Talk about artificial intelligence, and most people think about machines that can reason. In a business context that would mean clever AIs that could use their powerful intellects to become formidable business leaders that could outwit mere humans. But since…
Google has something of a penchant for changing the names of its products, and the latest one to be given a new moniker is Google Apps for Work. From now on – or until the next name change, at least…
When a company like Microsoft embraces open source software, it’s tempting to believe that the open source software model is better than the proprietary one and that companies should adopt an “open source first” policy: picking open source applications whenever…
“Store everything” and “analyze everything” are popular IT mantras, leading companies to build data lakes and use data analytics software. But that begs an important question. What kinds of business benefits can you gain from a business intelligence project? More…
Talk about customer relationship management (CRM) software and you’ll probably be thinking about on-premise software packages or software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings from big companies like Salesforce.com, SAP, Oracle or Microsoft. But there are plenty of viable open source CRM software options…
If you want to know what’s likely to happen in your business, you need predictive analytics. Predictive analytics is distinct from descriptive analytics, which shows what happened and when, and diagnostic analytics, which deals with why events happened in the…
A recent ruling on the legality of mobile device jailbreaking has cleared the way for productivity enhancing applications that Apple seeks to prevent. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) prohibits circumventing technological measures put in place by Apple to prevent…
It’s impossible to talk about Big Data without mentioning Apache Hadoop. But Hadoop is just a part of a thriving Big Data software ecosystem. There are plenty of other Big Data platforms and tools, and many of them are open…
Need an application to help you do a specific task more efficiently? Why not create it yourself? That is the thinking behind a growing phenomenon called “citizen development.” Gartner defines a citizen developer as anyone outside the IT department that…
By Heine Krog Iversen, TimeXtender Business intelligence can deliver great value because it allows people to get reliable feedback on complex action patterns. These actions can happen on an individual level or across departments, roles and teams. When properly used,…
Beacon technology was supposed to revolutionize the way that businesses interacted with their customers, but so far it hasn’t lived up to the hype. That’s not to say that Apple’s iBeacon standard, Google’s competing open source beacon technology Eddystone and…
Salesforce Making its CRM software “smarter” is a theme Salesforce has been hitting pretty hard. Last summer it paid $390 million for data science startup RelateIQ, a purchase that RelateIQ cofounder and CEO Steve Loughlin promised in a blog post…
By Holly Rudolph Thank goodness it’s…Tuesday? Maybe, if you’re trying to close a sale — and you’re in Australia. Tuesday stood out as the best day of the week for closing a sale Down Under when Pipedrive, a developer of…
It’s impossible to imagine making good business decisions without the right information to back up the decision making process. Business intelligence (BI) tools help by making it easy to extract and understand the information that you need from the mass…
Open source ERP accounts for a tiny portion of the overall ERP market, which is dominated by a handful of commercial products offered by well-known enterprise software vendors such as SAP, Oracle, Microsoft and Sage. Although there are plenty of…
The CRM marketplace is odd. While it’s dominated by some well-established heavyweights, it is also swarming with hundreds of upstart startups and more established, yet little-known, vendors. What explains the unusual makeup of this market? Five big boys account for…
By Mark Lorion, Apperian Enterprise mobile apps can be transformational for every department and across every industry. But to make an impact, apps need to be adopted. Whether an organization has a custom-built app, a third party app or a…
If the number of sessions at Microsoft’s inaugural Ignite conference is any indication, the company is placing a huge bet on Office 365’s success. Of the 674 recordings available for viewing, 81 — or 12 percent of the total —…
Online app stores have exploded onto the technology scene over the last half a dozen years. More recently enterprise app stores have become a thing. As a result, millions of people download and install applications onto their mobile devices, laptops…
By Cesar Fernandez, PMG Business management guru Tom Peters once said, “Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design, manufacturing, layout, processes and procedures.” Although this may be true, so many companies have a tendency to over engineer systems,…
By Fima Katz, Exadel According to Gartner, by 2017 75 percent of IT organizations will have gone bimodal in some way. This shift reflects the growing need for businesses to deploy a modern mobile platform that encourages business user participation…
By Michael de Groot, Geneca In today’s fast-paced world, new information is constantly available at our fingertips. People are leading increasingly digital lifestyles and, if it hasn’t happened already, you’re going to be compelled to deliver your offerings as some…
Imagine a new enterprise application that could save every knowledge-based employee in your organization an hour a day. That would give your workforce a huge productivity boost. That, in a nutshell, explains why Microsoft and IBM are busy developing next…
While retailers are investing in technology designed to facilitate omni-channel marketing strategies, many are struggling to deliver on them, due largely to the fact that customer data is contained in multiple silos throughout an organization. Splice Machine, provider of a…
By Michael Collins, BackOffice Associates The quality of data has become a priority as organizations strive to gain efficiencies in their information systems. As a result, more organizations are building data governance teams to manage data, measure quality and attribute…
The growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) has enterprises wondering how easy it is to build their own IoT applications to take advantage of it, and the best way to go about IoT app development. The good news is…
By Cesar Fernandez, director of Product Solutions at PMG Struggling to bridge the gap between IT and the rest of your organization? If so, you’re not alone. A recent survey conducted by PMG found that 60 percent of IT leaders…
It’s impossible to imagine making good business decisions without the right information to back up the decision making process. Business intelligence (BI) tools help by making it easy to extract and understand the information that you need from the mass…
Microsoft is making a big push to bolster enterprise interest in Office 365. The latest enticement comes in the form of unlimited OneDrive storage to all Office 365 subscribers. Initially it will roll out to consumers, while Office 365 for…
By Edward Wahl, Art & Logic Some circumstances call for generic, one-size-fits-all business applications. Others require apps built to purpose for optimal efficiency. But how do you know which is which? What is the best approach for your project and…
Take a look at the ERP market and you’ll find a landscape dominated by a handful of commercial products offered by well-known enterprise software vendors such as SAP, Oracle, Microsoft and Sage. Although there are plenty of open source ERP…
When you think of Microsoft, you naturally think of operating systems like Windows for the desktop and server. You also think of Microsoft Office and probably use one of the applications every business day. Today’s business IT climate is going…
By Anthony Petro, K2 Enterprise application developers have gotten the short end of the stick when it comes to notoriety and glory for their work. Speaking broadly, they do not enjoy the same “cool” factor that is often associated with commercial applications. But…
Few business processes are as important as employee payroll. The process is often complicated, however, by the need to move time and attendance, compensation and other employee data between disparate systems. This often requires multiple imports and exports of data…
Talk about customer relationship management (CRM) software and you’ll probably be thinking about on-premise software packages or software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings from big companies like Salesforce.com, SAP, Oracle or Microsoft. But as well as these and other commercial CRM offerings, there…
Infor, a company that assembled a large portfolio of enterprise applications through dozens of acquisitions over the past decade, is reinventing itself as a serious cloud contender with a flurry of announcements made at this week’s Inforum user conference. Infor’s…
Within the next five years, CIOs will have to deal with thousands of cloud applications and millions of mobile devices and sensors. And – shudder — they will have to integrate everything. Andrew Leigh, a product vice president at Jitterbit,…
Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 has been out for quite some time and received a Service Pack update earlier in the year. While SP1 included the usual mix of performance, reliability and security fixes, it also provided a number of new…
By Mika Javanainen, M-Files Corporation The emergence of PCs in the 1980s profoundly changed the way that businesses operate. However, human nature always finds a way to cling to the past. So as network file folder systems were introduced to…
Finance and accounting professionals don’t have time for “mundane processes” said Alex Ortiz, head of Product Marketing for Host Analytics. Alleviating the heavy workloads of F&A pros is one of the major goals of the latest release of Host Analytics’…
While the “bring your own device” (BYOD) movement is giving many CIOs headaches over security, it also represents an opportunity to turn what could be problem devices into a corporate advantage. Some organizations have taken to standardizing on a particular…
Enterprise apps stores offer a convenient portal that allows employees to download a selection of tested and trusted applications – usually, but not exclusively, for mobile devices. The benefits of enterprise app stores are well known, but it’s still early…
Pipeliner CRM has updated its flagship application with productivity and usability enhancements, including more functional calendar views, social media improvements, customization to lead scoring and native integrations with Box and Gmail. Among the software’s new features and improvements: The customizable…
By Rex Ahlstrom, BackOffice Associates Enterprise data is no longer restricted to transaction-based and other legacy systems. Companies have broadened their data sources and sharing platforms to include mobile, cloud and social channels. Many companies are embracing the “bring your…
By Himanshu Sareen, Icreon Tech The change resistor. The legacy employee. The amateur technologist. In any business environment, software teams will encounter one or more iterations of these common end-users. While some may worry over security issues, others will resist…
Every enterprise IT organization develops and maintains some number of custom applications. In the vast majority of organizations the applications targeted at the Windows platform are developed using Microsoft Visual Studio. While it is possible to use some other tool,…
Microsoft releases new versions of its main products on a relatively predictable schedule. SQL Server releases or major updates have appeared at roughly two-year intervals going back to SQL Server 2008. A bit of a naming anomaly occurred with SQL…
Genesys, a provider of customer experience and contact center software, today introduced a managed service solution called Genesys Guru that it says will help customers optimize their processes to attain operational cost savings and improved business performance. The initial Guru…
HP Autonomy has launched HP Optimost VisualTest, a self-service A/B/n testing offering that helps marketers determine the most effective combinations of digital content by market and customer segment, resulting in greater engagement, conversions and revenue. The software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering includes…
Wearable technology is undeniably hot. Exhibitions like CES and the Wearable Tech Show have been brimming with consumer gadgets that you can place on your head, put around your wrist or clip to your clothing. And just as smartphones initially…