Alignment, staffing and culture are often more critical than software and apps
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Retail is an industry where the old 80/20 rule certainly applies. Many retailers make most of their money from a relatively small group of core customers. Loyalty programs were created as a way to ma... More >
While many SMBs are fans of software-as-a-service, not all of them are. Forrester Research recently delved into the reasons behind why some SMBs are leery of SaaS. A recent Forrester repo... More >
Software-as-a-service is often portrayed as a kind of unstoppable force. Gartner, for instance, forecasts annual growth of 22 percent over the next four years for SaaS. While there are concerns ab... More >
Depending on your feelings about Google (and how much of its stock you own), the search giant's reported decline in pay-per-click advertising may leave you scared, smug or just uncertain. Mo... More >
Back in July, I blogged that Democratic presidential candidates Sen. Hillary Clinton (N.Y.) and Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) were finding themselves between a rock and a hard place on offshoring. This ... More >
IT governance reminds me a bit of energy-conscious data center strategies . Lots of folks are talking about these concepts. While many companies buy into them -- at least on paper -- they are far fr... More >
Though economic uncertainty has industry analysts like Forrester Research and IDC scaling back their tech spending projections for 2008, it appears that SMBs may be a bit freer with the funds than ... More >
Like some other observers, I was a bit nonplussed when I saw results from a Robert Half Technology survey that indicated just 6 percent of U.S. companies send work offshore . While the number did ri... More >
I blogged back in November about Microsoft's Windows Essential Business Server product lineup, focusing on the software giant's efforts to woo mid-size businesses with a software bundle -- once cod... More >
Technology vendors have long viewed VARs (value-added resellers) as an important bridge into the SMB market. Rather than using their direct sales teams to woo SMBs, vendors recruit partners to do i... More >
In India, BPO has long been eclipsed by its more successful cousin, IT outsourcing. But that could change in the coming months. As I blogged several weeks ago, the Everest Group and India's National ... More >
One of my favorite aspects of a presentation by Guy Kawasaki I saw a few months ago was the serial entrepreneur's illustration of the generic nature of most mission statements. His example, ... More >
I've blogged several times about SMBs and outsourcing, highlighting research that indicates that SMBs tend to be happier than big companies with their outsourcing experiences, wondering why so few... More >
As I've blogged before, many folks think that a company's commitment to IT needs to start at the very top -- with its board of directors. Yet a Deloitte survey published last spring found that... More >
Back in July, I asserted that Your Next PC Just May Be a Smartphone . While that's a little heavy on the hyperbole, there's no question that both consumers and companies are showing strong interest ... More >
With companies facing increasingly stiff competition as they look to fill IT jobs, they need to step up their recruiting game. That means looking beyond big online job boards to smaller niche sites... More >
Any worries that a slowing economy might mean a loss of IT jobs seem unfounded -- at least for now. In the United States, IT employment capped off a year of 7.9 percent growth with a record 3... More >
I've blogged before about SMBs' slow adoption of VoIP. I've often faulted the vendors , who appear to be struggling to position their products and services to the SMB market. Yet as IT Busine... More >
Before I interviewed Techdirt Insight Community analyst Carlo Longino, I wasn't convinced that businesses would ever want to adopt Twitter, an emerging communications platform that allows folks to pu... More >
Despite occasional reports to the contrary, it is now a given that outsourcing helps companies save money. A new Deloitte report confirms this , with 83 percent of the companies it surveyed saying t... More >
Last February I blogged about research firm Input's prediction that federal agencies would step up their outsourcing activities , with a resulting increase in the market from $13.3 billion in fiscal... More >
For SAP, it's turning out to be a long, strange trip to the software-as-service delivery model it sees as the key to winning new customers in the SMB market. SAP's SMB-oriented Business ByDesi... More >
The good news from a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers survey: IT executives are more aware of best-practices frameworks like the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and the Control Objectives for Informati... More >
Software-as-a-service is certainly looking like an industry darling. Gartner is forecasting a growth rate of 22 percent a year for SaaS through 2011, vs. annual growth of 9 percent for the overall ... More >
Are the business benefits of Internet technology worth the effort and expense that must be invested in it? Though the answer is "yes" for most SMBs, it doesn't come without caveats. Research c... More >
Earlier this week, I blogged about some suggestions offered by The Hackett Group to help companies prepare for the tough economic times ahead . But that is far from the final word in belt-tig... More >
Times are getting tough for the economy -- and for technology budgets -- with Forrester Research and other analysts scaling back their earlier estimates for spending growth. Not surprisingly... More >
With all of the ongoing drama surrounding Microsoft's unsolicited bid to buy Yahoo, it's hard to focus on anything else. It's easy to overlook, for example, the parallel moves made by both... More >
As recently as a year-and-a-half ago, some analysts were expressing surprise at the continued growth of offshoring , which they called "quite astounding." At that time, IDC said it expected the offs... More >
I blogged back in April about HP CEO Mark Hurd's mission to take on Teradata , the business division he once led when it was part of NCR Corporation, with a new data warehousing/business intelligenc... More >
Cultural differences, unforgiving time zones and management misunderstandings can make companies involved in outsourcing want to cry. But as with many difficulties in life, a better strategy is to ... More >
In President Bush's recent State of the Union address, he was careful to avoid the use of the "R word." However, Forrester Research wasn't so reluctant, citing a "mild recession" in the U.S. as it sc... More >
When I blogged recently about the benefits that best-in-class companies achieve via their operational business intelligence efforts, I only hinted at the specifics of how these companies manage to ... More >
Microsoft has often been knocked for the complexity of its software licensing programs. ( Six versions of Vista , for Pete's sake.) But now in a nod to the needs of SMBs, Microsoft is introduc... More >
Repeating a positive economic trend from 2007 , the outsourcing market in the Philippines is expected to accelerate again this year. According to a Reuters story published on Inquirer.net , exper... More >
Like many journalists, I was trained to write in an "inverted pyramid" style -- that is, put the most essential information first and then add all of the other stuff in order of importance, with the ... More >
In less than two months, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will begin accepting H-1B applications for fiscal 2009. Most experts predict a rush similar to last year, when the cap w... More >
Servers, PCs and other tech gear is cheap -- but the humans required to manage them aren't. This economic reality is leading India's National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) t... More >
Now that Yahoo is facing a $45 billion unsolicited takeover offer from Microsoft, we can expect to see a flurry of actions designed to help Yahoo expand its business and possibly fend off Redmond -... More >
Many companies are still struggling to determine when and where it makes sense to employ Web 2.0 technologies at work. Yet at least one application -- the company intranet -- appears to be a fairly o... More >
I've blogged about the efforts of some companies to inject new life into their intranets by adding user-friendly Web 2.0 tools such as wikis and RSS feeds. One company, Serena Software, even took t... More >
Globalization has made it possible for ambitious and hard-working people like Muktesh Meka, a 39-year-old entrepreneur who left his native India to attend a U.S. college in 1991 and later established... More >
One of the nuggets of information found in CIO.com's annual State of the CIO Survey, which I blogged about last month , is that 41 percent of CIOs report to the CEO, which has long been seen as a si... More >
Like many other folks in the blogosphere, last week I wrote about a new Web site called NotchUp.com , which is designed to help companies attract highly qualified potential hires -- especially those... More >
SMBs enjoy a veritable smorgasbord of storage options. It was true back in April when I blogged about new SMB market entries from HP and IBM, and it's even more true today, as this internetnews.co... More >
My admiration for Amazon's business chops and knack for innovation (both high- and low-tech) is no secret. As I blogged back in April, Amazon is becoming quite the Web services wonder . And it even ... More >
I recently blogged about some analysts' bullish expectations for CRM , with both Datamonitor and KensingtonHouse citing the growing interest in and adoption of CRM delivered through a software-as-se... More >
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