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Socialtext Connect Creates Social Layer in the Enterprise

At the recent Enterprise 2.0 Conference, Socialtext announced the beta release of Socialtext Connect, a new offering built on open standards that frees vital information currently locked in enterprise applications. Socialtext Connect enables companies to surface critical events from enterprise applications and inject streams into Socialtext's social software platform, where employees across an organization collaborate and take action.

Socialtext Connect works with traditional on-premise as well as cloud-based enterprise applications. It also integrates with and leverages web-based consumer applications such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google Buzz. Socialtext Connect adheres to established and emerging web standards, including Twitter Annotations and Google OpenSocial. Socialtext also plans to support the activitystrea.ms standard.

With Socialtext Connect, companies will get more business value from traditional enterprise applications like CRM, ERP and document management systems. Companies can now let their people subscribe to the events that matter most to them from enterprise systems. They can see those events in the Socialtext application streams they monitor and, where authorized, send updates to the enterprise systems from Socialtext.

There are three core components of Socialtext Connect:

1.      Connectors. A Connector serves as a bridge between an on-premise or cloud-based enterprise application, and Socialtext. Connectors use Socialtext's ReST API, and can be built to connect any application to Socialtext. Connectors can be built by IT developers, system integrators, and third-party developers. Socialtext has pre-built Connectors to Microsoft SharePoint and Lotus Connections. A Connector can be hosted in the cloud, as a plug-in to Socialtext's hosted service or appliance, or on the enterprise application itself.

2.      Signals Annotations. A Signals Annotation contains metadata from an enterprise system, including rich media, and accompanies a Socialtext Signals microblogging message. Annotations add context and relevance, enriching the value of application streams. Signals Annotations are built to the emerging Twitter Annotations standard, and will evolve with that standard.

3.      App Bots. An App Bot is a bi-directional software agent that listens for specialized events or information from an enterprise system, a web application, or Socialtext, and writes to these applications.

Source: Socialtext