<p>By now you've probably heard some of the messaging coming out of Dreamforce 12, the enormous confab taking place this week in downtown San Francisco and being held by SaaS giant (and former industry upstart) Salesforce. Namely, that the social enterprise is definitely here, and the cloud is where just about everything in our businesses -- including marketing, sales, HR, and customer support -- will operate in the future. And all of this will be running on always-connected mobile devices bristling with video cameras and location services.</p><p>Whether or not you actually believe this vision generally depends on who you are. There are certainly still some skeptics about social business, despite a growing number of success stories (and some cautionary tales.) SaaS itself is certainly less controversial and a foregone conclusion in many enterprises for non-mission critical functions. The broader vision of cloud -- as a place where our data, software, infrastructure, supply chain, customers and even workers reside, all on-demand -- is finally taking shape in IT circles and lines of business alike, though generally more slowly and steadily that vendors might have us believe.</p><p>Related:</p><p>Those in IT whose responsibility is connected to business continuity or operations have nightmares about the loss of control, security concerns, manageability, and governance of the whole SaaS, social, mobile vision of the cloud that seems to be forming. Those on the business side worry about these issues too, but generally much less. What does seem clear is that we're on the verge of yet another shift in the technology landscape. Our software and data is finally becoming highly integrated in a way we couldn't imagine 5 years ago.</p><p><a href="http://www.zdnet.com/dreamforce-12-social-business-capabilities-evolve-in-the-cloud-7000004594/">Keep reading...</a></p><p>Read also:</p><p><a href="http://www.business2community.com/social-business/the-social-business-equation-connection-engagement-trust-transparency-0285743">The Social Business Equation: Connection + Engagement + Trust + Transparency</a> (Business 2 Community)</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-salesforce-partner-to-sell-ads-2012-9">Mark Zuckerberg Partners Up With Marc Benioff To Sell Facebook Ads</a> (Business Insider)</p><p><a href="http://www.cmswire.com/cms/social-business/salesforce-rypple-becomes-workcom-integrates-with-chatter-sales-cloud-df12-017457.php">Salesforce Rypple Becomes Work.com, Integrates With Chatter & Sales Cloud ...</a> (CMSWire)</p><p>Explore: <a href="http://news.google.com/news/more?pz=1&ned=us&ncl=ddh8d0Ydl14k7oMERp141CaMIQEZM">540 additional articles.</a></p>