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I was disturbed by this week's story in The New York Times about Google's ongoing issues with European regulators. The lead is all you need to get a sense of things: "BRUSSELS -- A top German official called for Google to be broken up. A French minister pronounced the company a threat to his country's sovereignty. A European publishing executive likened it to a Wagnerian dragon." ...

I've been following the wearables space with great interest over the last year, from the first steps of products like Fitbit and Jawbone to the current wave of activity by a growing list of device makers and, importantly, app tool vendors. ...

The rollout of Community Cloud is timely, given this is a burgeoning trend in CRM, Denis Pombriant, principal of Beagle Research, told CRM Buyer. Community setups are beneficial to companies at least in part because they can help deflect service requests and keep costs down....

The CRM Evolution conference held last week in New York was interesting for multiple reasons. Most importantly, perhaps, is the perception that the market is moving into a higher gear, slipping past the restraints of a recession that would not quit. Good things are in store for the industry, I think, as buyers step up their games and vendors unleash a passel of new solutions...

Apttus and Adobe Echosign earlier this year conducted a survey of more than 100 Fortune 1000 sales leaders, focusing on perennial blind spots for sales managers ...

"What Infor is trying to do with this acquisition is build a comprehensive platform of offerings, and in that respect it will succeed," Denis Pombriant, principal of Beagle Research, told CRM Buyer. However, for companies seeking leading-edge functionality, their best bets w...

Take a look at almost any sales software on the market, and you'll find the vendor's claim that the product accelerates the sales process. It's a given. For years, we've been trying to achieve this acceleration, and we've been succeeding. The only problem with this approach is that it can't go on forever. It's a form of expecting infinite growth based on limited resources...

I was impressed by the announcement by Salesforce.com last week of a new product combination it calls "Sales Reach." ...

So far, Satya Nadella's moves as head of Microsoft echo the teachings of Jim Collins' 2001 best seller, Good to Great. It's a book about how and why some companies wallow in mediocrity and others operate at several levels of magnitude higher than their peers -- think Apple for one and Salesforce for another ...

It's general practice to have multiple sales forecasts, and that typically means low and upside potential as well as what's committed -- but the idea of teasing those threads apart only at forecasting time might be old school and no longer applicable. ...

Many of Salesforce's partners -- such as Totango, C9 and Aviso -- already offer analytics, and "what I think is more important is this [purchase] gives Salesforce more of a footprint in process orientation," Denis Pombriant, principal of Beagle Research, told CRM Buyer What Re...

Ray Donovan was U.S. Labor Secretary under Ronald Reagan and a colorful figure. During his tenure he was indicted by a Bronx, N.Y., grand jury on corruption charges stemming from a contract to build a subway line. The trial involved unions and the mob and was automatically sensational ...

It always happens this way. A market erupts or transitions to something new or it goes the way of the dodo and you miss the key turning point. Looking back, though, you can spot the telltale signs of disruption. People like me, who try to forecast these great events, have the reliability of a dartboard. Nonetheless, I feel like doing it again ...

Not that the shows ever end, but as I regain my spot on the ground, I have a few observations from the many shows that I have been to or read about over the last eight weeks ...

I don't know anyone who was ever great at sales forecasting. This is not to say that it can't be done, but it's a hard problem -- like forecasting the weather. Today, we can get weather forecasts for many days in advance with temperatures accurate within a few degrees, because we've invested in many data gathering and analysis tools like satellites, computer modeling and analytics. ...

News of the settlement came on Tuesday via a filing with U.S. District Judge Denise Cote by Steve Berman, an attorney representing some of the plaintiffs. Terms of the settlement have not been disclosed and still need to be approved by the court. One variable that could derai...

Wearable computing hove into view in a big way this week when Salesforce.com announced Salesforce Wear, which enables developers to build new apps for teeny-tiny screens and devices that you, well, wear. Wearables is a market poised for takeoff. Last year, for instance, Apple cornered the world markets capturing all the copyrights to "iWatch," which I think was not a coincidence. Also, let's not forget the things that are not worn but that simply exist through sensors on the Internet of Things.

"Consider this a Fitbit for the enterprise," Denis Pombriant, principal of Beagle Research, told CRM Buyer. Another use could be in the realm of security. "There is an increasingly greater need for security in all kinds of venues," Pombriant said.

I think about the future -- perhaps too much. I recently read Jeremy Rifkin's new book, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism, and it made me think about the future of work. Rifkin's thesis, encompassed by this rather cheery title, is that automation is taking on more and more jobs that once were thought to be the province of skilled labor. ...

Xactly, the SaaS-based incentive compensation solutions provider, has kicked it up a notch. The user meeting I attended last week in San Francisco was very successful -- but more importantly, it made some real news in the compensation space. ...