In recent months, Google has made plans to set its foot in the small and medium business (SMB) market. The multinational cloud computing company intends to swipe some of Microsoft’s control in the SMB cloud computing market. Microsoft is a long-standing business and it along with the newer cloud computing competitors may stand in Google’s way.

Cloud computing in the SMB market is very profitable because it providers smaller companies with an affordable database, programming and communication solutions. Cloud computing does not necessitate technical expertise or hardware so it is easy and cost-friendly.

Google has focused in on SMBs, particularly with its latest Google Small Business Blog. The blog launched earlier this month. It is a place where SMBS can find helpful tips, articles and features that will specifically help their company. Google sneakily wrote in Google product recommendations throughout the articles to hint at SMBs to buy their products. The blog is designed for any business from a small mom and pop store to a successful start up company.

Google has many website features tailored for SMBs. These include Google Docs, with auto-formatted hyperlinks, Google Sites and AdWords Help Forum, which includes a forum entitled the Small Business Corner. Google is even pairing up with the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) to create “Tools for Online Success”, which will educate business owners on how to succeed online. Google also recently released nine new applications, such as ToBeeDo, DeskAway and Katera Networks, in the Google Apps Marketplace that are business-focused.

Google is paying all of this attention to small businesses because it needs them. AdWords gives Google a big chunk of its revenue and there is a huge potential for more profits if it can tap into the SMB market successfully. To do this, Google needs to overcome Microsoft and other cloud-based companies like Dimdim, Box.net and Dropbox. Google needs to make its prices more competitive and its products more unique to fend off the other companies. Also, Google’s security is notably less secure than that of Microsoft. While Google is still a major player in the cloud industry, Microsoft stands to threaten the cloud company.

Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, filed a law suit against almost a dozen technology companies, including Google, Facebook, Apple and Yahoo. The suit was filed in Seattle federal court for patent infringement. It was filed on behalf of Interval Licensing LLC, which is part of Interval Research which was founded by Allen and David Liddle.

Specific technologies at Interval Research were patented in the 1990s. Of the 300 patents in Interval Research’s portfolio, four are in question. According to Allen, the major companies are infringing upon the technology without giving recognition to Interval Research or paying the company to use the technology. The e-commerce and Web search companies being sued are AOL, eBay, Facebook, Apple, Google, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo and Youtube.

A spokesman for Allen, David Postman, commented on the suit. He said that the patents in question are “fundamental to the ways that leading e-commerce and search companies operate today.” He continued to say, “Interval Research was an early, ground-breaking contributor to the development of the internet economy. Interval has worked hard to bring its technologies to market through spinning off new companies, technology transfer arrangements, and sales of its patented technology. This lawsuit is necessary to protect our investment in innovation. We are not asserting patents that other companies have filed, nor are we buying patents originally assigned to someone else. These are patents developed by and for Interval.”

The first patent is for browser technology that can rapidly review a block of information, such as news stories. The second and third patents involves screen savers and computer wallpaper that can be used to display important information. The fourth patent involves technology that alerts users to “items of current interest.”

The damages that Allen is requesting are unspecified.

Today, Steve Jobs announced at the Apple Music event that there will be a new operating system for the iPad. Jobs gave a preview of iOS 4.2, which will take the iPad to the next level. This free update will be available in November of 2010.

The iOS 4.2 will support the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. The iPad’s update will include folder organization, multitasking and a new application entitled AirPlay. AirPlay will allow users to stream video and audio from iTunes to your iPad. The iPad will even be able to print to any printer connected to your computer or networked printers.

While Apple promised that the new operating system would be released by this September, it will not be released until November. The new iOS does not have all of the features that many have been hoping for but at least it will soon be on a similar level as the iPhone, with multitasking support that the iPad does not yet have.

Steve Jobs with iPad

Jobs announced many other things at the Apple Event, such as an updated iPod Touch, which is very similar to the iPhone 4. Apple iTunes 10 will soon be released as well as the much anticipated Apple iTV.

To find out more about the updated products, go to Apple’s website.

It was recently leaked that the Samsung Group, a multinational electronics corporation, plans on releasing its own PC tablet very soon.  This tablet, entitled the Samsung Galaxy Tablet, is expected to give the iPad a lot of competition.  Spectators have even named the Galaxy Tab the “iPad killer”, which is not good news for Apple as Samsung may take away many potential iPad customers.

There will be many significant differences between the Galaxy Tablet and the Apple iPad. The Samsung Galaxy Tablet is expected to be 7-inches, according to leaked photographs, in comparison to the iPad, which is 10 inches.  It will run on Google’s Operating System- Android 2.2 a.k.a. Froyo.  The tablet will also have two cameras, as opposed to the iPad which has none.  The rear camera is intended for picture taking.  The rear camera will have 3.2 megapixels.  The front camera is intended to be used for video calls, which is ideal for many business users and may ultimately influence their decision to choose the Galaxy Tablet over the iPad.  Like the iPad, the Samsung tablet will support Wi-fi and 3G.

The Samsung Galaxy Tablet also aims to resolve one of the iPad’s main problems.  While millions of iPad devices have been sold, there have been many complaints and concerns with the iPad’s text input abilities.  The lengthy QWERTY keyboard on the iPad does not suffice as it is still difficult to use.  Samsung will make typing easier with the use of Swype, created by T9, to retype misspelled or incorrect words.

Samsung Galaxy Tablet Protoype

The iPad is ideal for reading books and browsing websites, with its 4:3 aspect ration screen and 1024×768 pixel resolution.  The Samsung Galaxy Tablet is primarily intended for video-watching, with its 16:10 aspect ration and widescreen aspect ration.

Samsung’s tablet is also suspected to have a microSD card slot, which will come with either 16 GB or 32 GB of memory.  The card slot will also allow users to upload pictures from their digital cameras.  The Galaxy tablet will also support Adobe’s Flash Player 10.1.

The Samsung Galaxy Tablet has many new and innovative features that are sure to give Apple’s iPad some major competition.  The Samsung Tablet aims to resolve many of the iPad’s problems, such as lack of camera, typing problems and video-watching abilities.  While its release has not been officially confirmed by Samsung, expect to see more of the Galaxy Tablet in the near future.

ConnectWise, the business operating system provider, is now available on the iPhone, Android and Windows Mobile Phones. The system was built to help IT service providers with anytime connectivity to their most important service tools. ConnectWise Mobile provides users with anytime access to ConnectWise from the most popular smartphones out there.

ConnectWise Mobile app gives IT service providers access to timesheets, calendars, service tickets, and configurations all from the comfort of their smartphone. There is no doubt that ConnectWise improves IT service efficiency by providing a platform that is always accessible. Another great feature of the mobile app is that internet connectivity is not needed to access the ConnectWise OS.

ConnectWise is built to meet the specific needs of mobile IT service teams. IT service providers can enjoy:

• Automated time and schedule management tools
• Greatly improved customer response times
• Rapid deployment of IT service technicians, as service tickets are created and accessed anytime
• Facilitated and enhanced communication between dispatchers, IT techs and service managers

“With ConnectWise Mobile, sales, technical and executive staff members are fully armed with the tools they need to manage, share, report and measure the effectiveness of their business operations anytime and anywhere,” said CEO of ConnectWise, Arnie Bellini. “ConnectWise mobile is unique among mobile apps because of its ability to put the world’s most powerful business operating system in a service provider’s pocket, significantly enhancing their business effectiveness.”

ConnectWise user, Don Bentz, takes advantage of the business operating system on his iPhone. “Without any training, I was able to close tickets when I was on the road, and even approve a vacation request from our HR board. Our field engineers have access without having to open their laptops or connect to the internet. If field engineers are running late for an appointment, they can notify the client by phone or email with a single click.”

Houston-based CRM vendor, SalesNexus, is launching their comprehensive CRM and email marketing suite to empower sales teams everywhere. SalesNexus CRM is designed to meet the needs of small to midsized enterprises looking to boost their sales initiatives. SalesNexus CRM offers a fully integrated email marketing suite and provides sales teams with a platform that nurtures leads.

SalesNexus CRM helps users optimize customer relationship management and keeps the sales pipeline full. SalesNexus is unique in that they help sales teams with their sales initiatives at all stages of the pipeline. “We can probably agree that in the long term, it’s more valuable to focus on building the relationship with the customer,” said President of SalesNexus, Craig Klein. “So, how about letting email handle some of the repetitive work so you can have more one-on-one time with the leads that are already ready to purchase.”

The web-based CRM provider will upgrading their UI and adding an email marketing platform to its CRM software service. SalesNexus’ Sales Master Institute users will also enjoy the upgrades at no additional cost.
SalesNexus is breaking boundaries in the CRM industry by being the first to add an email marketing suite to its CRM package. SalesNexus users and fans can take a sneak peek at the new CRM suite and all of its fabulous upgrades on Thursday, September 2nd at 2pm EST on the SalesNexus website: www.salesnexus.com.

Facebook might not be the most business-friendly social media platform, but it has certainly managed to change the way business does business. Box.net is taking a page right out of the Facebook; um book, to enhance their collaboration and content management platform. Box.net’s CMS features communication, file sharing and version control options for their users. Soon, the company will add newsfeed to that list as well.

In an effort to stay relevant and to ensure that information is properly and exhaustively dispersed throughout the social media pipeline, Box.net is adding a newsfeed feature to syndicate information. “It’s hard to connect the right people with the right information,” says Box.net’s CEO Aaron Levie. The newsfeed feature is designed to make it “easy for businesses to share information with anyone, anywhere.”

Box.net’s content management suite, as explained by Jake Widman from Information Week, “falls in the vast middle space between simple shared, synced storage like Dropbox at one end, and complex, high TCO offerings like Microsoft SharePoint at the other.”

The great thing about adding a newsfeed feature is that it will cast a wider audience net while still connecting the right people with the right information. As Levie explains, adding a newsfeed would “expose information in relevant and intuitive ways.”

The newsfeed would provide a steady stream of information that is more dynamic than information being dispersed through an email, which is so passé. The newsfeed can also be updated anytime, anywhere. “It drives relevant activities and surfaces them to users,” says the Box.net CEO.

With Box.net’s success in the past year and new collaboration tools, the cloud-computing enterprise is proving to be a serious threat to its CM providing counterparts, ahem, Microsoft. Also, since the newsfeed is on an open platform, Box.net partners can access the newsfeed and contribute as well. Box.net is anticipating that utilization of the newsfeed will go up five times over the next year.

Box.net, the cloud content management vendor, aka Microsoft’s arch nemesis, has a video update on their iPad deployment project at D7 Consulting. Box recently gave the company 20 free iPads with content management technology to help D7 setup an efficient workflow around the magical Apple product.The end goal for Box is to optimize D7’s efficiency through collaboration with the help of Box and Apple technology.

Box is also hoping to gain valuable feedback for their future software by leveraging what is learned by the D7 and iPad experiment. Box is also looking into a few exciting new features like methods for online access to optimize collaboration and accessibility. The cloud content management vedor is also looking into more ways to share content and “rich content” to extend the usefulness of their CMS.

President of D7, Joseph Daniels, claims to have learned five lessons from the iPad implementation project thus far. Good news is, the iPad is in fact, viable in the workplace. D7 iPad users concurred that the iPad can handle a surprising amount of abuse, without breaking down. The only caveat so far has been overheating after the iPad had been in the sun for a while. D7 also mentioned a lack of enterprise support from Apple, claiming it’s still more of a consumer device versus a business tool. Although, the iPad is slowly beginning to embrace the enterprise so we can look forward to a few changes.

All things considered, collaboration is paying off for all the parties involved in the D7 and iPad challenge Watch the video for more information on taking the iPad to work.

The ever so fabulous iPad is still charming users with its sleek design, user-friendly interface and life-altering apps. Maybe ‘life-altering’ is a bit extreme, but can you remember life before the App Store?

The iPad has proved a useful tool for many an Apple lover, but what about big business? For a while, Blackberry held the title of ‘Golden Child’ by businesses everywhere. However, Apple is fast taking over the business world. Businesses are giving the tablet a whirl, even using it in break rooms and boardrooms.

The iPad was built to appease the consumer masses, but the product has slowly penetrated the business world. The iPad is also IT Department friendly, which should help the magical tablet device gain acceptance in the business sphere

So is the iPad good for business?

Wall Street Journal Writer, Ben Worthen, wrote that “Apple has addressed these and other issues, including the ability for companies to encrypt information on iPhones and set up secure ways for employees to connect to corporate networks. The latest version of the operating system used by the iPhone and iPad adds features that make the devices easier for a tech department to manage, including the ability for businesses to distribute internally developed apps without going through the Apple’s App Store.”

‘What won’t Apple do’, should be their new slogan.

The iPad’s business appeal also resides in its ability to cover the major business necessities like email, messaging and web browsing. What other functions do most business owners need, anyway? The new apple operating system is also choc-filled with apps for pretty much everything, much like its predecessor the iPhone. Another bonus, compared to laptops, the iPad is an inexpensive alternative. In conclusion, big business and the iPad are a love-story in the making. Stay tuned.

Today, Intel Corp., the world’s largest chip maker, announced that it plans to acquire the security company, McAfee. Intel intends to pay 7.68 billion in cash, at $48 a share. This purchase is a big step for Intel.

Intel bounced back from the recession quickly and recently announced record sales. The chip company had a lot of money on hand (about $12.2 billion in cash), which is why it was able to buy McAfee. McAfee is not the only company that Intel has purchased recently. Last year, Intel bought Wind River to expand its presence in the consumer electronics market. McAfee gives Intel a presence in the antivirus software market.

Intel is relying on the growth of the security technology market so it can increase its power in that field. Intel wants to embed McAfee’s security technology into its chips. Now that Intel plans on buying McAfee, the chip company is a big player in the security software and services market.

Many analysts speculated about Intel’s intentions. Ashok Kumar, a technology analyst at Rodman & Renshaw, said, “Eventually the software features will get embedded in the hardware. So, maybe this is an expensive way for Intel to acquire domain expertise.”

Security is a growing concern for many businesses and Intel is looking to address these concerns. Paul Otellini is another analyst who also commented on Intel’s decision to purchase McAfee. Otellini said, “With the rapid expansion of growth across a vast array of Internet-connected devices, more and more of the elements of our lives have moved online. In the past, energy-efficient performance and connectivity have define computing requirements. Looking forward, security will join those as a third pillar of what people demand from all computing experiences.”

Intel already building security functions into its chips, but McAfee will expand Intel’s grasp immensely. Read more about both companies on their websites.