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Every disruptive innovation requires a minimum of two parties to play the game. There has to be a disruptor -- someone who does the disrupting -- as well as one or more disruptees -- the party or parties being disrupted. Identifying either party is difficult, but for different reasons ...

Six to eight weeks. That's about what it seems to take to get an on-demand solution up and running these days. This information comes from an analysis of nine on-demand vendors that we surveyed for our annual WizKids report which will be out this week ...

"All of these companies are offering users technology or services that are completely new to the market," Beagle Research principal and report author Denis Pombriant told CRM Buyer The On-Demand Wave...

There have been a lot of things to write about this week. The two things that pique my interest, and that I think will have long range implications, are the emerging discussion of customer rights and Salesforce.com's latest announcements of its financial vertical focus. I don't see how the two overlap and I won't try to relate them, but I think they each deserve some analysis. First, let's talk about customer rights...

"It remains to be seen how quickly, if at all, they will react to the challenge," Denis Pombriant, principal with Beagle Research Group, told CRM Buyer. Siebel didn't take Salesforce seriously at first, he noted The Salesforce versus Siebel fight has been somewhat mischaracter...

I got a lot of mail on the piece I wrote last week about retail data collection. The mail ran two to one in support, but it was still interesting to gauge the reactions of those who think the notion of collecting data like ZIP codes, drivers license numbers and the like is kosher ...

The not-so-pretty underside of CRM became apparent again recently with the revelation that TJX Companies, parent of more than 2,500 outlets including TJ Maxx, Marshalls and other retailers, had a break-in that may have compromised customer data ...

Salesforce.com issued a press release last week that by now looks rather ho-hum by its standards. The company announced that Deloitte & Touche had signed on as a systems integration partner and that got me thinking about how many things have changed, and how many have not ...

I am still thinking about SAP's announcement last week that it would invest in a new business model to bring its new SOA mid-market products to the marketplace. I thought it was a significant enough announcement that I wanted to offer an opinion on it right away, which is why I did a piece last week, and a few days' perspective have given me additional thoughts...

I always chafe at the saying, "The proof is in the pudding" in part because it is a truncation of a longer phrase, but mostly because it means nothing by itself. "The proof of the pudding is in the eating" is how the phrase really goes, and it is the one thing that came to mind when I heard about SAP's announcement in Germany about a new business model and new mid-market products...

I had meetings last week with each of the big three on-demand CRM vendors -- Salesforce.com, RightNow and NetSuite -- and made some observations. Sometimes I get complaints from some of them when I mention more than one in an article because they like to pretend that they are unique. My grudging conclusion after my meetings is that maybe they are right. Let me elaborate...

Axel Schultze is a serial entrepreneur based in Silicon Valley. Perhaps that is not a very useful description since the valley seems to be littered with them, but Axel is, in my mind, an interesting case ...

It is part of the American Experience to be always searching for self-improvement, and I think that contributes to our obsession with New Year's resolutions. I have made a few of my own over the years and 2007 will be no exception. In the last few days, I have witnessed this urge to plan and improve in others around me -- and I am not immune to it...

When making forecasts for a year ahead, I have always found the "greater fool" theory comforting. In short, it takes a fool to make a forecast, and a greater one to believe it ...

Based on the excellent job Denis Pombriant did on his column this week and the great columns he's delivered this year, I realized that I am truly the Accidental Analyst of CRM Buyer With that in mind, let's take a look at the predictions I made for 2006 and how I did. If this...

It's hard to believe that it's time to make predictions for the year ahead -- it feels like I just finished that job, but here we are again. I dug up my 2006 predictions and was amazed at how close some of them were. The lesson I derive here is that I must not have been trying hard enough ...

Salesforce.com is having a good year this quarter. That's not a typo -- the company seems to be announcing a year's worth of new products in a very short time, though delivery for some of the announcements might stretch out to this time next year ...

I have always advocated that CRM is a growing field, and that it grows at the margins whenever some innovative company introduces a new application type. As such, the definition really speaks more about all of the front office than CRM alone. Nevertheless, over the last few years we've seen a lot of new applications in sales, marketing and service that fit this description...

Salesforce.com made another announcement this week. This time they have announced a new integration facility that is based in part on the announced, but as yet undelivered, Apex programming language ...

"It's another arrow in the quiver that Salesforce.com users now have to bring together their on-demand CRM app with their legacy applications and those applications that reside behind the firewall," Denis Pombriant, principal of Beagle Research, told CRM Buyer "There are a var...