Spotlight Features

With its sex appeal, direct conduit to YouTube and ability to store videos and music -- advantages hardly conducive to productivity in a work environment -- it would not seem likely that many businesses would want to incorporate the iPhone into their operations. Then there is the not small matter o...

Although in its infancy, the market for on-demand application systems, including Software as a Service, is taking root and growing rapidly in East Asia, as was seen in Part 1 of this series. Springboard Research sees SaaS revenues in the region growing 80 percent annually between 2006 and 2010 from ...

Software as a Service, also known as "on-demand software," is making inroads across East Asia as organizations large and small become comfortable enough with Web services and network application delivery to risk using them for a variety of business functions. The regional SaaS market will grow more ...

Cost increases are squeezing margins for outsourcing companies providing software and call center services to U.S. customers from popular international destinations. No immediate price increases for U.S. customers are possible for suppliers that are locked into fixed-term contracts in U.S. dollars,...

How can companies establish effective customer relationship management in the heat of battle? We're not talking about a military action; the conflict in this case exists between entertainment companies and their customers. "For the most part, the entertainment industry and its customers have been at...

211 is more than a mere convenience to callers seeking information about critical health and human services available in their communities; it can literally be a lifesaver. "The heightened threat of terrorism in the post-9/11 world and the increase in frequency of environmental emergencies has raise...

Direct search, or direct navigation, occurs when a potential customer guesses a domain name and types it into his or her browser address bar. The domain name often corresponds to the type of product or service being sought. Direct search is responsible for less than 20 percent of the online connecti...

The most common and least understood marketing barrier facing outsourcing service providers is the absence of a strong brand. Most brands associated with IT and IT-enabled services companies are chosen on the basis of criteria relevant to where outsourcing firms are based, rather than where they int...

Some 90 percent of brand owners outsource at least some of their manufacturing, according to AMR Research. In addition, more than half of them expect to increase their use of contract outsourcing over the next two years. While it's been shown that outsourcing adds significant value -- and jobs -- to...

How do SOA and Web 2.0 services come together? Are we entering an era where a variety of business services from a spectrum of sources contribute to and perhaps dominate new business process aggregation? If so, won't that require a level of governance to protect enterprises from flighty Web-based ser...

Last week, I got into the idea of evolution as it relates to the technology market and used Microsoft and Salesforce.com to illustrate the need to keep multiple plans percolating so that a company can take advantage of a move in the market. Evolution is an important filter through which I view the w...

Salesforce.com on Tuesday announced its latest acquisition to the world. CEO Marc Benioff said that document management is a core element of the company's platform strategy. That strategy has been rolling out in bits and pieces since the company announced its Apex platform last year. However, it ...

SAP's abrupt announcement that golden boy Shai Agassi was leaving the company last week hit like a proverbial ton of bricks. The initial announcement said all the right things about Agassi wanting to pursue other options, and board chairman Hasso Plattner made the usual remarks about still being fr...

Two things impressed me about Salesforce.com's Spring '07 release: the community portal and the influence of the IdeaExchange on the direction of the product. A lot of people point to the portal as the more significant and I suppose it is, but maybe only by a whisker. At the end of the day, each is...

There is a dandy little market share war taking place right now in the compensation management sector. Vendors are making claims to uniqueness and superiority and trashing each other in ways that we haven't seen in a few years -- and it's great sport. Compensation management is one of the hotter ar...