Dropbox has put a renewed focus on enterprise with re-brand of Dropbox for Teams and single sign-on (SSO) log-ins.

The cloud storage provider has renamed its Dropbox for Teams software to Dropbox for Business. To ring in the updated name the firm has also added SSO log-ins to the software.

“With all the changes we’re making to create a Dropbox that’s better for companies both large and small, it’s become clear that the name ‘Dropbox for Teams’ doesn’t quite fit anymore,” said Dropbox for Business manager Anand Subraman in a blog post.

“To better rep the features we’re building and the awesome companies that use Dropbox to create, share, and save their most important work, we realize the time has come to rename to Dropbox for Business.”

One of the major changes coming to Dropbox is the addition of SSO log-ins, which allows users to sign-in only one time to a central identity management provider. Dropbox says that SSO was one of the most requested features for its enterprise focused offering.

According to the company, the SSO feature will give IT admins more control over password management. SSO will allow admins to implement company password policies onto the logins of Dropbox accounts.

For users, the feature will allow for a simpler way of logging into Dropbox. Users will now be able to log-in directly to company systems without the need to sign-in to Dropbox separately.

The SSO feature was built using the industry-standard Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) allowing it work in conjunction with a variety of identity providors. Dropbox reports that the feature can be used on internally built SAML-based federated systems.

Dropbox’s changes come as the firm continues to put a focus on enterprise tools. Last month, the firm brought an admin console to its software to give IT admins more control and visibility in the cloud.

The firm also made waves earlier this month when it signed a partnership with Yahoo. Dropbox’s partnership allows Yahoo Mail users to save email attachments directly to the Dropbox cloud.

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Apple’s iMessage and FaceTime services suffered prolonged outages overnight, leaving millions of customers unable to use the features.

An update on Apple’s status page confirmed that between 8pm and 1am [PST] the two services were unavailable.

No specific information was provided by Apple beyond a message saying, “Users were unable to place FaceTime/iMessage calls”.

V3 contacted Apple for further comment on the outages but it said it had no additional information to share.

The incident is the latest in a series of recent cloud outages to hit popular services, such as Google’s Drive service that went offline for two hours in March, leaving millions without access to their accounts.

Microsoft’s consumer Outlook service was also hit by problems in a datacentre when it began overheating and so took itself offline to prevent the problem spreading, which caused email access to disappear.

Last week the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) issued a warning to its agent that the security in the iMessage service made it hard for them to eavesdrop on conversations, thereby hindering their efforts, although some security experts dismissed these concerns.

Were you affected by the outage or are still seeing problems today Let us know below.

Dell’s second-largest shareholder, Southeastern Asset Management, has gone on record claiming the company has no reason to go private.

In a public letter to investors, Southeastern said that Dell’s recent proxy statement gives no concrete reason why the company should go private. The firm accuses Dell’s Board of offering Michael Dell the opportunity to buy the firm instead of addressing the real issue at the company.

“The proxy statement does not contain any sound reasoning for why, at this stage in the transformation, the company needs to be taken private,” wrote Southeastern in its letter.

“In the entire proxy statement, we found only one page devoted to Mr. Dell’s plans for the company following the transaction. That single page is consistent with the company’s prior public statements, and nothing about these plans requires that the company be private.”

In its proxy statement, Dell argues that the firm must go private for the long-term interest of the company. The firm says that it will have to invest in options that will not see immediate return-on-investment.

Specifically, the company reports that the quarterly results driven paradigm of publicly held companies makes it hard for Dell to invest in long-term options.

If Dell were to go private it says it would begin to invest heavily in research and development. Dell wrote in its proxy statement that it would make investments in technologies such as cloud services, infrastructure services, and managed security services.

The company says it would do that with the goal of becoming an integrated provider of end-to-end IT solutions. However, the company warns that to achieve its goal it would have to invest aggressively and would likely see objections from stockholders.

“While the Parent Parties believe that these plans for [Dell] after the merger are in the company’s best interests in the long term,” wrote Dell in its proxy statement.

“The Parent Parties believe that, were the company to undertake these actions as a public company, many stockholders would be likely to object and the company’s stock price could suffer a significant decline.”

Southeastern disagrees with Dell’s assessment. The shareholder says that Dell’s enterprise software solutions (ESS) are a growth sector and should be invested in. Southeastern believes that Dell would be able to invest in IT solutions even if it stayed a public company.

Salesforce.com has released a set of developer tools which the company hopes will allow firms to build and support better mobile applications.

The company said that its Mobile SDK package would allow vendors to make better use of their customer data stored within the Salesforce.com CRM service. The kit will include a framework and developer tools for crafting mobile applications.

In addition to the mobile SDK, Salesforce is releasing a Mobile Pack JavaScript framework package and a Mobile Accelerator Program designed to help support developers looking to launch mobile applications.

The company is also looking to kick off a weeklong global event which will begin on 22 April and will include events in 32 cities around the world.

Salesforce hopes that the release will allow companies to overhaul their customer-facing platforms and provide better services and applications to customers.

Adam Seligman, vice president of developer relations for Salesforce, said that as users become more familiar with mobile applications and interfaces, pressure is building on companies to improve their apps.

“Customer data makes all that happen,” he told V3.

“What we are trying to do here is make it easy to get the customer data into the application.”

Once the data is integrated with the application, Salesforce.com hopes that it will allow developers to completely change the way they design applications. By easing access to customer data, applications can become more interactive and be better-equipped to support customers.

“It opens up a whole new world of applications,” Seligman said.

“There is this great set of meaningful, important customer data in Salesforce and that data is going to make that whole generation of apps better.”