This week I thought as a public service I would lay out the real cost of deploying a SaaS (software as a service) solution, starting with a look at two major SaaS providers, Salesforce.com and NetSuite, both of which offer CRM solutions.
The days of dismissing SaaS as “just another delivery system” are long over. In its recently-announced Spring ’07 release, Salesforce.com has shown how there is an endless number of ways in which it can reconfigure its core competency to serve new purposes.
If we are ever to cut through the hype in order to determine how good SaaS (software as a service) really is, the best way would be to talk to companies that use SaaS. Of course, each application or service must stand on its own — SaaS can’t turn a pig’s ear into a silk purse, as they say — but I’ve been wondering what it is that’s inherent to all or most SaaS applications that makes the model so appealing to mid-size and larger companies.
The annual Demo 2007 conference in California last week laid bare for an audience of venture capitalists the results of thousands of hours of blood, sweat and tears on the part of hardware and software engineers.
Ah, isn’t it good to be back from the holidays, showing off the latest gadgets you received as gifts from your family? That new iPod, for example, will be great for storing files, especially because your company won’t allow you to take home your laptop for some silly security reason. No one will ever guess all the stuff you need is around your neck, stored in a little silver Mini.
Of all the issues IT departments will deal with in 2007, from coping with regulatory compliance to building out SOAs, SaaS (software as a service) could quickly become the new focus. In fact, forget about SaaS vendors’ claims that the SaaS model eliminates the need for significant IT oversight, the opposite is actually closer to the truth.
During a presentation at the IEEE Globecom 2006 Expo in San Francisco on Tuesday, Alan Crouch, director and general manager at Intel's Communications Technology Lab told the audience to expect Intel to put a pre-standard version of IEEE 802.11n Wi-Fi into its Centrino chips by next year.
For those who know how to read between the lines, the announcement this week by Payment Processing [PPI] of training courses to meet VISA compliance guidelines for application developers, service providers and merchants, is the first sign of a developing storm that could have repercussions across the entire high-tech industry.
SAP has announced that its hosted CRM product will now include service-level capabilities.
Customers always want their software bug-free and free of charge. Anything less is a disappointment, according to Josh Greenbaum, a principal at Enterprise Applications Consulting.
I think it’s wonderful that Bill Gates is retiring so that he can devote himself to his foundation. If he puts half the effort into doing good works that he put into building Microsoft, the world will benefit. However, that doesn’t mean your company has to continue funding his efforts by overpaying for Microsoft licence agreements.
Did you ever hear the warning “Be careful what you wish for, it might come true?” Well, because Microsoft is the company most people love to hate, I decided to ask a cross section of industry cognoscenti this simple question: what would happen if Microsoft and all of its technology disappeared tomorrow?
Hewlett-Packard has launched its IT Shared Services Portfolio, a two-part offering that industry analysts say will raise the level of its consulting services.
Last week, Accenture signed a seven-year applications outsourcing deal with Unilever, to run all of Unilever’s application development, implementation and support.
The open source software model’s assault on traditional applications is contining with the recent release of the Pentaho open source Business Intelligence project’s latest version, Business Intelligence Professional Edition Platform.