Last spring, Microsoft announced that, beginning this fall, it would start to release updates for its Dynamics Customer Relationship Management (CRM) package twice a year instead of once every two or three years as it has in the past. Now…
Microsoft this week released the latest update to its Dynamics AX enterprise resource planning (ERP) package to general availability worldwide, on schedule. Dynamics AX 2012 is shipping in 25 countries and 23 different languages, according to a Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT)…
Portions of Microsoft’s Office 365 cloud computing suite were down for several hours in the U.S, including some unrelated services, on Wednesday, the company confirmed. However, the outage didn’t last very long and the services are now restored, according to…
Microsoft this week announced a set of tools for its Windows Azure public cloud computing platform meant to simplify programming the environment to process large data sets for scientists. Dubbed “Project Daytona,” Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) toolset is meant to free…
Microsoft announced general availability of its next-generation online suite at an event in New York on Tuesday. Although Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer spent most of his time onstage emphasizing Office 365’s benefits for the small to medium-sized business…
Microsoft released a new roadmap for its customer relationship management (CRM) products this week that will ultimately lead to much more frequent updates. According to a post to the Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Dynamics CRM Blog yesterday, one important change will…
“Big data” is exploding as more and more information is collected and stored daily, and both businesses and governments need to prepare if they’re not going to be completely overwhelmed, according to a new report. Just in the U.S., there…
The enterprise software market grew by a surprising 8.5 percent worldwide in 2010, at least partly based on strong sales in Latin America and Asia/Pacific markets, according to a new report. Total revenue for enterprise software hit $245 billion last…
Microsoft announced Monday it has begun widespread public beta testing of its Office 365 cloud-based online business application subscription service. The service combines cloud delivery of the latest versions of Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) enterprise services — Exchange 2010, SharePoint 2010…
In less than 20 years, the Web has changed many industries from top to bottom, hardly any as much as in the areas of sales and marketing. Consumers today frequently browse for the best deals online and purchase products using…
SAP today rolled out version 4 of its business intelligence (BI) and enterprise information management (EIM) products after three years in development. Version 4, launched Wednesday at an event in New York, essentially overhauls the company’s BusinessObjects portfolio, with a…
A month after Microsoft released Dynamics CRM 2011 Online for its own cloud services environments, Microsoft announced it is now shipping an edition of its customer relationship management (CRM) package that enables customers to run it on-premise or via a…
IBM this week began shipping a new module in its Cognos Express line of business intelligence (BI) and analytics software that’s specifically designed to meet the needs of mid-sized companies. Named Cognos Express Planner, the package can be used standalone…
Oracle announced Tuesday that it is shipping a significant update to its WebCenter Suite 11g user experience portals suite. WebCenter Suite 11g is one of the packages within Oracle’s (NASDAQ: ORCL) Fusion Middleware, which debuted in summer 2009. “[The suite]…
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced commercial availability of the company’s next generation customer relationship management (CRM) cloud services offering yesterday, and plans to launch customer-premises and partner-hosted editions of the package on Thursday. Never before has Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) made…
A new survey of midsized businesses indicates many of them are planning to increase IT spending in the next 12 to 18 months, as budgets begin to clear, the economy continues to accelerate, and companies put increased emphasis on reaching…
Microsoft today offered a preview of new features planned for the next release of its Dynamics AX enterprise resource planning (ERP) package, including new technologies meant to simplify and speed development of third-party applications on the platform. The new version,…
After months of rumors, Salesforce.com announced Thursday that it has acquired live conferencing firm Dimdim for some $31 million. The company’s intent, according to Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), is to enhance its evolving Chatter collaboration platform by adding Dimdim’s electronic meeting…
On the eve of Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce 2010 conference in San Francisco, Microsoft is offering a rebate on its own hosted online customer relationship management (CRM) package. In an “open letter” published in the western regional edition of The Wall Street…
It’s only been seven months since Microsoft last upgraded its Dynamics GP enterprise resource planning (ERP) package for mid-sized businesses to Dynamics GP 2010. Still, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) is already talking up the next release, due to be dubbed “Release…
Microsoft and partner consultancy Avanade have announced deployment of Microsoft’s Dynamics CRM Task Management Tracker (TMT) — an “off-the-shelf” solution — for the U.S. Air Forces in Europe (USAFE). “TMT provides a simple interface for responding to task and process…
Business intelligence software is notoriously complex and can be difficult to use besides being resource-intensive. Tableau Software this week announced the release of version 6 of the company’s business intelligence software of the same name, which was designed for easy…
Microsoft plans to ship the latest update of its Dynamics SL enterprise resource planning (ERP) application in the second quarter of next year, the company said Tuesday. The upgraded version — dubbed Dynamics SL 2011 — will feature improved role-based…
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has announced the promotion of three insiders as presidents of key divisions at the software giant. The appointments, announced Friday, include a replacement for former Business Division president Stephen Elop, who left Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) to…
Microsoft was almost a non-starter in cloud computing just a few years ago — but it has worked hard, built massive data centers worldwide, and come out with what customers apparently feel is a compelling set of offerings, including its…
The state of Minnesota announced Monday it has signed a deal with Microsoft to use the software titan’s cloud computing services for unified communications and collaboration services. Under the terms of the deal, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) will provide the state’s…
Microsoft and Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) settled their competing patent infringement lawsuits out of court on Wednesday, and while little is known about the deal itself, industry observers see the agreement as more about Microsoft notching a victory in safeguarding its…
Microsoft and Salesforce.com have settled their competing patent infringement suits against each other. The competing lawsuits were settled with the two firms agreeing to cross-license large portions of each other’s patent portfolios, including Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) back-end server infrastructure, according…
Two leading analyst firms have rated Microsoft’s customer relationship management (CRM) software as a leader in that market. Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) announced that Gartner has rated its Dynamics CRM package as a leader in its Magic Quadrant for Sales Force…
It seems a bit like Mad magazine’s Spy vs. Spy with each trying to cleverly sabotage the other, only it’s cloud versus cloud in the latest legal tangle between Salesforce and Microsoft. Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) sued Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) for…
Microsoft has begun the third community technology preview (CTP 3) for the next release of its Dynamics CRM software for customer relationship management (CRM). Codenamed “CRM 5,” the latest CTP is directed primarily toward software developers, hosting partners and value-added…
Just like the late winter sky outside the Paul G. Allen building on the campus of the University of Washington, Microsoft’s future is in the clouds — cloud computing to be exact. “For the cloud, we’re all in,” Microsoft CEO…
Attention Microsoft customers waiting to try out the company’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) hosted CRM offering: The wait is over. The software giant began delivering its Dynamics CRM Online service today, a Microsoft-hosted version of the company’s Dynamics CRM 4 customer relationship…
Microsoft has expanded the preview of its hosted customer relationship management (CRM) offering to more partners and customers. In addition, the company is in the process of bringing out new features for its Office Live Small Business services offerings. Formally…
Microsoft announced Monday that it has released to manufacturing the long-awaited update to its Dynamics-branded customer relationship management software (CRM). Previously codenamed “Titan,” the latest version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM actually has two names in its final form. For on-premise,…
A report released today ranking the top 100 online retailers for customer satisfaction finds that the customer’s experience with a retailer’s Web site is a key component in determining customer loyalty and an indicator of longer-term financial success. Rating highest…