Tag: on demand

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

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+ attendees at SAP TechEd 2011, held the week of September 12 in Las Vegas, were SAP partners and technology specialists from the vendor’s large ente...

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

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 social solutions. Traveling in the Way Back Machine ...

Sage Summit 2011: Tackling the Sage NA Branding Challenge

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 brand across multiple small and medium business (SMB) solutions. Earlier this year, following Sue Swenson’s retirement, Pascal Houillon to...

HubSpot: From Breakthrough to Breakout

I’ve been very impressed by HubSpot, which helps small and medium businesses (SMBs) optimize and streamline their inbound marketing programs (see my 2009 interview with HubSpot Marketing VP Mike Volpe) for a while now. Looks like others are impressed too—as evidenced by HubSpot’s announceme...

SMB Group Top Ten 2011 SMB Technology Predictions

Here are the SMB Group’s Top 10 SMB Technology Predictions for 2011! A more detailed description of each follows below. 1. Mobile Commerce Lifts Off 2. SMBs Demand that Vendors Bring Order to Social Media Chaos

Zoho Support: Big Business Customer Service for Small Business Budgets

Zoho, one of the pioneers in cloud computing solutions for small and medium businesses (SMBs), has added a new customer support management application to its line up of 20-plus cloud-based collaboration, communication, business and office productivity solutions. Zoho Support helps streamline the process to create, capture, process and manage support tickets. Z...

What is Business Intelligence, and Why Should You Care?

(Originally published on July 30, 2010 in Small Business Computing) What is Business Intelligence? Business intelligence (BI) is an umbrella term used to encompass the processes, methods, measureme...

What is Hybrid Computing, and Why Should You Care?

(Originally published on June 9, 2010, in Small Business Computing) What is Hybrid Computing? A hybrid computing platform lets customers connect the packaged small business software applications that they run on their own internal desktops or servers to applications that run in the cloud. As discussed in

What is Social Media Management, and Why Should You Care?

(Originally published on March 4, 2010, in Small Business Computing) What is Social Media Management? As described in the column “