Cubetree launched a free collaboration suite designed to bring the capabilities of Facebook to the enterprise. But Cubetree’s offering goes a bit further that social computing by integrating more traditional collaboraton capabilities such as file sharing, as well as Web 2.0 services such as blogs and wikis into a complete SaaS-based collaboration offering. There’s a trend here, underscored by commercial products such as Telligent Community Server and IBM Lotus Connections to bring Facebook-like capabilities to the enterprise market, but where is Facebook itself in all of this?

One of the clear trends thus far in the IT industry is that many displaced workers are looking at contract work as a means to survive in these turbulent economic times. Fortunately, Web 2.0 and hosted applications such as Google Apps, Skype, Zoho, Gizmo, ThinkFree, Yugma, and FreeConferenceCall.com enable individuals to access a full suite of communication and collaboration applications that previously would have required a significant up-front and on-going investment. So how do these types of applications jump the gap from “useful for small groups or individuals” to “useful for large enterprise.”

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Now that Microsoft has officially launched SaaS versions of Exchange and Office, they’ve begun making plans to deliver the next version of Office via SaaS as well. Microsoft’s move into the SaaS space is in some ways reactionary, as they look to fend off challenges from Zoho and Google, but it is also going to create concerns for the hundreds of companies that offer their own suites of hosted Microsoft apps.

As a recent convert to OpenOffice I’m still not sure the SaaS market for office apps is going to replace thick versions of document, presentation, and spreadsheet applications, but I do look forward to the continued ability of SaaS-based office productivity suites to enable easier document collaboration.

There are some very cool apps that live in the cloud, but the ones that impact enterprise work flow are the ones with serious prospects of longevity and financial gain. It’s not enough, however, to create singular and separate business applications that are delivered via the cloud. On top of functionality and a high quality user experience, enterprises want integration and customer service.

At Om Malik’s Structure 08 event, Zach Nelson from NetSuite touched on this very issue.

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