Axosoft, the developer of project management software OnTime is releasing a new version of its product that includes an innovative new way for developers to visualize, review and manage the life cycle of backlog items. The first 10 People to use coupon code “TechCrunch” to buy Axosoft’s OnTime Hosted Solution for 1 year from the Axosoft Store will get $790 off on their purchase ($790 is the cost of OnTime 5-User starter pack for 1 year).

The new version includes a dead simple project visualization and tracking tool. Plus the new product also offers a TortoiseSVN plug-in, allowing teams using the TortoiseSVN Subversion client to have seamless communication between Subversion and OnTime. And the update features e-mail and worklog enhancements, as well as an automatic-update functionality for OnTime Windows client.

Cloud infrastructure giant Rackspace is welcoming a number of former Sun Microsystems employees this week. The employees came from Drizzle, an offshoot of open source database MySQL that aimed to create a “trimmed-down, faster version of the database system.”

Tonight, Google launched its Google Apps Marketplace, an online storefront for Apps products and services. Here are our notes from the announcement. And of course, the marketplace is launching with a number of pilot partners (50 to be exact). One of those partners happens to be recently launched Socialwok, a product that ads a social layer to Gmail and other Google products. At last year’s TechCrunch50 conference, Socialwok made a big splash, winning the award for best demopit startup and launching its enterprise-friendly, FriendFeed-like layer for Google Apps. The web-based application was praised for launching a social network that wrapped around the very unsocial Google Apps. And the startup just launched a gadget to allow users access all the features of Socialwok without leaving Gmail.

Socialwok in the the Google Apps Marketplace allows organizations to use their existing Google Apps accounts to login into Socialwok and create a social network for their domains to share within Google Docs, Google Calendars, Google Spreadsheets and other Google objects in feeds. For example, with the Socialwok Gmail gadget, users can view, post and comment on various feeds in their organization right from Gmail.

Zoho, a web-based productivity suite that was called a “fake Office” by a Microsoft VP, is announcing a significant partnership with Google today. The startup will be a launch partner for Google’s recently launched Google Apps Marketplace, which allows vendors to sell applications that compliment Google Apps. Zoho will be integrating two of its app over 20 business applications – Zoho CRM and Zoho Projects with Google Apps.

So starting today, Google Apps users will be able to add on-demand CRM app Zoho CRM and project management software Zoho Projects into Google Apps. While Zoho has previously rolled out the ability log-in to its applications via your Google Apps IDs, the two applications have been specially formatted for further immersion into Google Apps with App’s extended APIs. IT admins will now have an option to add Zoho Apps to their domains through Google Apps Marketplace. Once the IT admin adds a Zoho application to their domain, all users within the domain will have access to the Zoho Application through Google universal navigation.

Google’s recently announced $25 million acquisition of DocVerse represented one saga of an ongoing war between Google and Microsoft over dominance in the productivity suite place. Today, Israeli enterprise software company Mainsoft is launching a Docverse-like plug-in that may up the ante in the battle. Harmony is launching free plug-ins that bring Google Docs documents and Microsoft SharePoint document libraries directly to Microsoft Outlook.

Once downloaded, Harmony for Google Docs will open in a sidebar pane within Outlook. The new Harmony sidebar enables people to share a single, centralized copy of the document, eliminating the many intermediary steps associated with sending e-mail attachments back and forth. The plug-in allows users to locate, share, and work on Google documents directly from their email client.

Many of us take the disaster readiness of servers and data centers for granted. But for IT admins from both small and large companies, being prepared for disaster and emergency situations is complicated and expensive issue. Google has made an announcement today for any enterprise users of Google Apps; assuring IT admins that the suite is now fully prepared for disaster recovery. Rajen Sheth, Senior Product Manager, Google Apps, tells us that as of recently, Google is prepared for disaster recovery for all of its products in the Google Apps suite, which include Gmail, Google Docs, Google Sites, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Talk and Google Video.

Google’s secret sauce is live and synchronous replication. So every action you take in Gmail is immediately replicated in two data centers at once, so that if one data center fails, Google will transfer data over to the other one. Traditionally, Google says, synchronous replication can be very expensive for companies. For example, the cost to back up 25GB of data with synchronous replication can range from $150 to $500+ in storage and maintenance costs per employee. Google says that exact price depends on a number of factors such as the number of times the data is replicated and the choice of service provider. Of course, Google replicates all the data multiple times, and the 25GB per employee for Gmail is backed up for free. And data from Google Docs, Google Sites, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Talk and Google Video, which encompass most of the applications in Google Apps, is also synchronously replicated for free.

There are a plethora of enterprise friendly collaboration platforms to choose from these days, with Yammer, Salesforce, Jive, Bantam Live, Socialcast, and others all vying for marketshare. All of the offerings are compelling but now more than ever, the startups and companies that develop these platforms are facing pressure to make their offerings the most appealing and feature-rich. Today, Socialtext, the developer of an enterprise social software platform built around microblogging, is rolling out a more powerful version, called Socialtext 4.0, of its collaboration applications.

One of the features users were asking for was the ability to create groups within their Socialtext applications. So now, you can create collaborative groups within your Socialtext app, that comes with a group home page including an activity stream of group member updates, a dedicated microblogging channel, and one or more workspaces. Collaborative Groups can be synced with other groups and can also be configured for privacy needs. A group can be listed, with its membership designated as either “request-to-join” or open. Alternatively, a group can be unlisted, which makes it completely private.

Virtualization giant VMware is set to acquire select technologies from parent company EMC. VMware will be buying up certain technologies from EMC’s Ionix IT management business, including solutions aimed at delivering improved management and deployment of servers and applications in a virtualized data center.

The transaction is valued at $200 million and is expected to close in the second calendar quarter of 2010. VMware will acquire all technology and intellectual property of FastScale, Application Discovery Manager, Server Configuration Manager and Service Manager. As part of the agreement, EMC will retain the Ionix brand and have full reseller rights to continue to offer customers the products acquired by VMware.

IT software giant CA is acquiring cloud computing startup 3Tera. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. 3Tera’s product, AppLogic, helps enterprises build and deploy cloud-bases applications both to public and private clouds.

CA is opening up the purse strings to boost its presence in the cloud. The company recently acquired Cassatt, NetQoS and Oblicore. 3Tera allows companies to provision, deploy and scale public and private cloud computing environments. 3Tera also makes it easy for service providers to offer application stacks on demand. 3Tera’s client base includes 80 enterprises and service providers globally, which use the cloud computing technology to provide services to users

HyTrust, which helps companies manage and control virtual infrastructure, has secured $10.5 million in Series B funding from Granite Ventures and Cisco Systems. Existing investors Trident Capital and Epic Ventures also participated in the round. The latest round of funding brings the HyTrust’s total funding to $16 million.

HyTrust says it will use the new funding to drive product development and to fuel sales and marketing efforts. HyTrust has developed a policy management system specifically for virtualization, enabling IT departments to control and virtualize servers.

Online productivity suite Zoho has been open to allowing users to use their Google, Google Apps and Yahoo accounts to log-in to Zoho Apps. Zoho says that most of its users are using their log-ins for other applications to use Zoho’s offerings. Today, the productivity suite is adding a social layer to its suite by integrating the ability to login with Facebook Connect.

Similar to its integration with Google apps, Zoho users can login to Zoho using their Facebook credentials. Users with existing Zoho accounts can now link the two accounts so that they can login with Facebook credentials alone. But the plus of using Facebook Connect now allows Zoho to transcend platforms. So you can now share documents with Facebook users who don’t have a Zoho Account. Of course this isn’t Zoho’s first foray into Facebook’s territory. Zoho’s Facebook app allows users to create documents, spreadsheets and presentations from within Facebook and includes the ability to view and edit all existing documents, spreadsheets and presentations (both personal and shared) from Zoho Writer, Sheet and Show.

Twitter’s Streaming API, which allows developers realtime access to Tweets, was recently launched into full production mode, after being in alpha testing since April of last year. Eric Marcoullier, CEO and co-founder of API aggregation platform Gnip, has written an interesting blog post guiding companies on the logistics of moving to Twitter’s streaming API that is definitely worth a look. Marcoullier outlines who should be using the Streaming API and the best way to fold the API into their applications.

Salesforce’s enterprise friendly social collaboration platform Chatter was announced at last year’s November with much fanfare. To many, there was no doubt that Chatter will have a lasting impact on the enterprise and cloud computing. And customers seemed to agree. Following Salesforce’s debut of Chatter, over 67,000 of Salesforce’s customers requested to be private beta testers of the realtime collaboration platform. Today, a lucky 100 large and small businesses, including Reed Exhibitions, Schumacher Group, and TransUnion, will begin to use Salesforce Chatter as the platform enters private beta.

Salesforce says that private beta participants were chosen based on their existing Salesforce.com technology deployments and potential Chatter use case. Chatter itself as a platform has much of the same functionality as when the platform first debuted. One addition is the addition of Chatter integration to Saleforce’s iPhone and BlackBerry apps, allowing users to tap into Chatter’s realtime stream on the go. Chatter will be integrated into the new Salesforce homepage along with a dashboard of reports and approvals, workflow, tasks and calendar. You’ll also be able to see filters as well. Chatter will let you see updates from people, files, applications, HR, and will integrated other Feeds (Dow Jones, Thompson Reuters).

We recently wrote about CloudShare, a recently launched service that allows companies to demo software in the cloud. Organizations can instantly deploy multiple, independent copies of their existing demos or training environments from CloudShare’s platform. Today, CloudShare is launching CloudShare Pro, a lightweight, free version of its service for individuals and small businesses.

CloudShare is essentially a collaborative tool for IT environments, allowing users to share, interact and collaborate in enterprise IT environments, for any length of time. CloudShare Pro’s environments are pre-configured to include servers, networking, storage and pre-installed operating systems and application licenses, including those forsoftware vendors like SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft. The new offering also promises speed, scalability, and ROI. The starup says that its enterprise customers have seen sales cycles accelerated, and costs reduced by 30-50 percent, tracked via CloudShare’s analytics dashboard.

On the heels of the EU’s approval of Oracle’s $7.4 billion deal to acquire Sun Microsystems, the tech giant has opened up the purse strings to acquire application management software provider AmberPoint. Terms of the deal were not disclosed and the acquisition is expected to close in the first half of this year.

We wrote about Bantam Live, an online workspace for business teams that has “social CRM” features, when the startup presented its product at TechCrunch’s RealTime Stream CrunchUp last July. Today, Bantam is launching the commercial version of its social workspace and is rolling out premium features to its product.

Bantam Live’s software-as-a-service product provides an online workspace for business teams that includes a real-time dashboard stream of messaging and workflow activity along with a native social CRM application. Members can share information, track activity, and manage contact and company relationships inside and outside the organization via the real-time activity stream.

IBM has acquired Chicago-based software firm Initiate Systems. Initiate helps healthcare providers and other government organizations manage and organize data across various sources. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

It appears that the acquisition is aimed at boosting IBM’s healthcare offerings. According to IBM, Initiate’s software us currently in use at more than 2,400 healthcare sites, over 40 health information exchanges and multiple government health systems around the world including CVS/Caremark, Blue Cross Blue Shield, United Healthcare Services and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

2009 was a banner year for Salesforce.com. The enterprise cloud computing company made significant enhancements to its product lineup, reported overall strong earnings, and even launched their own take on realtime enterprise social networking and collaboration, Chatter. Today, Salesforce is launching one of its first product enhancements for 2010: the Force.com Visual Process Manager.

Force.com, company’s platform to build and deploy enterprise applications, will now allows companies to design and deploy business processes inside their apps without having to build the applications on other software. Customers can visually design any complex business process with a design tool and instantly run it in the cloud without writing a single line of code. The technology powering the Visual Process Manager is based on technology acquired from Informavores, call scripting startup Salesforce bought last year.

One casualty of Oracle’s $7.4 billion deal to acquire Sun Microsystems, which was recently approved by the European Commission, is the closure of Project Kenai. Sun’s Project Kenai is a collaborative hosting site for free and open source projects.

Project Kenai allows developers to collaborate with each other and allows for free software project hosting. Its services services included version controlled source code repositories, team wikis, a download area to host documents, an integrated team member IM chat, issue tracking, forums, mailing lists, and web hooks for selected events. Project Kenai’s domain will be closed and the infrastructure will be continue to be used under NetBeans.org. Owners who had projects hosted under Kenai will have to migrate their content to other locations and repositories.

Stealth startup Makara is launching publicly tonight with its cloud-based application deployment and management platform. Formerly known as WebappVM, Makara has raised angel funding from Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The startup also raised $6 million last year from Shasta Ventures and Sierra Ventures.

Rather than offer a system management software designed for traditional application environments to the cloud, Makara’s’s cloud-based platform leverages the virtual layer to allow developers to rapidly deploy, scale and monitor applications in cloud environments. The product, which is self-service and self-managing, is available for free on its site.

Cloudkick, a Y Combinator-incubated startup that offers a free server management system to businesses, is rolling out its freemium model and additional features. Cloudkick provides detailed graphs on the health of your servers, and tools to categorize and keep information about what each server is doing. Cloudkick’s dashboard allows you to easily add or remove servers from Rackspace Cloud, Amazon EC2, Linode, GoGrid, Slicehost, RimuHosting, and VPS.NET and then monitor an unlimited amount of instances. You can see all the servers in one place, and color-code and label each server.

Cloudkick will check whether servers are alive and functioning and then alert you, via email, if servers go down. Cloudkick also provides data on bandwith and other metrics on servers in easy to use graphs and tables, allowing you a visual snapshot of server activity. You can also access servers straight from web and can run commands through your web browser remotely, which is handy when you are trying to manage servers from another computer

Could IBM be prepping more of its own location-aware technology and devices? According to a recent patent filing, it looks like it. On Thursday, Big Blue filed for a patent for a “method and system for location-aware authorization.” The inventors appear to be IBM engineers based in Rome, Italy.

According to the filing, the technology would provide a method and technology to control access to a device based on the location of that device. IBM gave the example of a company that only wanted employees to use a particular device in the office or their home and believe that their technology would allow the employer to control where the particular device can be accessed.