for the cloud — an inherently web-based experience that needs to be available to employees at home or on the road, as well as in the office. Cloud products also tend to have a cost advantage derived from the extreme economies of scale achieved ...

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