One of the key technology pain-point (for SMBs) relate to multiple disparate SaaS/on-premise based business and collaboration applications that do not talk to each other (requiring re-entry of the same data) and each with their own separate access, UI, billing and pricing schemas – making it very difficult for them to resolve problems when they oc...
Author: Sanjeev Aggarwal
Intuit Partner Platform: Changing the Rules of Cloud Platforms with Federated Applications
Cloud platforms, or “platforms-as-a-service” (PaaS) are quickly becoming a key channel for application developers. By writing and publishing their applications to integrate with those of a major PaaS provider, such as Salesforce.com or Microsoft, smaller developers can gain instant access to a large installed base of customers. With so many vendors creating their own clouds, however, it’s easy...
Video Conferencing Solution – Now Affordable by the SMBs
As the on-premise systems now support reservationless On-demand conferencing, they let employees hold impromptu meeting, without pre-scheduling these meetings – allowing them to collaborate when they need to, with whomever they need to, provided both parties have access to compatible video conferencing systems. ...
IBM Lotus Foundations: A Real Choice for Small Businesses and Partners
As I mentioned in a blog I posted after Lotusphere 2009, IBM Lotus has been reluctant to go head to head with obvious rivals, particularly Microsoft. At Lotusphere, however, the company came out swinging, declaring intentions “shatter Windows” and “change desktop economics” with Symphony, the free Lotus desktop suite, and compete aggressively against Microsoft Small Business Server (SBS) with t...
The next generation Contact Center – Social Networking + Traditional Contact Center
The traditional contact centers now support more real-time communications technologies – VoIP, IVR, e-mail, IM. However, the intelligence and information repositories that are leveraged by these contact centers is very much static and internally focused. With the growing pop...
Social Networking – The SMB challenge and how the SMBs can gain value from Salesforce.com Cloud Service solution
Social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, WordPress are all the range in the B2B and B2C world today. But does the SMB business owners/CEOs or a lone marketing person have the time to devote to track and follow these sites without spending an inordinate amount to time and effort – especially when there is no clearly identifiable direct linkage...
What Will Social Networking Displace?
Just a couple of years ago, many people were still debating whether digital social networking was just a flash in the pan. With social media growth surging, that that debate is over. People have moved on to try and figure out where social networking is headed—as evidenced when I Googled the “future of social networking” and got 542,000 results. Now of course I didn’t read all of them, but a co...
Impressions from Sage Insights 2009
Last week, I attended Insights, Sage North America’s annual partner event. I’ve attended this event for several years now, watching the company’s attempts to create a cohesive brand and strategy across its many small and medium business (SMB) solutions. At last year’s Insights, Sage had just hired Sue Swenson
What is Virtualization, and Why Should You Care?
May 7, 2009 By Laurie McCabe 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 insiders often add to the confusion by over-complicating things. To help add a sense of clari...
Can Standards Clear the Clouds?
With market adoption of cloud computing forecast to skyrocket, no one in the tech industry wants to be left on the ground. But, as cloud computing platforms, models and definitions multiply, they’re becoming as numerous and diverse as Mother Nature’s clouds—and just as easy for customers to get lost in. Last week, Ben Worthen blogged in the WSJ a...