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In the old information technology world, systems integration and consulting companies flourished, helping enterprises of all sizes across nearly every industry pull together a plethora of proprietary systems from a wide array of software and technology vendors. Despite the promises of the cloud, not...

Anyone who has attempted to adopt Salesforce cloud solutions in an enterprise environment knows that it may not be as easy as expected because of the additional effort typically required to integrate various data sources. This is a common problem that has plagued the enterprise application industry ...

As Amazon sets consumer expectations for rapid delivery to the home, companies in nearly every industry have been recognizing that they must move to the cloud to keep pace. This means revamping their transportation and logistics systems to meet their customers' escalating delivery expectations. Thes...

One of the biggest challenges facing organizations of all sizes trying to move to the cloud is finding and retaining the skilled workers necessary to implement today's rapidly expanding assortment of on-demand services. This skills gap cost companies more than $250 million in lost business opportuni...

Corporate executives know that if they don't transform their companies into digital enterprises they are going to be at a significant competitive disadvantage. Yet many corporate leaders have been unable to make significant progress transforming their organizations. Many executives have found that c...

It can be a full-time job trying to keep up with Salesforce's newest cloud offerings and messaging. However, it is always worth the effort, because the company's pronouncements are often early bellwethers of the future direction of the software industry. This has become particularly true with respec...

Everywhere you look, organizations are shifting their software acquisition preferences and policies away from traditional, on-premises legacy applications to a new generation of on-demand SaaS solutions. Although I was an early advocate of SaaS, I'm becoming concerned that many leading SaaS vendors ...

There's been a lot written recently about how artificial intelligence, machine learning and automation are going to displace millions of workers. However, these powerful new technologies already have spawned a surge in demand for a new wave of highly skilled consultants to help organizations capita...

In the world of the cloud, showcasing the partner ecosystem in an online marketplace has become an imperative. Salesforce has been in the vanguard of this trend. Since its inception in 2005, the AppExchange has grown to include more than 3,000 partner solutions that augment Salesforce's growing port...

Although nearly every research study and industry survey suggests the Internet of Things market is growing rapidly, plenty of companies are holding back from pursuing IoT opportunities. Ironically, the possibility of a long-overdue financial downturn in the next few years could force executives to p...

As the tug of war between humans and machines escalates, we've become witnesses on nearly a daily basis to events that suggest there won't be an ultimate winner or loser in this existential battle for survival and supremacy. Just take two little human mistakes that recently received worldwide attent...

Even as Salesforce aggressively seeks to consolidate its position as the leader of cloud-based front-office applications via a series of acquisitions, it is possible that 2017 could be the year the company uses some of the same purchases to make a strategic move. Salesforce soon may become a major p...

While the general public's fascination with technology largely has been focused on the latest connected products unveiled at the recent CES conference in Las Vegas, many companies are trying to figure out where the real business opportunities lie in the long-awaited rise of the Internet of Things. O...

Anyone who attended the recent Amazon Web Services re:Invent conference -- or watched many sessions online, as I did -- probably is still trying to absorb the full implications of all of the company's initiatives unveiled at the event. Although AWS already has redefined the computing and software de...

A majority of independent software vendors were dealing with an escalating assortment of organizational issues monitoring and monetizing their software capabilities, according to a survey of ISV executives, which Vanson Bourne conducted last year on behalf of Gemalto. As many of those ISVs move to t...

Nearly 25 years ago, Michael Hammer and James Champy coauthored one of the most influential business books of the period, Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution, anticipating some of the important changes that lay ahead. The corporate world was trying to cope with the gro...

The disruption of the IT and software industry by the rapid rise of cloud and SaaS continues to take a toll on the biggest players in the business. In their latest round of desperate moves to reposition themselves in the radically changing marketplace, the major companies of the past have been willi...

Oracle's acquisition of NetSuite is a clear indication that the rapid adoption of cloud alternatives to traditional on-premises applications is shifting from front-office customer relationship management to back-office enterprise resource planning solutions. Now, the question will be whether Oracle ...

While most businesses are focusing their efforts to capitalize on the Internet of Things in areas that will generate immediate cost-savings and operating efficiencies, a number of IoT pioneers already are leveraging a new generation of connected products to fundamentally change their business models...

The advent of a brave new world of connected products and services in the Internet of Things is forcing organizations of all sizes across nearly every industry to reconsider how they will interact with their customers in the future. As a consequence, a growing number of companies are thinking about ...