Top 10 Enterprise Products of 2009

2009 may be remembered as the year that enterprises truly understand the importance of social software. This manifested with the rise of enterprise collaboration services, cloud computing technologies and the growing importance of mobile technologies for the enterprise.

Web-based services are moving fast into the enterprise, raising questions about document-based environments in a world increasingly influenced by real-time information. We saw this time and again as the year rolled on. It played an important factor in how we developed our top ten list.

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Our list includes three companies that made the list last year. We expect that this list may have some surprises. We welcome your feedback on the products that made the top 10 and your thoughts on ones that didn’t make it.

Microsoft Windows Azure and Sharepoint

Microsoft has made huge strides with Sharepoint 2010. It is expected to continue its march into the enterprise this coming year. It may not be a best of breed application by any means, but its API is attracting a healthy number of third-party vendors. These companies are developing services to bring a level of transparency to enterprise data, which has historically been trapped in data silos.

But Windows Azure is Microsoft’s most exciting development. Ray Ozzie unveiled the cloud-based platform at the Professional Developers Conference last month and it is living up to its promise. It supports Ruby on Rails and MySQL, another sign that open-source is welcome on the Azure platform. Dallas, its mashup service, embraces the computational power of cloud computing, giving developers the ability to create their own applications that they may sell via the Azure platform. All in all, the services Microsoft is providing makes it a natural fit for the Top 10 list.

Jive Software SBS 4.0

This Portland-based company continues to make strides into the enterprise. Earlier this Fall, the company unveiled Jive SBS 4.0, its most significant update to date. SBS 4.0 is Jive’s latest version of its enterprise collaboration technology. Jive may be the most threatening competitor to Microsoft Sharepoint. Its platform integrates with Microsoft Office, the iPhone and provides a social layer that users find compelling. Jive recently raised million in venture funding from Sequoia Capital.

Salesforce.com

Salesforce.com took a deep dive into the social space this year, culminating with Salesforce Chatter, a real-time service that acts as an internal social network for its customers. It was the culmination of a big year for the cloud-based service. Force.com, its application platform, saw significant growth. To date, developers have launched 135,000 applications on the platform. Further, a growing number of third-party services are integrating with the platform, showing again how important Salesforce.com has become in the Enterprise 2.0 space.

SocialCast Social Business Intelligence

One of our favorite companies in the web space, SocialCast is one of those services that just seems to understand the market and execute accordingly. What sets it apart is the user interface and SocialCast Social Business Intelligence, its sophisticated analytics environment, which will be a critical aspect to any service providing a real-time feed in an enterprise environment.

Google Apps

Google is making a clear move into the enterprise in a number of ways. Most recently, it enhanced its integration with the Blackberry. Google Sites recently had a major upgrade. Overall, Google is investing heavily in features to give enterprise customers more incentives to switch from Microsoft Office.

We’ll see how 2010 turns out for Google, but the path looks pretty clear for Google Apps to make further gains in the enterprise.

Next page: Top Enterprise Products of 2009, 6-10