When the Cloud Meets Agile Development
With new, powerful cloud platforms available, shouldn’t newer software developmental techniques like Agile apply to these environments as well? CA thinks so and has created a new toolset for this.

Dreamforce post#2: Chatter, Events, REA and the Future of Management
Don’t think of Salesforce’s Chatter as bunch of social networking techologies for business people to use. If you do, you’ve missed the real potential for businesses to operate in real-time.

A Tale of Two Software Worlds: Old ERP vs. SaaS
Dreamforce’s attendance really puts a strong data point on how attractive SaaS is becoming. Other vendors this week have provided additional data points that point to a troubling time ahead for laggard ERP vendors.

Cloud-to-Cloud Integration – Another Big ERP Challenge!
NetSuite’s new Open Connect integration should make ERP buyers and vendors re-think interfaces and integration across application suites. Everyone needs to re-think what cloud-to-cloud integration, in multi-tenant apps, really means.

Sustainability: Hard for business, harder for ERP vendors
ERP vendors don’t get sustainability. They think it’s about collecting all of a user’s electric and gas bills to determine their carbon footprint. They think it’s a reporting exercise. If they can develop a spreadsheet with more rows and columns than the next ERP vendor, then they have achieved some sort of market leading, product excellence crown of achievement.

Demand this from software vendors
I was getting a briefing last week from a software executive. We got to a point in the conversation where the discussion was focusing on existing products. I moved the conversation to a different space, though. If you’re getting a pitch from a vendor, you should move the conversation, too! Still Market Relevant – When […]

Two Views of the Software Market
A Bridge Too Far? In a blogger briefing this week at SAP’s TechEd, SAP CTO, Vishal Sikka, drew a chart of the application software market and what new areas of technology are of interest to the firm. I’ve tried to reproduce his freehand drawing into the following PowerPoint rendering. I believe I have captured the […]
Shouldn’t services firms have their own ERP?
I caught up this week with Morris Panner, CEO of OpenAir (now part of NetSuite). One aspect of our wide-ranging conversation concerned the continuing evolution of businesses, the economy, etc. towards a greater services orientation. Drawing on that, we discussed how services firms need their own version of ERP.
Here are just some of the […]