Industry observers have long talked up the need for CIOs to cozy up to other members of the C-suite, including the CFO and the CEO. “Reincarnate” CIOs who possess this ability to interact with their business peers could eventually ascend…
Salesforce.com, Jive Software and other companies offering social software to enterprises are taking the wrong approach, said several SAP executives on a call introducing Jam, the German company’s own entry into the social enterprise market. Jonathan Becher, SAP’s chief marketing…
While it’s easy to find marketing hype about Big Data, it’s hard to find professionals who understand what it is and know what to do with it. EMC, the enterprise storage company that has been staking a claim in the…
Though companies try to cut costs wherever they can in times of economic uncertainty, they prefer to maintain or even increase investments in customer-facing technologies that have the potential to drive top-line revenue. So it’s no surprise that a Computer…
If enterprise app popularity was judged by the number of big vendors buying small pureplays, marketing automation would certainly be sitting pretty. Earlier this year, both Oracle and Salesforce.com purchased providers of marketing platforms with a social slant. Now Microsoft…
When it comes to Big Data, knowledge is low while expectations are high – a tricky combination. CompTIA, a non-profit IT industry association, released a study in which it found just 37 percent of IT and business executives report being…
There’s a new ERP kid in town, Sweden’s Jeeves Information Systems. The company, which has offices in France, Germany, the UK and Norway and is owned by American investment company Battery Ventures, just opened a North American headquarters in Chicago. The…
Enterprise Apps Today‘s Ann All discussed the importance of ERP reporting with Glenn Wirick, vice president of product development for InsightSoftware.com, which makes productivity tools for Oracle’s E-Business Suite and JD Edwards software. Wirick has worked with JD Edwards software…
By Bruce Temkin, Managing Partner, Temkin Group Customer experience (CX) management is evolving from an ad-hoc set of activities to a full-fledged professional discipline. As the CX movement matures, it resembles the quality movement of the 1980s. Here’s what one…
Just like Las Vegas, what happens in the data warehouse has generally stayed in the data warehouse, with data strictly under IT control and users who must wait for IT to address their data analytics requests. During the last decade…
Business intelligence is one of today’s hottest enterprise applications, and the cloud is receiving much buzz as enterprises look to cut the cost and hassle of software implementations. So it’s no surprise that these two “cool kids” will likely become…
A recent Enterprise Apps Today article offers some great advice on Taking Enterprise Apps Mobile, from assessing mobile app needs to creating a mobile app business case to deciding which devices to use for mobile apps. Once that is done,…
With the considerable hype around mobile applications, it’s easy to believe that most companies already have multiple mobile apps or will soon. Easy to believe, but wrong. According to a new survey by MGI Research, some 70 percent of respondents…
Hype is often viewed as distracting, annoying or both. (Just ask parents of preteens with “Bieber fever.”) Hype isn’t always a bad thing, though, as it can help create awareness for worthy topics. It’s a safe bet business analytics vendors…
Enterprise software giant SAP mentioned some impressive adoption numbers for HANA, its in-memory data platform, during a press call yesterday. Kevin Gilroy, senior vice president of Global Indirect Channels, called HANA “an innovative, tipping-point product” with 400 customers, nearly half…
It looks as if 2012 is shaping up to be a decent year for enterprise software spending, with Gartner projecting companies will spend 4.3 percent more for software in 2012 than they did last year. That tops Gartner’s growth estimate…
While traditional business intelligence, what Howard Dresner calls “meat and potatoes BI,” has served organizations fairly well, many business users are looking for something a little tastier. They’re beginning to get it, thanks to their increased involvement in selecting and…
For years, the “cloud” has been the king of nebulous technology terms. But there’s a new contender, it seems, based on results of a recent Harris Interactive survey commissioned by SAP that asked small and midsize businesses (SMBs) about their…
Business process management (BPM) is the rare enterprise application that may attract more investment during challenging economic times than in times of plenty. A recent Capgemini report found that 96 percent of those who had tried to measure a return…
Bigger isn’t better when it comes to implementing the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), a framework of IT service management (ITSM) best practices. It can take years to adopt all 26 ITIL processes, said John Prestridge, vice president of marketing and…
A few months ago Enterprise Apps Today reported on the growing need for companies to provide cross-channel customer service, offering customers a consistent user experience across multiple channels including call centers, company websites and even social networks like Facebook and…
While overall growth in the mobile phone market is slowing, recent IDC research shows smartphones are still experiencing strong growth, with IDC forecasting a 38.8 percent year-over-year increase in smartphone shipments in 2012. So it’s not surprising that providers of…
While Oracle has been talking up its cloud plans, most of the discussion has centered around how it will help enterprises move IT assets such as applications and infrastructure to the cloud. Oracle’s Advanced Customer Support organization is leveraging the…
While Big Data has the potential to revolutionize business intelligence, it will first need to become considerably less complex, said Rachel Delacour, CEO and co-founder of BIME, a French company that offers a complete stack of business intelligence services and…
Though chat, activity streams and user profiles are still most commonly found on popular consumer services like Facebook and Twitter, they are steadily advancing into the enterprise. Thanks to the efforts of vendors like Oracle, which last week announced its…
Alastair Mitchell, co-founder and CEO of Huddle, a provider of enterprise content management (ECM) software, pegs his company as a SharePoint killer. He engineered a stunt in October in which a Huddle marching band and cheerleaders crashed Microsoft’s SharePoint 2011…
Software-as-a-service is growing at a healthy clip, from global revenue of $12.3 billion in 2011 to projected revenue of $14.5 billion this year, according to Gartner. Strong growth will continue through at least 2015, when Gartner expects worldwide revenue to…
It’s no surprise that mobile CRM applications for sales people are in demand, given they spend so much time on the road, meeting with customers and visiting prospects. Xactly Corporation, a provider of on-demand sales compensation and sales performance management,…
Data visualization is one of the hottest trends in business intelligence, with experts saying it can help take business intelligence out of the realm of data specialists and into the hands of business analysts. SAP is keen to capitalize on…
Executives like to see a clear return on investment from enterprise software. However, it can be a tricky proposition with any kind of social applications, including social CRM. Surveys administered late last year by Jive Software and the Association for…
Do companies with aging applications from Oracle and SAP want to pay those vendors for support and maintenance? A 2010 Computer Economics survey showed many Oracle customers chafed at the fees they paid Oracle for support. As Computer Economics President…
When it comes to dealing with Big Data, software architecture matters, said Lou Jordano, director of product marketing for Spotfire, Tibco Software, which this morning rolled out Tibco Spotfire 4.5, the latest version of its in-memory analytics platform. Though there…
CRM’s star is rising in the enterprise, as evidenced by a recent Gartner survey that found CRM moved up 10 spots on a list of CIOs’ technology priorities and a separate survey in which CEOs tapped CRM as the most…
New details about Windows 8, Microsoft’s forthcoming operating system, which some observers see as a huge bet for the software giant, seem to be emerging on almost a daily basis. A new survey found underwhelming adoption of Windows 8 in…
There appears to be growing interest in giving consumers more options to use their smartphones and other mobile devices for help in completing online transactions and resolving other support issues, judging by the release of two new applications. Earlier this…
Streamlining communications and making it easier to find information are fairly obvious use cases for social software in the enterprise. So it’s not surprising that recent product announcements from companies like Jive Software and eXo Software focus on helping companies…
SugarCRM’s open source roots are showing at its SugarCon conference, taking place this week in San Francisco. The agenda was created based on attendee suggestions and online voting, and the event will wrap in “unconference” style with a session around…
Writing for IT Business Edge, Mike Vizard in February highlighted the release of version 3.5 of the eXo Platform, which companies could use to build a custom social intranet application that could run on the public cloud via platform-as-a-service offerings…
In the early years of this decade, it seemed like most companies needed cloud computing like a fish needed a bicycle – to steal a phrase from the late feminist Gloria Steinem. Now, however, a growing number of companies need…
One way for organizations to deal with Big Data challenges is by using a NoSQL database such as the open source MongoDB database. Buoyed by the growing interest in Big Data, the lead commercial sponsor behind MongoDB is establishing relationships…
Genesys, a provider of customer service and contact center software and services with more than 2,000 customers in 80 countries, is introducing this week a mobile customer care solution called Genesys Mobile Engagement. According to the company, the software empowers…
arcplan, a provider of business intelligence and planning solutions, is introducing arcplan Enterprise 7.2, a new version of its software that includes MDX interfaces for the in-memory technologies SAP HANA and Kognitio Pablo. arcplan Enterprise was rated the top third-party…
inContact, a provider of cloud contact center software and contact center agent optimization tools, earlier this week announced the availability of the first of three major product enhancements planned for 2012. Among improvements in the latest inContact release: Enhanced Agent…
SugarCRM has completed a $33 million equity and debt financing round, which was led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and included participation from new investors Silicon Valley Bank and Gold Hill Capital. All of SugarCRM’s current investors, including Draper Fisher…
Microsoft Dynamics CRM consultancy Sonoma Partners is introducing a Mobile Sales Kit application for the Apple iPad. According to Sonoma Partners, the software aims to replace the reams of collateral sales people carry on client visits. Companies can lower printing…
Business consulting firm Bluewolf has partnered with gamification specialist Bunchball on a new offering, called #GoingSocial that the two companies say will help employees of Fortune 500 organizations learn how to use social media tools to collaborate better, connect with…
As a recent study by Adobe made clear, companies continue to wrestle with determining the value of their social media activities. Even users of social media aren’t always wildly enthusiastic about its benefits – especially in the workplace. Writing for…
Traditional business intelligence is increasingly converging with predictive analytics as companies focus less on analyzing historical data and more on trying to get an edge on their competitors by predicting future outcomes. Software giant SAP last year began rolling out…
With lots of new options for storing and analyzing data available to companies, it’s not surprising IBM is releasing a major upgrade of its DB2 relational database management software and a new version of its InfoSphere Warehouse software. As Bernie…
Aktana, a startup that used to be called IncentAlign, is introducing new software designed to help field sales forces make better decisions. The Collective Intelligence Suite for Field Sales, which is accessible from iPads or Android tablets, uses a sales…