Vendors

In a bid to augment its cloud services business with more flexibility on pricing and customization, Microsoft on Wednesday announced the launch of Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft AppSource, which will integrate its ERP and CRM solutions. The combined cloud offerings, which will become available...

This summer has started out to be anything but a somnolent day at the beach. The Brexit vote for the UK to leave the EU is enough to disturb your slumber, and that's not the only thing on the plate. To be frank, it appears we are at one of those major historical transition points that might happen a...

Microsoft on Monday made its Dynamics CRM Spring 2016 Wave generally available to customers. The application focuses heavily on machine learning and the Internet of Things. It offers field service and project service automation capabilities, as well as four preconfigured Web portal solutions for cus...

Salesforce held its Connections 2016 user event in Atlanta earlier this month. About 7,000 people attended, but in the Georgia World Congress Center and airplane hangar, attendance seemed smallish. It might have been held down by Gov. Nathan Deal's slow response to vetoing a religious freedom law la...

SugarCRM on Tuesday unveiled Sugar 7.7, the latest version of its CRM package, with several enhancements. A custom tag feature lets any record in the application be tagged for better classification and sharing. A new search UI automatically expands upon selection. The Sugar 7.7 Knowledge Base has be...

Apple's earnings disappointment thudded into view last week in the middle of an afternoon of briefings at Oracle's Modern Marketing Experience conference in Las Vegas. In that context, it gave me a lot to think about -- especially the difference between a one-time earnings disappointment and somethi...

Fusion this week launched Contact360, an enterprise cloud contact center solution developed in collaboration with Technology for Business, the long-time partner it acquired earlier this month. "Fusion will be offering a clear migration path to the cloud for TFB's Fortune 500 enterprise and governmen...

Zuora, the company that made its bones in subscription billing and payments, held its annual Subscribed user meeting last week and staked out some new turf. It always has been focused on the back office, but its latest messaging included elements of the front office. Perhaps it's no surprise given C...

Remember when your mother used to yell up the stairs to get you to turn your music down? Sometimes, in the age before sensitivity awareness, your dad would do the yelling and he'd substitute noise for music. Ah, the good old days. Too bad they aren't here right now yelling at vendors. ConsumerAffair...

IBM on Thursday announced that it has agreed to buy Bluewolf, a Salesforce system integrator. It reportedly will pay $200 million. Bluewolf will provide cloud consulting and implementation capabilities as part of IBM Global Business Services' Interactive Experience practice. The aim is to deliver di...

IBM last week announced its acquisition of Optevia, a Software as a Service systems integrator specializing in Microsoft Dynamics CRM solutions. It will become part of IBM Global Business Services. Optevia specializes in the public sector market in the UK, where it is based. Its focus is on emergenc...

LiveOps Cloud on Tuesday unveiled its enterprise-level CxEngage Contact Center as a Service, or CCaaS, platform. The omnichannel open framework, which was built from the ground up, integrates with standard APIs. It essentially links applications such as CRM, workforce management and business intelli...

Salesforce is opening a can of snakes with its new Health Cloud, which became generally available this week. I've seen the healthcare industry up close recently as aging parents and in-laws make greater use of the system. My overall impression is that CRM could learn a great deal from healthcare pro...

Salesforce shares held strong on Friday, following Thursday's spike on the company's release of a fiscal fourth-quarter earnings report that beat Wall Street estimates and raised revenue guidance for fiscal year 2017. The stock finished up 11 percent Thursday, at $69.42, and held the gains on Friday...