Sage Streamlining Takes a Major Turn With the Sale of ACT! and SalesLogix

February 19th, 2013

Last week, The Sage Group announced that it is selling its Sage Act! contact manager and SalesLogix CRM to Swiftpage. Swiftpage is a U.S. based digital marketing software vendor and has been a Sage partner supplying Sage E-Marketing as a … Continue reading

MSP Cloud Challenges in the Midmarket–and How IBM Helps Meet Them

November 1st, 2012

In my recent post, A View From the MSP Trenches: Cloud Opportunities in the Midmarket, I examined how MSPs see the midmarket opportunity shaping up, and why they are partnering with IBM to capitalize on these opportunities. I discussed how MSPs … Continue reading

MSP Cloud Challenges in the Midmarket–and How IBM Helps Meet Them

November 1st, 2012

In my recent post, A View From the MSP Trenches: Cloud Opportunities in the Midmarket, I examined how MSPs see the midmarket opportunity shaping up, and why they are partnering with IBM to capitalize on these opportunities. I discussed how MSPs … Continue reading

Key Themes from SAP TechEd 2011–How Do They Relate to SMBs?

September 21st, 2011

As the name implies, SAP TechEd offers technical education, such as hands-on workshops, deep-dive lectures and sessions with SAP technical experts about all things SAP. That said, TechEd isn’t for everyone, and it’s no wonder that most of the 6,500+ … Continue reading

Is Salesforce.com Outgrowing SMBs?

September 7th, 2011

Salesforce.com’s Marc Benioff is a great visionary with a big appetite for change. From packaged software to the cloud, from CRM to platform-as-a-service, he’s painted a color by number picture for businesses to emulate. But does his latest work, “the … Continue reading

Reflections on Dreamforce 2011: Now the Cloud Can Ride the Waves

September 6th, 2011

This year, Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce event–with a record-setting 45,000 attendees–got me thinking about the early days before the cloud was the cloud, how far its come, and how perfectly poised it is to ride the waves now driving technology adoption–mobile and … Continue reading

Sage Summit 2011: Tackling the Sage NA Branding Challenge

July 26th, 2011

A couple of weeks ago, I attended Sage Summit 2011, Sage’s first combination partner and customer event. I’ve been attending Sage partner, customer and analyst events for several years, observing and commenting on its ongoing attempts to unify it’s corporate … Continue reading

Pervasive Puts Its Galaxy Integration Community Into Orbit

May 23rd, 2011

–by Sanjeev Aggarwal and Laurie McCabe, SMB Group At its annual Metamorphosis conference earlier this month, Pervasive announced Pervasive Galaxy, which merges an online integration marketplace and community into a single, streamlined platform. Pervasive has designed Galaxy to remove boundaries … Continue reading

The New Dell and What it Means for SMBs: Takeaways from Dell’s 2011 Solutions for a Virtual Era Event

May 11th, 2011

Twenty-seven years ago, Michael Dell launched Dell with $1,000 and a streamlined sales and manufacturing model that revolutionized the PC industry. Sticking with this playbook, Dell achieved similar success in the server market, once again disrupting the status quo. However, … Continue reading

Dell and Boomi: Doubling Down on Integration

May 3rd, 2011

Originally published 4-26-11 as an SMB Group research brief in .pdf format, available here. When big companies gobble up smaller ones, you always wonder whether the acquired company will get swallowed up into the belly of the beast, derailed or … Continue reading