Starting August 1st, Google is going to begin phasing out their older browsers. Google states that the move, “is part of a trend to stop the use of ageing browsers which can be insecure and not sophisticated enough to handle the latest web technologies.” If customers use these older browsers prior to the phase out date, they will notice that Gmail, Google Docs, and Calendar will start to lose functions, then eventually stop working. Currently, 17% of customers globally will be affected by this if they don’t make the upgrade.

• Google to Abandon Older Browsers

Greenberg gives a fairly quick run through of Salesforce’s ever-expanding vision and upgrades throughout the years. Some of the events he touches on include Salesforce establishing the social enterprise and acquiring Jigsaw, Radian6, Heroku, etc. to stay on top of the enterprise, integrating Chatter for private, company social networks, and clarifying the cloud for their customers and making it easy to understand. With Rivals such as Oracle and Microsoft, Salesforce must keep innovating and making their CRM service stronger to stay on top. More than anything, Salesforce is “genuinely attuned to what the customers want now and in the near future,” and are not just listening and discussing these needs, but acting out on them.

• Salesforce Irons it Out: 21st Century Social Enterprise Certified

Earlier this week, Salesforce announced that the US Government is going to embrace the trusted CRM service. Hundreds of government agencies are in the process of turning to salesforce.com, including more than half of US cabinet-level agencies, such as the US Department of State. They are using salesforce.com to, “deliver a broad range of services from grants management to electronic medical records and constituent-facing websites to contact centers.” This is all part of the Obama Administration’s Cloud First policy, which drives the government adoption of cloud computing.

• Government Embraces Salesforce.com’s Trusted Cloud Computing Model

In breaking news, VSee has received a capital injection from Salesforce; the amount was not disclosed, but was stated that Salesforce invested “multiple millions of dollars” in the video collaboration service provider. VSee was founded in 2008, and provides “a service that supports multiparty video calling, application/desktop sharing and file transfers over the Web.” We’ll keep an eye out for any more details of this story to come.

• Exclusive: Salesforce Invests In Video Messaging Startup (And Skype Rival) VSee

Intuit launched Intuit Anywhere on Tuesday, providing “a series of widgets and data services that connect QuickBooks Online data to applications outside of the company’s marketplace.” This is all apart of Intuit’s developer strategy, making Intuit more accessible and “drop-dead easy” for developers to use. The program is currently in Beta and only accessible to some customers, but more information will be released by Intuit in August.

• Intuit Opens Up Platform to Outside Developers

Google launched the Chromebook on Wednesday, a web-only laptop that runs solely on Google’s own Chrome browser. Having had the opportunity to preview this device a few weeks ago, I can say that it is a simple device that runs quickly and efficiently. Anderson describes the Chromebook as possibly “the most secure computer available,” and foresees the only major issue being that it only works when the user is online. Though, the Chromebook is highly secure, offers a great deal of memory (16GB), and could be quite useful as more and more applications are moving towards the cloud.

• Chromebook: Web Applications Put to the Test

An interesting article about Google to compare to Aderson’s comments. Google announced that they have been using offline version of three of their main applications for a few months now- Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Calendar. Coming this summer, all users will be able to access and use these apps offline as well. All the more reason to look into the Chromebook.

• Coming This Summer: Fully Offline Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs

On Tuesday, Skype officially announced that Microsoft will acquire the Internet communications company for 8.5 billion US. Skype believes this acquisition is the best way to “extend Skype’s reach” and allow more people around the world to take advantage their product. They promise that the acquisition will create, “a new era of generative ways for everyone to communicate.” Many comments below the announcement seem negative, it will be interesting to see how this acquisition actually plays out.

• Microsoft Will Acquire Skype

A simple blog post on the joys of Chatter. Taulli states that after using Chatter for a short period of time, “it became a regular part of our business. It has actually reduced email volume and the number of meetings.” Chatter, being a Facebook-style social networking tool for businesses, promises an average of 32% email reduction, 28% fewer meetings, and a 36% increase in collaboration within your company. And what do you know, it actually works.

• Chatter: Bringing Facebook to the Enterprise

Check out the freebie for the week- free Salesforce training podcasts are now available on iTunes. All the yummy salesforce.com training you can eat.

• Salesforce.com Training and Certification

Appirio announced their recent acquisition, VMG, this week. VMG is a training partner that assists companies in their training programs in order to help them improve their service. Appirio states that they plan to use VMG’s talents “throughout our sales, delivery and solution architect teams to ensure user adoption and customer satisfaction are embedded in everything we do.” Appirio’s acquisition sheds light on how important it is to not lose quality customer service while working in the cloud.

• Appirio Acquires VMG, Directing Attention to the People Part of Cloud Adoption
  

Dennis Howlett brings to light the fact that the term ‘cloud’, “has become so bastardized… it could mean almost anything.” Even though the general public often hears about the cloud, few companies actually know what it truly is and how it can help their business. In turn, companies are wasting millions in marketing over something they themselves do not even understand.

• Adoption? All Over the Map

Author gives their opinion on the future of the cloud, stating that, “the cloud will have a profound impact on the way corporations use IT.”  What the author failed to note is that the cloud already has made a profound impact, not just in IT, but also on how businesses work as a whole. Like we have stated in the past, the cloud changes everything.

• The Future of Cloud Computing

This article adds a different level of credibility to the cloud by putting it in an investment context. F5 Network, salesforce.com, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle, and VMware are the seven major companies that are rapidly expanding their cloud computing resources. Author Andre Bradley states, “investors can expect to see the shares of these companies climb in the coming years,” and suggests that investors begin looking into it and investing now.

• 7 Cloud Computing Stocks You Should Own

Looking for an excuse not to move to the cloud? Cloud Tweaks lists 65 reasons why you might not want to make the switch. Just a few to get you started: “6. You would be bored- No more coordinating the configuration, test, development, and integration of hardware and software? What would you do all day? 30. Your internal security is 100% guaranteed- much more secure than having your data in the cloud. 56. You’re certain that Cloud computing is just a fad like the Internet was.”

• 65 Reasons for NOT Moving to the Cloud- Proceed at Your Own Risk!

After the recent conclusion of Cloudforce ‘11 in NYC, Reid Carlberg of the Force.com Labs took some time to post a tip about resolving coding obstacles. Having spent 7 hours with Salesforce developers in 1:1 coding consult sessions, Reid found himself coming back to his problem solving strategy – a quonset hut. “Find the point where the problem manifests itself most clearly, isolate that point, and then create the simplest version of a solution that might possibly work.  I call this building a quonset hut.”

• Code Consultations and the Power of the Quonset Hut
  

In this article, R “Ray” Wang builds his case for two-tiered ERP. In an ideal world, many enterprises would prefer to jump entirely into the cloud. This plan, however, is unrealistic as businesses face the challenge of optimizing business value, a challenge that acknowledges that certain legacy systems still hold value. A two-tiered approach to ERP can leverage the legacy systems with remaining value while also leveraging the cloud. The two-tiered approach depends heavily on systems’ integrability, a well-conceived cloud roadmap, and a cloud system architect who can construct a seamless, working ERP out of the two systems.

• Research Summary: Best Practices – The Case for Two-Tier ERP

Ben Kepes dives into the world of SMB and Disaster Recovery via a recent study. While cloud computing has brought large-enterprise levels of computing power to the SMB, the SMB has yet to adopt the large-enterprise attitude that expects Disaster Recovery to be a standard part of their process. Kepes perspective is unique – “Having come through a natural disaster recently, I’ve seen first hand how having accessible data – no matter of location or status of physical equipment – is a critical part of business continuity.”

• SMBs and Disaster Recovery
  

And, just to prove the point, this week’s Gmail failure and resulting account deletions brought to light their own back-up plan – “But it isn’t safe and sound in some remote server attached to the cloud. Instead, it’s safe on back-up data tapes somewhere in an undisclosed location.”

• For 40,000 Gmail Users, Google Has to Leave the Cloud to Review the Tapes
  

Enterproid is a new mobile app that addresses the dilemma faced by IT Departments by the increasing number of personal smartphones brought into the workplace by the workforce that are being used for work as well as personal reasons. Mobility is crucial to the new workforce but IT Departments must still “secure and manage this emerging fleet of devices.” Enterproid is an app environment that creates “a distinctive profile that is secure from the rest of the phone.” Users and IT manage their devices with a cloud console.

• Enterproid Brings Work / Life Balance to Smartphones
  

Chris Rollyson, friend of Delivered Innovation, has published this case study about rapidly building and deploying a social media roadmap for Maple Leaf Digital Lounge, a Canadian venture and virtual ecosystem that “promotes discovery and collaboration among Canadian digital startups, foreign and Canadian investors and other enablers.” In addition to a unique value proposition, Chris also faced the challenge of time – the Maple Leaf Digital Lounge launch event is March 12 at SXSW.

• The Maple Leaf Digital Lounge Uses SNR for a Fast Launch
  

The Force.com platform takes common database mistakes and automatically fixes them without any effort by the user. One of the most exciting issues being addressed is that Force.com includes analytics and integration for databases, meaning the database can be used for things other than simply storing apps. To see the other four database mistakes being eliminated by Force.com, read the link below:

• 5 Common Database Mistakes the Force.com Platform Eliminates

Netflix has become the next big mainstream company to use a public cloud infrastructure. It moved its API to Amazon Web Services. The following article includes an informative slide show on why Netflix chose to move to the cloud, what the benefits are, what they’ve learned, and more. Since Netflix is a high-profile name to choose the cloud over their own data center, there are a lot of interesting lessons to be learned. Read the link below to learn more:

• Netflix Gains Significantly by Moving its API to the Cloud

We thought you might be interested in an event called Rocked the Recession. This two-day conference is bringing together entrepreneurs, professionals, and organizations who are thriving during the recession. The speaker and workshop lineup is filled with successful Chicago entrepreneurs and thought leaders. To find out more on what the conference is all about, check out the link below:

• Rock The Recession in 10 days: Get Tickets Now

A potential “next big thing” is emerging. “Big Data” is starting to generate some buzz. Defined within the article as, “an umbrella term that signifies the democratization of access to storage and analysis of large data sets,” it stands to change the way we look at data. With access to such large sets of data, there are a lot of areas that can use this information to make predictions, track epidemics, and so on. To read more about what you can do with Big Data, and where to find it, read the link below:

• Is Big Data the Next Big Thing?

If you’ve wondered whether IT decision makers see the cloud as a threat or an opportunity, look no further. In a survey of IT decision makers, many of whom are considered conservative, 9 in every 10 see the cloud as an opportunity rather than a threat. Their reasoning behind the thought is the cloud gives the opportunity to reduce IT infrastructure costs and manage peaks and troughs in system usage. To read more about why IT decision makers are excited rather than threatened by the cloud, read the link below:

• 9 in 10 See Cloud as Opportunity, Not Threat

Groupon started in Chicago. Watching it grow into a company that is potentially being bought for 6 billion dollars by Google has been exciting. By offering such a large sum for the company, Google is betting on the fact that local advertising on the web and the rise of social behavior online are two trends that are here to stay. Because Google doesn’t have any arms of their business in either of these Internet movements, it makes sense Groupon would be their next huge purchase. To read more about the potential Groupon acquisition, read the link below:

• Google Wants Groupon Because Social Ads Are the Future

We hope someone at Google noticed this Groupon earlier in the week before it expired. Looks like a pretty solid bargain:

• Google Should Use This Groupon for Groupon [Humor]