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There is no question that one of the hottest topics in the tech industry is the rapidly evolving world of the Internet of Things. The seemingly infinite variety of use cases for capturing data from a widening array of connected devices and objects is inspiring the imaginations of corporate decision ...

A rising tide of interest has sparked a series of competitive moves among the widening array of software and technology providers vying for a share of the rapidly expanding IoT market. The enormous promise has driven a growing number of large and small players to rebrand and reposition their product...

The explosive growth of data is one of the biggest challenges facing organizations of all sizes across nearly every industry, and a growing number of cloud service providers are recognizing that they can provide more than just simple storage and economical compute power to their customers buried in ...

One of the sure signs of a maturing company, or even an entire industry, is the ability to offer free services to nonprofit organizations in order to demonstrate benevolence. However, such charitable acts aren't just about being altruistic. As a growing number of cloud providers are discovering, the...

One of the geographic regions asserting itself as an epicenter of technology innovation focused on the rapidly evolving Internet of Things is the Boston area. To bring greater attention to the widening array of area companies pursuing new business opportunities in the IoT market, the region recently...

A new wave of opportunities is emerging to create industry-specific Software as a Service and cloud computing vertical market solutions. A number of new examples of this phenomenon have crossed my radar over the past few weeks which clearly illustrate the long tail effect of the cloud. The most prom...

Although I've been a proponent of the business benefits of migrating to the "cloud" since before the term was popularized by today's market leaders, I have to admit that the cloud industry is doing a great job of making it increasingly difficult for CIOs and other corporate decision makers to feel c...

Computer and software companies have been courting students for decades, and now school administrators are becoming the target of smart SaaS and cloud computing service providers. The most notorious examples of using classroom marketing tactics to gain a long-term strategic advantage are Apple and G...

The Internet of Things is a key driver of accelerated growth of cloud-based alternatives to traditional on-premises systems and software, and as the new year begins to unfold, it is gaining momentum. The idea of the IoT evolved from the more narrowly focused concept of machine-to-machine communicati...

Despite recent revelations regarding the NSA's extensive surveillance of email messages, Internet traffic and mobile communications, no one expects people or businesses to discard these essential habits and tools. In fact, I believe cloud-based alternatives to traditional, on-premises software and s...

The growing adoption of Bring Your Own Device policies by organizations of all sizes, across nearly every industry, has enabled corporate end-users and business units to more easily acquire apps tailored to their specific work requirements. This Bring Your Own Apps phenomenon, often referred to as t...

Although the cloud marketplace is growing rapidly, the current rate of growth will continue only if a broader set of strong channel companies emerge to extend the reach of today's cloud leaders into new industries and geographies. I've been suggesting for years that building more channels to market...

I'm not a religious guy, but I've been preaching about the virtues of moving to the cloud. Well before the idea became popular, I saw the potential cost savings offered by the cloud, as well as the opportunities to leverage it to generate new innovations. Now, nearly every industry is recognizing th...

I've been charting the evolution of the corporate app store idea in this column for more than three years. Until recently, most of the focus has been on how various service providers and other institutions can establish app stores to resell apps to their customers. Now, enlightened CIOs are discover...

A persistent myth in the tech world is that major enterprises in highly regulated industries are risk-averse and reluctant to adopt new technology innovations. In the case of the financial services sector, this has not been the case for years, and it is being disproved again as a growing number of f...

With nearly every market forecast and growing anecdotal evidence pointing to escalating demand for cloud-based alternatives to traditional on-premises systems and software, the challenges of integrating the new on-demand solutions with existing applications and data sources are becoming even more cr...

Organizations of all sizes across an assortment of industries are using a growing set of cloud analytics solutions to address their Big Data, business intelligence and data integration challenges. Escalating competitive pressures and customer expectations are forcing organizations to find new ways t...

Strategic Big Data and Actionable Analytics are two of the Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2013, according to Gartner. Yet only 12 percent have a big data strategy that governs their daily operations, a recent survey of 339 data management professionals by SAS and SourceMedia found. In my vie...

A growing number of established and emerging software and technology vendors are seeking to take advantage of the convergence of Big Data and the cloud. None has made a bigger bet than IBM. Since 2005, IBM has spent more than $16 billion on 35 acquisitions to boost its analytics capabilities. The ...

One of the age-old challenges that has plagued the software industry, like many others, is how vendors can reach small- and mid-sized businesses with their software products. Although today's Software as a Service model eliminates many of the distribution challenges of the past, it hasn't overcome t...