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With the wealth of business collaboration tools available online, it can be a daunting task to choose the best one for your company. Here are a few of the standouts that can help everything from the smallest mom-and-pop to the biggest national brand coordinate their business strategies.

Blue Jeans For Online Video Conferencing

The Blue Jeans network provides cloud based video conferencing to companies both large and small. You can easily share content with other meeting participants from your conference room video system, including presentations, spreadsheets and videos–saving your time during your work day. Since the video conferencing system is so easy to use and implement based on cloud, you can leverage this and set it up yourself with the support of the network. By doing so you’ll be able to familiarize yourself with the video conferencing service and save money on the setup and maintenance costs. The full package service deal also includes enterprise grade security features that keep your organization protected.

Co-op For Enterprise Microblogging

Co-op is a free application with a very easy to use user interface for your employees. Because it’s similar to the interface of Twitter, which is widely used, the transition time for your employees should be greatly reduced. This application service allows you to post updates, ask questions, share links, and track time. It also lets you share your daily agenda with your team and coworkers so everyone knows what you’ll be up to during the day. The web application part of this service also stores your data and activity automatically so you won’t have to worry about losing anything without it being backed up. Now you can even look back upon what you’ve done in previous weeks or months in case you’ve forgotten about the neglect project that wasn’t a priority at the time.

Cyn.In For Virtual Collaboration Space

Cynapse’s Cyn.In is an open sources community that has a robust collection of collaboration tools for enterprise level organizations and businesses. There are actually three versions of the collaboration tool available to the public. All of them include active directory integration, application source code, web-based appliance management console and more. One of these editions are free for use so it can be a good trial run before investing into the other tools. The virtual collaboration space encompasses wikis, blogs, file repositories, event calendars, discussion boards, image galleries, collaboration spaces, status logs, people directory, crowd rating and voting and more. Since this is a web based tool, there will be no need for time spent on implementation–saving you on both money and time.

CubeTree For Integrating With Third Party Systems

Since SuccessFactors acquired CubeTree, the enterprise collaboration tools have become more in demand due to expansion. There are now more free and premium upgrade versions available to enterprises. The free version already includes user profiles, microblogging, file sharing, wikis, and 10MB per user. There are also microblogging features like Co-op: status updates of 140 characters; a commenting feature (similar to commenting on activity streams on Facebook); feed filtering, which lets you choose who to follow and what feed items you’d like to receive; direct addressing (similar to Twitter’s @name function); and integration with several third-party systems. If you’re looking to integrate with a third party system, CubeTree is definitely your pick to look into.

Hashwork For The Small Business

If you’re a small business just looking for a smaller and easy no setup collaboration tool, Hashwork might be for you. Because it only requires you to sign in once for set up by entering your email address, you might be able to get by with a small number of employees. Plus, you’ll save time because everyone will have a company email. What’s more is that there won’t be a need for an administrator in this case so you won’t have extra human resource expenses as a result of using more collaboration tools. Hashwork has a simple user interface and functions quite similarly to Twitter. You get more management features in paid upgrades but won’t need to do so unless you’re completely satisfied with your service. Features: 140-character posts, direct addressing, groups, hashtags.

Jaiku For The Facebook Generation

Jaiku is a collaboration tool powered by Google and is free for everyone. Easily accessible and used by the Facebook generation in the workplace. It features updates posted via Web, instant message and SMS, as well as through third-party applications built by other developers. Jaiku also lets you include icons in your messages, customize your background, add Web feeds and set your location. This tool is not ideal for the enterprise level but great for a start-up that needs a quick and easy to use collaboration tool in office with clients potentially overseas. Since new start-ups are always tight on budget and time, using a free collaborative service is a perfect starter to kick start your services. There is nothing to lose in case you have to transition to a new service in the future.

Guest Blogger