Articles about Messaging and Collaboration

There are many products that have hundreds of millions of active users in a single month, but there are few that have passed the billion mark. However, the select group, which includes the likes of YouTube and Facebook, has just gotten bigger.

And it is Google and Facebook which once again add new members to that list, with Gmail and WhatsApp, respectively, joining the pack. Both services passed that milestone in January, with one taking longer than the other to reach it.

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Cloud email services are still not as big as you’d expect in the enterprise, but they are growing stronger. Those are the results of an automated survey by market analyst Gartner.

According to the survey, 8.5 percent of public companies use cloud email service from Microsoft’s Office 365, while 4.7 percent use Google Apps for Work.

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Despite the fact that countless emails are sent every day -- both internally and to clients/customers -- many people don’t give their email signature the attention it deserves.

However, conveying the right corporate image -- big or small -- requires thought, so Cloud Solutions has come to the rescue by creating an infographic with some top tips for improving your email signature.

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The battle arena for messaging apps has become increasingly busy in recent years, with the likes of Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and countless others all vying for attention. In the workplace, Slack is the current favorite thanks in part to its smart capabilities, programmability, and bot.

Not wanting to miss out on the action, Facebook recently unveiled Facebook M, a virtual assistant bolt on for Messenger. Looking to compete directly with this, Google is working on a new AI-powered messaging service of its own according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.

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The business communication tool Slack is trying to end the year on a high note, and looking at what the company announced yesterday, it seems to be on the right track.

The team-communication app, which now has two million daily users and 570,000 paying customers has announced three things -- an app store which will offer other productivity tools (like Trello, for example) to integrate with Slack, an $80 million fund to help developers create more apps for the store, and a new framework called Botkit which should simplify the process of creating apps.

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Salesforce and Box have announced a partnership that aims to enable closer business collaboration and greater productivity.

The two companies have announced Salesforce Files Connect for Box to help businesses access files securely and Box SDK for Salesforce to assist the software development cycle.

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Google is striving to improve the security protection for its business product Google for Work by introducing data loss prevention for its popular services such as Gmail.

DLP is an enterprise technology that aims to reduce the data leakage of confidential and valuable data from the business. The common ways that data leakage occurs is through emails and storing files to employee’s personal cloud storage services.

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There are lots of messaging apps on the market, which means that you can end up needing several if you have friends and contacts on different services. It would be a major breakthrough to have a universal standard for messaging, but is that ever likely to happen?

Telecom and web convergence company tyntec has carried out a survey among smartphone owners in the US and China to uncover trends in consumer messaging app usage and to evaluate the probability of OTT (over-the-top) messaging apps one day becoming a truly universal service that connects the world's population.

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BlackBerry and its subsidiary Secusmart have announced the release of SecuSUITE for Enterprise, a new voice encryption solution that protects mobile calls on the Android, iOS and BlackBerry operating systems.

By using the VoIP, software-based, cloud-hosted solution, employees will be able to conduct secure conversations worldwide and be able to send encrypted text messages of any length.

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Email is the go-to platform for business communication, but is it about to be dethroned by a collaboration software successor?

Many businesses have become disenchanted with email, viewing it as an outmoded communications tool that causes frustration and zaps productivity. Recent research found the average employee spends more than a quarter of their working week just reading and responding to email.

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As often happens, the internet went nuts over the weekend. The cause? A change to Snapchat's privacy policy. Rumors spread like a disease that the blink-and-you'll-miss-it messaging service was not only storing users' posts, but also taking ownership of them.

Snapchat has responded to the public outcry, explaining that this is simply not the case. But having spread around the world via mainstream media, the rumor may be hard to quash -- perhaps the app's Ghostface Chillah mascot spooked people over Halloween.

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Microsoft is promoting Skype more than ever before. Not content with desktop and mobile apps, now the company is bringing the voice and video messaging tool to its office suite. Starting with Office Online integration Skype messaging is now available in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote Online, as well as Outlook.com.

This is a continuation of Microsoft's increased focus on the cloud, and a recognition of the importance of communication for collaborative projects. There are times when simply being able to work on the same document with colleagues is not going to be enough, and this is where Skype integration comes into play.

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When talk turns to privacy and online anonymity, it isn’t long before Tor enters the discussion. The Tor browser has become famous for its use of .onion domains, making it easier for people to browse the web without fear of being snooped upon.

Now there is a new tool for the security-minded to play with. Tor Messenger Beta is -- as you would expect -- a chat tool that routes traffic through Tor. One thing it has in its favor right from the start is that this is not a weird proprietory app -- it can be used in conjunction with existing networks such as Jabber (XMPP), IRC, Google Talk, Facebook Chat, Twitter, Yahoo, and more.

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Gartner predicts that cloud office systems will account for 33 percent of the overall office market by 2017. This is a big step considering a few years ago collaboration in businesses typically involved emails, phone calls, and perhaps a few instant messages (IMs) exchanged within the company.

However, nowadays the arrival of cloud computing and all the remunerations that come with it have shaped the path for collaborative cloud-based services, reforming how businesses work over the internet. Many collaborative services target a specific business need, such as social networking, productivity apps, storage, or good old fashioned email.

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The switch to mobile devices has brought about a change in the way people communicate and consume media, moving away from the desktop PC and TV. This shift toward 'mobile first' or in some cases 'mobile only' needs to be reflected in how businesses expand their communication services.

This is one of the key findings of a new report by mobile engagement specialist OpenMarket and UK market research firm Portio Research. The report highlights that of the 7.3 billion people worldwide, 6.1 billion use an SMS-enabled phone, which amounts to 84 percent of the global population.

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