Here’s what TEC analysts have to say about some of the more significant enterprise software developments of 2012.

Aleksey Osintsev, TEC Research Analyst, on cloud ERP:
For the ERP software space, 2012 was a year of extensive appraisal of the suitability of cloud-based ERP software to the manufacturing industry. The software-as-a-service (SaaS) concept is being clarified, and lessons are being learned by manufacturing companies around the globe. New vendors are offering various cloud-only ERP solutions for manufacturing, while many traditional vendors have developed cloud or SaaS versions of their existing applications, or new cloud systems that parallel the older on-premise ones. Even more significantly, manufacturers are giving cloud deployment serious consideration as part of their IT strategy for the future.

From what I saw during 2012, businesses are starting to realize that perhaps they should not be lemmings in following the crowd to the cloud. Read the rest of this entry »

OpenText announced that the US Department of the Interior (DOI) is deploying OpenText’s Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solution. Because some organizations cite their concerns with the security of cloud-based solutions, it’s notable that a large government agency’s deployment will be cloud-based. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve just published a new brief, reporting on EMC’s Documentum family of enterprise content management (ECM) products and services. Read the rest of this entry »

The IT industry is constructed of three-letter acronyms (TLAs). However, the total number of possible three-letter abbreviations using the 26 letters of the alphabet is only 17,576. This explains the stars-wearing-the-same-dress types of incidents in the IT world. When Sherry Fox discussed ECM and EIM, the acronyms represented enterprise compensation management and enterprise incentive management respectively. In this blog, the two “dresses” are worn by two different stars—enterprise content management and enterprise information management. Read the rest of this entry »

Traditional Japanese Decision-making, or Ringi

The decision-making process in North American companies operates within a centralized system, and generally takes a top-down approach. In Japanese companies, however, the approach to making decisions is the opposite: it is bottom-up. This traditional and formal decision-making process, which is even now employed in Japanese governmental offices as well as companies, is called the ringi system.

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