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I'm just back from a week in the woods, trying to get my head around social media and CRM again ...

I dropped a small stone in a large pool last week, and the ripples are still spreading. In a separate post I wrote that IT is over. I was very careful to say that IT is over as a disruptive innovation and as an economic engine, but few understood what I meant, so I thought this would be a good chance to clear it all up ...

What's the world coming to? Microsoft lost money in the software business lastquarter -- the first loss in a decades-long string of positive earnings from the world'sbiggest software company. Sheesh! ...

I have always been interested in the similarities between biology and economics and ultimately business. In the last few years we've adopted some of the parlance of biology when we talk about business, especially social business. Perhaps the best example is the analogy we freely make between a vendor and its partners and supply chain, i.e. "the ecosystem." But itdoesn't stop there; it extends to the customer as well...

This week Esteban Kolsky and I launched a research initiative aimed at better understanding how businesses across the world are adopting social media for their business processes. ...

I spent most of last week in Boston at the Enterprise 2.0 conference, where I was honored to be the sales and marketing track chairman. Next year it will be called "E2 Social" and will bookend the other conference that has been held in Santa Clara, which will become known as "E2 Innovate." There's good symmetry here. I can't think of another purely social show or one focused on innovation. Most shows today are vendor-sponsored, which is good but different...

Last week I lamented how the legacy software establishment was focusing on the easy-to-sell parts of cloud computing without really providing the essence of cloud. Since then, I have been inspired by a couple of articles at Business Insider that point in a different though not opposite direction ...

Oracle re-introduced its new cloud/social constellation of stuff last week that it had announced back at OpenWorld. If I count the analyst briefing I got in Redwood Shores in April, it was a re-re-introduction. Oracle is not the only company to follow this strategy. For example, Salesforce follows a conventional triple-tell approach too -- tell them what you're going to say, say it, tell them what you said. But each time Salesforce repeats itself, the messaging gets clearer. When Oracle does it, the message only gets louder...

Salesforce.com announced it was buying Buddy Media for nearly US$700 million on Monday. In any discussion, that's a lot of money, maybe more than Salesforce has yet spent on any acquisition. What's going on? ...

I was so looking forward to getting the Facebook IPO out of the way, and then splat, like a ripe tomato in the kisser, we have to learn that the underwriters might not have shared some pre-IPO information transparently. Enough already! Bankers appear to be tone deaf to the fallout from their gross behavior. If you want an historical comparison, I think you need to go all the way back to the Renaissance and the Borgia popes. But no matter. ...

The purchase is just one of SAP's efforts to enter full force into the cloud applications business. Last week, it unveiled a roadmap for its push into the market that focuses on managing customers, suppliers, employers and financials. Focusing on that market is a smart move for the company right now, Denis Pombriant, analyst at Beagle Research, told the E-Commerce Times.

Last week was like the fireworks on the Fourth of July. You know how at the end they fire off a huge flourish of explosives, and if you live in Boston for some reason the Boston Pops play "The 1812 Overture?" It was like that minus the Pops. Actually, the crescendo was not limited to last week but to a rolling thunder effect that happened because many software companies have decided Q2 is a good time for analysts to visit the Bay Area...

This spring has seen a raft of software company events and announcements, and they've been good meetings full of real news and important new developments. It is as if these companies bided their time during the worst of the recession, building new product, thinking about the future and how customers will use their technologies. It was time well spent...

There was an interesting article about airlines in The New York Times last week, "When Flying 720 Miles Takes 12 Hours," but the subtext was all about CRM, or at least where CRM has to go. If you know me at all, you know I closely attend to macroeconomics and energy issues, and they are all over this article ...

I read Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in college (yes, in Middle English and no, it wasn't that long ago), and now every April brings me back to the opening verses about springtime and renewal. This April was especially memorable in our industry, and as the month has just passed I wanted to take a moment to discuss some of the things I witnessed ...

"One of the important take-aways from last year was that companies in different parts of the world do business a bit differently from those in other areas, and their CRM software must support those differences," said Denis Pombriant, principal at beagleresearch and a member of the media team for CRM Idol 2012...

This might be the year we look on in hindsight as the time Oracle got its groove back. It is well known that CEO Larry Ellison thinks in 10-year cycles and about how the industry seems to morph like a caterpillar about every decade. He's not the only one. Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, has referenced the decadal cadence, and others have too...

This is a topic I'll revisit shortly. Next Wednesday, on April 25 at SugarCon, I'll be moderating a panel on the topic of getting to the next generation of CRM with Denis Pombriant, Brian Vellmure and Craig Rosenberg. I'm looking forward to hearing what they have say, and I plan to share it with you...

CRM vendors that have wondered about the necessity of porting their applications to the small screen (i.e. mobile) should take note of last week's acquisition of Instagram by Facebook. ...

Thanks for the overwhelming response to last week's post, "Why CRM Works." It was surprising and gratifying that so many people read and tweeted about it, given its length -- almost double my usual contribution. Since it was based on Daniel Kahneman's groundbreaking work, I give all the credit to him and his great career in trying to understand how we think...