Those readers with long memories may still cherish the old Isuzu car commercials with Joe Isuzu, the smarmy salesman. “This car can fly!” he might announce, and a little message at the bottom of the TV screen would say, “Well,…
Recently, Gartner noted a study that purported to show that “between 70% and 80% of BI projects fail.” Ordinarily, I would treat this kind of statement, from Gartner or anyone else, as the equivalent of “give me your money or…
One of the written works I most admire, Bruce Catton’s history of the Civil War (“Never Call Retreat”), says of the prelude to Missionary Ridge that Grant and his commanders “had inspected the ground beforehand, and, as sometimes ironically befalls…
Among the flood of computing vendor announcements that marked the start of the new year was one that might have been easily overlooked: Microsoft and HP unveiled converged application appliances for small businesses, business intelligence, analytics and email serving. Neither…
Recently, the real news for IT, business intelligence and enterprise applications buyers has often been vendors’ new selling proposition, not just the solutions offered. Examples might include new cloud pricing models, new ways of combining hosted and on-premises implementations, and…
The typical user’s idea of mobile business intelligence is that of a cellphone performing analytics (reports, dashboards, ad-hoc queries) against a company database, just as smartphone access to Facebook provides social networking across the global Web, or just as we…
I was reading a business intelligence (BI) white paper feed when I happened across one whose title was, more or less, “Data Visualization: Is This the Way To Attract the Common End User?” And I thought, “Oh boy, here we…
A good e-commerce system offers an easy way to set up and manage an online store and makes it simple for customers to peruse and purchase goods. But what if your e-commerce platform took the initiative to improve your placement…
Reprinted from SmallBusinessComputing.com When who you know is just as important as what you know, you might consider using contact-manager software to track all of your dealings with clients and customers. Sage Software’s ACT by Sage 2006, a descendant of…
Ever-expanding Internet access and faster broadband connections make Web-based applications such as NetSuite’s NetSuite Small Business more appealing to a larger audience. This powerful online accounting system is the latest incarnation of a program that used to be called NetLedger…
Small businesses are finding that they can make as many sales through the Web as in brick-and-mortar stores, if they can master the intricacies of the Internet shopping cart. Fortunately, by relying on Actinic’s Actinic Catalog and Actinic Business, two…
Teradyne, Inc.‘s Broadband Test Division announced the availability of NetFlare, the company’s new Internet test system designed to reduce costs for ISPs and broadband call centers focused on consumer and small business. NetFlare accomplishes this by identifying the owner of…