The Impact of HP’s New Direction—An SMB Market Perspective

August 25th, 2011

–by Sanjeev Aggarwal and Laurie McCabe, SMB Group After HP’s announcement that it would ditch it’s new Touchpad and put WebOS in mothballs, rumors leaked about it’s intentions to spin-off or sell it’s Personal Systems Group (PSG) PC business and … Continue reading

Salesforce’s Dimdim Acquisition–Adding to a String of Collaboration Pearls

March 16th, 2011

The SMB Group has followed (and used!) Dimdim, which has provided innovative, easy to use Web conferencing services in a freemium model with very liberal terms of use, for a couple of years. In January, Salesforce.com acquired Dimdim for $31 … Continue reading

Top Takeaways from Pervasive’s 2010 IntegratioNext Conference

November 18th, 2010

Wow the déjà vu is just too strange! In June of this year, I attended Pervasive’s Metamorphosis Partner event–during which IBM announced that it would acquire Cast Iron. Now, in November, during Pervasive’s very well-attended IntegratioNext User Conference, Dell announced … Continue reading

Recent Vendor Briefing Highlights: IBM’s Cast Iron Acquisition

June 17th, 2010

We are publishing recent vendor highlights on the SMB Group web site. As time permits, we discuss our key take-aways from more interesting briefings. I will try to remember to post them here as well. Here is the most recent … Continue reading

IBM’s Cast Iron Acquisition (6-17-10)

June 17th, 2010

Highlights: In May of this year, IBM acquired Cast Iron Systems (for an undisclosed sum) to help customers more effectively tackle the challenges of integrating cloud and on-premise solutions. Cast Iron, which was founded in 2001 and has 75 employees, … Continue reading

Does IBM Lotus Really Want to Get Small? My Take on Brent Leary’s Podcast

January 28th, 2010

I still haven’t had time to write about Lotusphere 2010, but in the meantime, you may want to listen to the conversation I had with small business guru and friend Brent Leary. Last week, Brent interviewed me about my take on this … Continue reading

Standing Out in a Sea of Green IT: IBM’s Scalable Modular Data Centers for Midsize Companies

January 26th, 2010

As a follow up to my post What Is Green IT and Why Should You Care?, I had the opportunity to talk with Steve Sams, VP for IBM’s Global Site and Facilities Services, along with several other members of IBM’s … Continue reading

What Is Green IT, and Why Should You Care?

January 4th, 2010

(Originally published in Small Business Computing, December 29, 2009) Technology insiders tend to throw around technical terms and business jargon, assuming people outside the industry understand what it all means. By its nature, technology vocabulary is often confusing and complicated, … Continue reading

Top Takeaways from IBM’s General Business Influencer Summit

November 11th, 2009

Last week, I attended IBM’s General Business (GB) Influencer Summit for analysts covering the mid-market (companies with 100 to 1000 employees and larger enterprises that are not currently spending a lot with IBM, sometimes termed “white space” accounts). I’ve attended … Continue reading

What’s a Business App Appliance, and Why Should You Care?

August 6th, 2009

(Originally published June 18, 2009 in Small Business Computing) Technology insiders tend to throw around technical terms and business jargon, assuming people outside the industry understand what it all means. By its nature, technology vocabulary is often confusing and complicated, and … Continue reading