NetSuite continues to round out its exacting capabilities for retailers and distributors. Having acquired the Retail Anywhere cloud point of sales (POS) system in early 2013, on the eve of the SuiteWorld 2013 conference NetSuite has acquired OrderMotion Inc., a provider of order management solutions based in Burlington, Massachusetts, for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition of OrderMotion’s cloud-based Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) Order Management capabilities adds to NetSuite’s own cloud-based order management system, furthering NetSuite’s focus on this increasingly important and complex business challenge and critical functionality—omnichannel order fulfillment.

Read the rest of this entry »

SAP has announced SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud service, taking the logical but no less important step of taking its SAP HANA platform to the cloud, giving organizations a new deployment option for the in-memory platform.

The SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud service will enable organizations to run mission-critical instances of SAP’s enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and Netweaver Business Warehouse solutions in the cloud, powered by HANA.

SAP plans to deliver the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud through its partners within what SAP calls an “open + us” strategy, offering the capabilities from the partner data centers and/or SAP’s own data centers located worldwide. Read the rest of this entry »

Coincidentally or not, my industry analyst career started at about the same time that salesforce.com was founded, back in 1999. And boy, has the vocal cloud software company had an amazing transition over the years—once dismissed as a fad-like niche sales force automation (SFA) vendor with glorified contact management capabilities, salesforce.com is now a $3 billion (USD) enterprise software powerhouse. Whether one likes salesforce.com CEO and founder Marc Benioff’s bluster or not, the vendor is now indisputably a member of the elite enterprise applications club, joining the likes of SAP, Oracle, Infor, Microsoft Dynamics, Dassault Systemes, Autodesk, and Sage Group. What more poignant example of the “old school” vs. “new school” contrast could be pointed out than the fact that Obama’s 2012 campaign used salesforce.com to monitor voters’ inquiries in real-time in the cloud while Romney’s 2012 campaign used an on-premises Oracle solution (that famously erroneously predicted a landslide victory for the Republicans).
Read the rest of this entry »

It seems that Actian Corporation, provider of the famous and globally used relational database called Ingres, is repositioning itself within the big data and data management space. It has just made an interesting move towards strongly increasing its presence by acquiring ParAccel, a provider of one of the fastest analytic databases on the market. Read the rest of this entry »

UNIT4, a cloud-focused business software  and services company, has announced a partnership with Amazon, one of the top global providers of cloud services. Under this agreement UNIT4 will develop the necessary consultancy services and technical support to deploy its UNIT4’s business software with the Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform. Read the rest of this entry »

Pearson, a global education company, has selected Cameleon Software’s Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) solution as part of a business transformation initiative aimed at enhancing the customer experience. Anticipating the growing need for customized and personalized services, as well as the shift from paper to digital content, Pearson adapted its business processes to the market changes and, as part of its strategy, implemented a CPQ solution. Read the rest of this entry »

The popularity of cloud computing does not necessarily absolve cloud solutions from developing vertical industry focus. Thus, NetSuite and eWinery Solutions, a provider of direct-to-consumer (DTC) software and systems for the wine industry, have just formed a partnership to develop and offer an industry-specific cloud software solution. VinSuite will target wineries to help them compete at both the local and international levels.

The wine industry is increasingly competitive, with more than 8,000 wineries, 100,000 wine brands, and  100,000 wine retailers in the US, and new developments every week in Europe, Latin America, and Asia Pacific. It is truly a global business, but the software systems used to run these businesses are fragmented—typically a winery has to use multiple disparate legacy systems, creating inefficiency and high IT costs.

Read the rest of this entry »

Recently released FinancialForce PSA Winter ’13 builds on FinancialForce.com’s commitment to making professional services teams more effective, mobile, and social (having been built on the Salesforce Platform and natively embedded with Salesforce CRM). Winter ’13 is based on enhancement ideas submitted online by the company’s growing community of users via the FinancialForce Community portal that was launched in 2012.

Read the rest of this entry »

It is not surprising to hear that enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are not particularly beloved by their users. Indeed, companies are not exactly infatuated with their pricey enterprise system “toys” the way some consumers love their tablets or smartphones (not to mention the unconditional way my 5.5-year-old loves her teddy bear). So the recent InformationWeek piece on users being frustrated with their ERP purchases could have been just another article on that theme. But, what caught my eye here were the words “the UK” and “public sector.” Reportedly, more than 60 percent of IT decision makers in British local government feel their ERP investments haven’t delivered, according to a recent poll.

Read the rest of this entry »

NetSuite was seemingly on a roll at the end of January 2013. A day after its win at the Zicam maker, NetSuite announced that CallidusCloud, a leading provider of cloud-based sales performance management (SPM), training, hiring, and marketing software solutions, has transformed its global business and information technology (IT) efficiency by implementing NetSuite OneWorld. The newly deployed cloud enterprise suite has reportedly improved end-to-end cross-enterprise business visibility and performance for the fast-growing software company to replace an “IT nightmare” of 14 disparate business applications, including enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM). Read the rest of this entry »

The Office of Vocational Training and Employment Promotion (OFPPT) of Morocco, a public training institution offering educational training in 35 fields of study has chosen Microsoft Office 365 for its education and vocational training solutions. The OFPPT will also work with Microsoft to create 100 new Microsoft IT Academies across the country to continue with its mission to offer vocational training.

“The approach we’ve taken with Microsoft is a model of public and private partnership for advanced professional training in the ICT sector. The use of new technologies will actively contribute to human development, as well as support the growth of the national economy and ongoing infrastructure projects through effective, efficient and proven Microsoft solutions,” said Larbi Bencheikh, general director of the OFPPT.

Additional to this agreement, it is expected that Microsoft will lead more than 60,000 Microsoft Office Specialist and Microsoft Certified Professional certifications over the next three years via the OFPPT.

One huge potential benefit of cloud computing is the ability to encourage education via the use of on-demand services that are less costly and perhaps more accessible than on-premise and other types of solutions. This movet will drive customers towards the new SaaS model, but will also drive and encourage the use of Microsoft’s existing set of front office applications.

NetSuite announced that Matrixx Initiatives has accelerated its financial processes, improved business analytics and visibility, and reduced its IT costs since implementing NetSuite OneWorld. Matrixx, headquartered in Bridgewater, New Jersey, is the maker of Zicam brand cold remedies. After it was acquired by H.I.G. Capital in 2011, Matrixx faced a costly upgrade to its outdated Oracle JD Edwards client/server enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution. Rather than undertake a painstaking upgrade, it evaluated several other solutions and selected NetSuite over Microsoft Dynamics GP and Sage 300 ERP (formerly Sage ERP ACCPAC). The company has reportedly significantly reduced its software licensing costs and eliminated its in-house servers and the need for a full-time information technology (IT) employee to perform data backup since transitioning from JD Edwards.

Read the rest of this entry »

Just before the NRF BIG Retail Show 2013, NetSuite announced that it had acquired Retail Anywhere, a provider of multichannel retail management solutions. The acquisition builds on NetSuite’s SuiteCommerce platform, delivering a broad integrated cloud business suite for retailers, giving them what they need to open up new sales channels and expand their businesses globally. The addition fulfills a strong demand among retailers for a single commerce solution that supports the multiple customer touchpoints a retail business needs to succeed—from physical points of sale (POSs) at brick-and-mortar stores or other locations to call centers, social media, and business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce via desktops, laptops, smartphones, and tablets.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company formed as a joint venture between UNIT4 and salesforce.com, announced the availability of trust.financialforce.com, a resource for customers that describes the control processes, security, application quality, and platform monitoring environment that underpin all FinancialForce.com cloud business applications. Built on the Salesforce Platform (a.k.a., Force.com), FinancialForce.com applications inherit all the benefits of the investments made by salesforce.com in infrastructure, data management, controls, security and certifications including SysTrust, Truste, VeriSign Secured, Safe Harbor, SAS70, and ISO 27001. Read the rest of this entry »

The following forces and information technology (IT) trends will continue to shape 2013:

1. Cloud Computing
While cloud computing is becoming mainstream, hybrid cloud–on-premises configurations (a.k.a., “software plus services” and “connected services”) remains the reality for cloud integration and federated cross-cloud security issues. Organizations are increasingly looking to hybrid cloud architectures as a way to have a more dynamic computing architecture over time. Read the rest of this entry »