Oracle’s latest release of it’s CRM product brings social networking functionality into enterprise CRM.

Phil has some relevant comments and says;

The lead component of Oracle CRM’s new social capabilities is a new feature called ‘Sticky Notes’. This allows a user to mark any object — for example an account in a given salesperson’s portfolio — with a comment and then subscribe to the message stream related to that object. Team members can then follow and participate in the conversation around that object, which is all co-ordinated within new functionality called the ‘Message Center’. They don’t have to go into the application or call up the account itself. The Sticky Notes conversation stream can also be exposed as a portlet or gadget and embedded in an external home page such as iGoogle or MyYahoo!.

As you can imagine, implementing all of this has meant enabling various forms of Web 2.0 goodness such as RSS feeds, OpenSocial and widget APIs. It’s also meant grappling with the security and integration implications of blending intranet and Internet resources. This is the sort of risky innovation you expect from start-ups rather than established enterprise players, so all credit to Oracle for pushing ahead with it. I was also surprised to discover that these new features are all entirely separate from the other Web 2.0 applications that Lye previewed along with Larry Ellison last November, so there’s even more yet to come from the Oracle CRM stable.

So yesterday Zoho introduced a product that moved the consumer space towards enterprise, today Oracle comes in with a product that moves enerprise more towards consumer functionality. Interesting times indeed..

Ben Kepes

Ben Kepes is a technology evangelist, an investor, a commentator and a business adviser. Ben covers the convergence of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users.

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