Thursday, February 28, 2008 8:02 PM/EST
Here's the striking similarity I found in both camps: groups of people interested in finding the money trail with software as a service, either as an investment vehicle or as a revenue stream. People I spoke with informally--in the halls, at breakfast and lunch, in the elevator--all seemed interested in the same things: staying on top of emerging trends in the fast evolving world of SAAS--not missing a thing seems critical--and finding out how to make money with SAAS applications, whether that boils down to an architectural, platform or sales and marketing discussion.
Friday, February 22, 2008 10:03 AM/EST
Here's the bottom line. Besides the fundamental questions around security and privacy that need to be answered regarding RFID-chipped identification cards (and other systems), there is another looming issue: What are the societal impacts of a society that is potentially tracked at every step? Do you really want your daily whereabouts posted on Google Calendar and Twitter? The UW study seems to be addressing these very basic but necessary questions.
Sunday, February 10, 2008 9:44 PM/EST
While it's always been in the back of my mind that Oracle would acquire NetSuite for its on demand capabilities - Oracle CEO Larry Ellison & family owns a major stake in NetSuite - a Salesforce.com union makes possibly even more sense. Salesforce is the undisputed leader in the Software as a Service sector. And Oracle likes to buy winners.
Tuesday, February 05, 2008 10:50 AM/EST
While many vendors in the retail sector seem to be scaling back their RFID operations - through an informal poll at the National Retail Federation's Big Show conference in November, everyone I asked said their RFID plans were on the way back burner due to lack of customer interest - the U.S. Department of Defense is increasing its RFID spend for the year with one vendor, Savi, by $60 million Savi, a Lockheed Martin company, said Monday that its total contract with the DoD now stands at $483 million. The DoD plans to spend the extra $60 million on the U.S. Army's Information Technology, E-Commerce and Commercial Contracting Center, better known in Army parlance as ITEC4. I put in an e-mail to Savi Monday to get a fuller understanding of what the contract details entail - an expansion of an existing project, or new initiatives - but haven't heard back...
Monday, February 04, 2008 12:25 PM/EST
The bottom line: How is Microsoft going to transform its slogging Online Services Business, which includes Search, MSN and Windows Live, into a fast moving, revenue generating business unit by adding another industry slow mover?
Friday, February 01, 2008 5:10 PM/EST
There are two new updates this week in the world of RFID: The first is that as of Jan. 31 the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative mandate has kicked in. So if you plan on traveling between the US, Canada and any other contiguous and non-contiguous U.S. borders, either by land or sea, you better have some proof of citizenship. An oral statement of citizenry or an 'I didn't know that' won't cut it, according to a Jan. 18 statement from DHS. The second notable event is that some banks are willingly rescinding their RFID-chipped credit cards - if a consumer goes through the hassle of calling and requesting a new one.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008 3:10 PM/EST
Quite some time ago I had a conversation with AMR analyst Rob Bois and he mentioned a statistic - maybe well known but shocking to me at the time - that four out of five CRM implementations fail. In the meantime there's been the rise of Software-as-a-Service, CRM as a development platform and, always, Salesforce.com. Or the success of Salesforce.com that precedes any real discussion about the company. Now, a new report from Forrester research analyst William Band, released Jan. 10, seems to show that not much has changed on the CRM front: A lot more implementations are rated poorly than are rated succesful.
Friday, January 25, 2008 3:37 PM/EST
Earlier this month SAP released its preliminary fourth quarter 2007 earnings on the heels of its Jan. 30 full report. On the very bottom of the press release, in a footnote, the company actually intimated some pretty substantive information: SAP has discontinued its TomorrowNow operations. But the real question remains: Even if there is a buyer for TomorrowNow - whether that be a competitor or another investor - what is the damage to the very nascent (but very necessary) third party support industry?
Tuesday, January 22, 2008 4:25 PM/EST
Goldman Sachs said in a research note Tuesday that it is lowering revenue and earnings estimates by between 1 and 2 percent for BEA Systems, Informatica, Microsoft, McAfee, Parametric, RightNow Technologies, SAP and Salesforce.com. Also on the hit list: Adobe, BMC, CA, Macrovision, Red Hat, Secure Computing, Symantec and Tibco Software.
Friday, January 18, 2008 2:08 AM/EST
I went to Ning, Andreessen's latest love child, to check out all the networks people have developed (during his Q&A Andreessen said there are about 150,000 individual networks created on Ning, which, like Salesforce's Force.com, is an on-demand development platform).
|
|
