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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told analysts last week that ultra-thin PCs will be the answer to the growing popularity of netbooks. I doubt that, but I can certainly understand Ballmer's interest in backing the ultra-thins, and this obviously has implications for larger issues like cloud computing ...

I am hearing from vendors that their on-premise CRM sales in the early part of this year are pretty good. No one has briefed me ahead of their earnings calls, but the results from late last year and Q1 seem to be pretty good ...

What a summer for remembrances. Forty years ago, a couple of people landed on the moon, and a half-million of them landed on Max Yasgur's farm in upstate New York for the Woodstock festival. [*correction] ...

My ride from San Francisco Airport to Redwood Shores, Calif., tells the story of my entire trip to the West Coast last week. ...

Kudos to all those who participated in, organized or even attended the Enterprise 2.0 conference in drizzly Boston last week. There is a lot to write about ...

Events taking place on the streets of Tehran may have an important effect on how social networking rolls out across the rest of the world, and that includes the CRM world. Last week, the media began carrying stories about a "cyber revolution" that may be happening in the Islamic Republic, but those stories fail to account for the whole story -- the yin and yang of social media...

What do these things have in common? Maybe nothing other than that the movie has a sequel and the two-dot-oh suffix is a sequel. Also, the start of blockbuster movie sequel season overlaps with trade shows like Sales 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0. ...

Business schools have been discussing General Motor's loss of market shar for decades already, and the added denouement of the company's bankruptcy filing will no doubt drive many academic papers for decades to come ...

Clara Shih is a friend I met through Salesforce.com. She recently published The Facebook Era, which looks at the relationship of social networking to front office computing. She is really busy these days promoting the book, and she recently left Salesforce to pursue new ideas in social networking and to form a company dedicated to the task. ...

A lot happened at Insights, the Sage partner meeting held in Nashville earlier this month, though not necessarily at the press release level. I was there and got a sense of change happening. It was the first anniversary of new CEO Sue Swenson coming on board and our first opportunity to see the imprint she is making on the company. Last year, Swenson had been with the company for only a matter of weeks and as CEO could only talk about the future. With a year behind her some results are apparent, but the expectation is that there is a lot of work ahead. ...

Today's column is a little different from the usual fare. Beagle Research Group has once again recognized a handful of companies with its annual WizKids award, this time for their innovations in front office computing. The idea behind the award -- and a report that goes with it -- is that innovation is happening all the time, and the best ideas can change our world. The 2009 WizKids all have that capability.

"If you can't make money at it, you don't have a business, you've got a hobby." ...

I wanted to write a piece about the wisdom of crowds for a long time, but I needed a clip from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" to make it work. After a lot of procrastinating, I went to YouTube, did the hard work of reviewing all of the Python clips and found the right one. There is no limit to the effort I will make to write a piece -- this research was physically demanding and my sides still ache...

Zuora, the on-demand billing service for on-demand companies, is turning 1 year old. Last week, the company announced 100 product improvements with its 2.0 version and said that it had attracted 100 customers in its first year. Why all the attention to this startup? ...

I have been remiss in not paying enough attention to social media monitoring software. I suppose it's understandable given that social media is at the margin of CRM -- moving to the center, but still in the outer shell -- and monitoring software is somewhere beyond that orbit in the software equivalent of the Kuiper belt. Maybe it's time to pay a little attention there, because monitoring software can be a big addition to your marketing strategy, and much of it is free...

I am fond of Paul Greenberg because he's smart and knows a heck of a lot about CRM -- most importantly, he's a good judge of whether a company is for real or just playing around. I am also grateful to him for pointing out that I was the fortunate one to identify on-demand technology as a disruptive innovation. ...

I almost couldn't have imagined it. I give myself a little leeway, but after years of writing and talking about "new, new things" it didn't really dawn on me that at some point we'd be talking about a new, new economy -- but we are ...

It is inevitable. In economics, commoditization is a routine part of the life cycle, the opposite end of the spectrum from innovation and as natural as life and death. Sometimes commoditization results in the elimination of a product or idea, but at other times it merely means subsuming the innovation into something larger. I believe we are witnessing the latter in the case of on-demand technology...

Two of the biggest names in CRM had trade shows recently. Oracle and Microsoft each held customer conventions in the same week, but the two could not have been more different. Microsoft attracted thousands of customers, partners, employees and press to New Orleans for Convergence, one of its big annual events. In a departure from convention, Oracle held a day-long exposition promoting its front and back office solutions on the Internet...

Last Monday at Demo, Zuora CEO and cofounder Tien Tzuo introduced Z-Commerce for Facebook -- a significant announcement that might be looked back on as a turning point in the evolution of on-demand technology ...