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Vidyo Digs a New Channel in Crowded Teleconferencing Market May 20, 2010 Fast and cost-friendly video conferencing could son become as commonplace as cellphones at home and at work, and the firm Vidyo hopes to cash in on the trend with a new, specially designed architecture. The New Jersey-based startup recently took the wraps off an HD-quality personal telepresence it designed to take high-def video conferencing into the range of pennies per minute.

Go800: You Text Us, We'll Call You May 07, 2010 As business offerings go, Go800's plan is simple: It gives mobile consumers a quick keyword connection to a call-back from vendors. The vendor's ad lists an easy-to-remember keyword, a ready-to-buy viewer texts that keyword to Go800, and a moment later the viewer's phone rings with a call from the vendor.

Don't Forget B2B CRM April 21, 2010 While we're on the subject of the customer relationship, it's important, even vital, that we do a better job of teasing apart customer types. It seems to me that the vast conversation about social CRM and the social customer has focused on the end consumer -- the business-to-consumer relationship -- not the business-to-business one.

Microsoft Gives SMB Sysadmins a Place in the Cloud April 20, 2010 Microsoft is targeting Realtors, insurance agencies and other small businesses that use a highly mobile, distributed workforce with Windows Intune, the new desktop management service it announced Monday. Intune, aimed at businesses with 25 to 500 PCs, offers online PC management and security in the cloud as a service.

Server Load Balancing: Not Just for the Big Guys Anymore April 14, 2010 Today Web and application infrastructure continues to expand applications for e-commerce and communications with customers, partners and internal employees. For those responsible for deploying, maintaining, and supporting these network applications, there is an increasing need to get their highest performance out of data center equipment.

Memo to Congress: Don't Mess With the Angels April 12, 2010 Angel investing groups are still going strong despite the economic downturn. Although private equity financing dates back to the Sumerians, the current incarnation really began after World War II. The trend has accelerated since the first whirlwind of dot-com businesses in the 1990s sought private financing, and a healthy ecosystem developed.

The Reinvention of the Cloud Computing Reseller April 09, 2010 A year ago, I suggested that the Software as a Service and cloud computing industry was entering a new stage in which vendors would begin putting greater emphasis on expanding their sales channels to broaden the addressable market for their solutions. Anyone following the SaaS/cloud computing industry knows that this idea has become a reality.

Customer Centricity vs. the Front-Office/Back-Office Fallacy April 08, 2010 CRM is supposed to give you a 360-degree view of your customers. I debate that -- I think it gives, at best, a couple of overlapping 270-degree views, and 30 degrees will always be hidden. However, my real point is this: Having a 360-degree view of your customers isn't worth a hill of beans unless you can couple that with a 360-degree view of your own organization.

Does the iPad Have That Special Business Touch? April 06, 2010 The discussion so far about the iPad has focused on the potential for joining media-hungry consumers as a third screen on their couches as they surf the Web or watch videos. But is there also a place for Steve Jobs' latest sensation in corporate boardrooms, small business working lunches and on business trips?

Strike While the Social CRM Iron Is Hot March 18, 2010 "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it." If you haven't heard that one multiple times, you aren't really in business. It's a truism -- and part of being a truism is that it's true, for the most part. When a new business strategy emerges, it can temporarily topple truisms -- but soon, they're back and as applicable as ever.

Dell Hits Style, Substance Sweet Spot With Low-Cost Executive Laptops March 16, 2010 The "trickling down" of enterprise computing features to smaller businesses has long been a part of life in an IT universe governed by Moore's Law. However, trickle-down IT also has significant implications in desktop and mobile computing, as well. Dell's new Vostro 3000 solutions offer proof of how supple vendors can leverage innovations across multiple product platforms.

Urban Airship's Flight Plan: Push Out Info, Pull In Revenue March 09, 2010 Given the growing popularity of mobile devices and the great many applications to go with them, you would think that this new niche had plenty of room for newcomers. Many of those newcomers, though, will find it difficult to capture a great deal of consumer attention. Places like the Android Market and the Apple App Store are popular and growing fast, but they're awash in apps that struggle to stand out from the crowd.

Social CRM: Walk Before You Run February 25, 2010 Had a meteor hit the Dulles Westin outside of Washington, D.C., two weeks ago, it would have set social CRM back 10 years. That meteor, in addition to melting a lot of snow, would have vaporized in a trice the vast majority of the world's serious thinkers on the topic of social CRM.

Does VPN Make Sense for a Small Biz? February 23, 2010 Virtual private networks, or VPNs, have been around for about a decade. They provide a secure data exchange between two locations using an encrypted connection. VPN technology has changed little over the years. A newer version of VPN software, known as SSL-VPN, taps into the common IP circuitry of Web browsers to make secure connections with less reliance on third-party software.

Trend Micro Rejiggers Small-Biz SaaS Security February 08, 2010 Trend Micro on Monday announced a new and completely overhauled version of its Software as a Service for small and medium-sized businesses. The new version, named "Worry-Free Business Security Services," replaces "Worry-Free Business Security Hosted," which was launched only 10 months ago.

Startup, Know Thyself: Q&A With Sierra Ventures Managing Director Tim Guleri January 29, 2010 In this business climate, the road to striking a venture capital deal is difficult for both funder and fundee. Small startups with big ideas obviously have a harder time finding VC firms willing to take a chance on them, but those VC firms themselves are under added pressure to make the correct decisions regarding where to put their limited resources.

MashLogic: Links Done Your Way January 27, 2010 In the world of venture capital fund-raising, the would-be entrepreneur is usually the party who goes looking for acceptance. However, that's not the way MashLogic got funded. Instead, several partners at Bessemer Venture Partners sought out Ranjit Padmanabhan with seed money and the cofounder title to start up MashLogic in late 2007.

VigLink Aims to Turn Hyperlinks Into Gold January 12, 2010 A startup developer of technology that helps publishers better connect sales with affiliate marketers has closed on seed funding from First Round Capital, Google Ventures, and such individual investors as LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman. The financing for the company, VigLink, will be used to take the product out of beta and into the general market within the next few months.

nPower Makes Battery Charging a Walk in the Park January 05, 2010 Tremont Electric may very well be traveling along the same path once crossed by the Little Engine That Could. The two-year-old startup is headed where several other power generation companies want to go but have yet to get off the research and development tracks. If the inventor and developer of the nPower PEG, Aaron LeMieux, stays on schedule, consumers may find his product on store shelves by next Spring.

ParAccel's Bid to Build a Better Data Cruncher December 30, 2009 Data mining is becoming a crowded field filled with software providers using similar strategies. Their basic goal is always the same. The analytics platforms are designed to slice and dice data to make sales trends and buying opportunities more evident. The firms that can deliver this product more accurately and more rapidly grow their reputations and entice new customers from lesser-producing competitors.