Anyone that is still vociferously doubting and denying the future of cloud computing and its near-mainstream nature will sound as strange and nutty as some US Senate hopefuls that still proudly deny evolution and climate change (while admitting to “dabbling with witchcraft” in the not-too-distant past). In fact, can anyone name a renowned enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendor that has not yet at least announced its cloud computing plans and strategy (if not already delivered actual cloud products)?

During the Grape Escape 2010 event this past summer, the common theme in all four featured vendors’ announcements was getting the “cloud religion.” I am still amazed to see how some of these vendors’ mantras have transformed from “Our customers do not ask for it!” to “We are in the cloud too!” in just a couple of years. 

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Today, Pronto Software [Evaluate this product], developer of enterprise software solutions, is announcing the inclusion of IBM’s Cognos 10 Business Intelligence suite in its upcoming release of PRONTO-Xi. This important news comes at the same time as IBM’s announcement of its new Cognos 10 BI suite release. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, IBM the blue giant announced its acquisition of Clarity Systems, a privately held company with its corporate base in Toronto (Canada). Complete press release here.

According to Mark Nashman, president and CTO of Clarity Systems: “Clarity System’s unified approach offers the flexibility, security, and control needed to make more informed business decisions while meeting compliance requirements.”

This enables IBM to extend its business analytics initiatives and provide a complete stack of analytic applications.

“Smarter decisions thrive on accurate financial information, and it is therefore imperative that financial governance systems reduce risk of error and provide confidence in the external reporting process,” said Rob Ashe, general manager of business analytics for IBM.

Is this an IBM positioning regarding SAP’s recent analytic products launch?

This acquisition seems to be part of IBM’s general strategy to complete the circle regarding information management and analysis. The other pieces of this jigsaw puzzle: IBM acquired PSS systems, a company devoted to implement information governance policies for companies with large amounts of business information; and recently completed the acquisition of OpenPages to enhance its offering in the field of risk management and compliance.

The data management and analysis area remains squarely in the sights of the big software vendors, as many companies are still looking to improve business performance and decision-making processes through the use of more powerful and resourceful tools.

I welcome your thoughts—leave a comment below, and I’ll respond as soon as I can.

The month of May is usually the high season of software vendors’ conferences, but mid-May 2010 was a bit extreme: I was invited to four major user conferences that took place on or about the same dates all over the United States (US). Given that cloning and teleporting technologies are decades away from us, I had to minimize the “damage” by at least picking two events that were relatively physically close to each other.

One event that I had to regretfully decline due to the scheduling conflict was Deltek Insight 2010. I certainly kept my eye on the event via the Twitter chatter and blogosphere (e.g., see a conference report from SPI Research’s principal Dave Hofferberth). More recently, I had an in-depth post-event recap briefing with Deltek’s in-the-know staff members and what follows now are the major developments that transpired at Deltek Insight 2010 (I attempted to put them in logical groups of announcements).

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Today’s product lifecycle management (PLM) is an ever-growing and flexible container for holding a variety of functionality and it has become more important to treat PLM adoption as a phased endeavor with prioritized requirements. PLM adopters (especially first-time and early-stage adopters) should give their priority to urgent areas where quick but significant results can be expected.

I mentioned in a blog post the “the crucial 20 percent of the PLM functionality may bring you 80 percent of the benefits of adopting PLM and help secure the bottom line of your business.” After certifying CXInsight for Electronics from Adeon Software House (ASH), I think this product is a good example of the 80-20 rule—even though it’s not a full-fledged PLM solution, CXInsight for Electronics does address some of the most urgent requirements for product development in the electronics industry.

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My recent blog series on the JDA FOCUS 2010 user conference focused primarily on JDA Software’s strategy and product roadmap on the heels of its recent acquisition of i2 Technologies. But FOCUS 2010 was reportedly the largest vendor’s conference ever, with more than 1,700 registered attendees, more than 100 customer presentations, and nearly 300 total sessions.

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Are you still using cold calling for sales? Do you have a strategy when approaching potential customers over the phone or is it mostly a shot in the dark? Are you aware that you can use social media for sales, which has advantages over cold calling?

In order to answer these questions, let’s take a look at how cold calling and social media can help you with three of the most important rules of selling.

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Recently, I had the pleasure of speaking with Martin Schneider, Senior Director of Communications at SugarCRM where he provided information about the company, Sugar 6 (latest version), and social customer relationship management (SCRM). In this first up close and personal blog post, Martin will discuss what made Sugar CRM the most successful open source CRM product and one of the best CRM products in the market.

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Part 1 of this blog series positioned all four Microsoft Dynamics enterprise resource planning (ERP) product lines and concluded that Microsoft Dynamics AX [evaluate this product] has been selected as the ace in the Dynamics ERP lineup and a global “platform” player in selected industries. In other words, the product has been providing an industry-enabling layer upon which certified partners can build their sub-vertical solutions to cater to so-called long tail (sub-vertical) niches.

Part 2 went through the eight previous generations of the Microsoft Dynamics AX (formerly Axapta) product including the current Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 release. The final part of this blog series will peek into the product’s near future and analyze its traditional strengths and still outstanding weaknesses.

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In Using Social Media Tools for Recruiting Talent, I discussed how more and more businesses today are using social media tools for attracting and finding the right person to fill a position. This current post will focus on the job seeker. It’s no secret that the last few years has seen unemployment rates rise well above the norm. In fact, recent numbers show that—while things are slowly getting better—many in the market for a job are still struggling to find work. It’s also no longer a secret that in order to effectively market yourself, the use of social media technology is a must. In this blog post, I will discuss just a few of the ways that job seekers can use social media tools to their advantage. Read the rest of this entry »

Part 1 of this blog series introduced Epicor Software Corporation’s set of tools called the Epicor Productivity Pyramid. The Pyramid enables one of Epicor’s main business strategies: to extend the value of several of its mature enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications by making enterprise data readily and easily available to all stakeholders.

My blog post then zoomed on to the Epicor Portal solution, a cross-platform querying tool that empowers business workers to find and share information within and across Epicor’s diverse line of business (LOB) applications.  Epicor now provides the database schemas for most of its ERP applications to allow business workers (a.k.a. information workers and end-users) to easily create queries or views and communicate their findings.

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In Why Some People Don’t Like PLM, Graham McCall said that some product lifecycle management (PLM) users’ reluctance to share knowledge with others is the obstacle toward higher acceptance of PLM. I thought his point made perfect sense, and my instant reaction was to ask myself: How can this problem be resolved? Ideally, a PLM system is a platform for people to work together. This means that knowledge sharing is mutually beneficial—by sharing knowledge with others, you also get hold of others’ knowledge. This sounds like an incentive for PLM users to share their knowledge, but when it comes to the real PLM environment in production, this is not always the case.

My thought stopped there for a while and then came back to me after I attended the Siemens Industry Software Analyst Conference because I felt things that I saw at the event were quite relevant to the cure I was looking for. Read the rest of this entry »

Part 1 of this blog series introduced PROACTIS, a UK- and US-based specialist vendor of spend control and e-procurement solutions with accredited partners worldwide. I had the chance to meet the company during my attendance of UNIT4’s UK user event in early 2010, where PROACTIS was an exhibiting partner.

The article then expanded on the company’s history, its procure-to-pay product offering, customers, and partners. Part 2 will analyze recent events, starting with the latest product developments. 

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This interesting question recently arrived in our Ask the Experts inbox, so I thought I’d write a brief post clarifying the difference between ASP and SaaS models. Read the rest of this entry »