Software giant Oracle has built what it hopes will be a new home for corporate worker bees.

Dubbed Beehive and introduced at Oracle’s recent user conference in San Francisco, the new software aims to let employees team up through electronic workspaces as well as calendar, instant messaging and e-mail tools.

Beehive is part of a broader push by Oracle into the hot area of employee collaboration, also called Enterprise 2.0.

Beehive isn’t on the cutting edge in terms of functionality, says Dana Gardner, president of consulting firm Interarbor Solutions. But by centering the system in back-end computer servers rather than relying heavily on software installed on client personal computers, Oracle could woo customers from Microsoft Outlook by offering a simpler, more flexible alternative, Gardner says. “It’s about the architecture more than it is the feature functions,” he said.

Enterprise 2.0 refers to the way companies are trying to tap a variety of interactive and networking technologies to improve communication, cooperation and productivity. Many of the tools emerged first in the consumer Internet realm. The Web 2.0 era includes such practices as blogging, instant messaging and social networking.

Vendors such as SelectMinds sell corporate versions of social networks. The Enterprise 2.0 bug also has bitten talent management software vendors, which sell applications for HR tasks such as employee performance management.

Oracle, which along with SAP is one of the titans of the HR software field, also has embraced Enterprise 2.0 itself. At its OpenWorld conference in San Francisco, the company announced the release of Oracle WebCenter Suite, a set of products that allows customers to establish online portals with services such as discussion forums and wikis—Web pages that let people create content collectively.

With Beehive, Oracle is tackling two business challenges around collaboration: teaming up in a secure fashion and doing it in the context of current business routines, the company says. Beehive’s defenses include the ability to employ role-based access control. And Beehive allows organizations “to embed collaboration directly into existing business applications and processes,” Oracle said.

Beehive works with a number of e-mail programs, including Outlook.

Technology consultant Janus Boye applauds this aspect of Beehive. “It is wisely integrated into Outlook, which it expands on,” he said. Still, Boye urges organizations to take a wait-and-see approach to incorporating Beehive.

Beehive is priced at $120 per user.

—Ed Frauenheim

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