“Social customer service” refers to those services that provide customer support via social media channels. Providing such services is no longer merely a niche or specialty sideline. Challengers, or disruptors who were early with the new technology, are working to expand and integrate their offerings into enterprise systems and processes. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
To help companies boost the speed of delivery of their mobile sites, Instart Logic is ramping up sales and product development with a new round of venture funding. Read more »
Content owners, whether they are publishers, retailers, or marketers, are always looking for new ways to deliver a unique experience to their customers. We call this content personalization. Key trends in this area are led by a collection of technologies that we call post-programming curation. These technologies use the best of behavioral tracking, collaborative filtering, audience targeting, and dynamic content presentation. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Remember when the decision to go to Amazon Web Services was all about saving dough? Smart consumers now know that’s not the real reason to move workloads to the cloud. Read more »
Although there has been a focus on energy efficiency in commercial buildings for some years, the BEMS market can still be considered nascent. The landscape of new entrants, new technologies, and new methodologies is expanding rapidly, and even well-established market leaders are finding new ways to present and market their businesses. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The first quarter of cleantech was a mix of good and bad news. Avis’ purchase of Zipcar and Silver Spring Networks’ long-awaited IPO finally occurring were further signs of thawing capital markets and movement in the acquisition space. However, in both situations valuations were lower than hoped, a sign of how investors view cleantech. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The deployment of smart meters combined with the growth of cloud computing infrastructure has created opportunities to build business models around the volume of emerging energy data. Those who use data to solve customer problems and leverage decades of software development and advances in big data will attract investment dollars. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
As more consumers use smartphones and tablets to do business, monitoring mobile apps alongside desktop sites becomes more critical. New Relic’s offering lets customers do just that. Read more »
Worldwide IT spending finished out 2012 with a growth rate of 3.8 percent over 2011, the lowest growth rate since 2009. Fourth-quarter 2012 earnings reports and guidance were notable in their lack of any decisively positive news to raise 2013 spending expectations much. Those optimistic about […] Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Nipendo, whose Software as a Service for managing purchase orders, invoices and other documents, has received $8 million in Series B venture funding. It could help the business increase adoption in the United States. Read more »
With new funding, Anaplan is further developing software for finance and sales planning and adding infrastructure to support it, taking away business from enterprise business-intelligence vendors. Read more »
Gary Read, the CEO of Boundary, reports more than 5 terabytes of data coming into its servers for processing. At the same time, the company has grown revenues and employees. Read more »
The last quarter of 2012 saw the rise of cloud-based databases, the cloud awakening of software giants such as HP, and many cloud outages that have left question marks. Enterprises found more IT dollars, and they will focus on the cloud for much of that spending. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
NetSuite says retailers want to run their businesses on the same backend technology whether they are online or on Main Street so it’s buying Retail Anywhere to build one system for both. Read more »
Helping to redefine this talent management is workforce analytics, a powerful combination of highly sophisticated computer algorithms and predictive models. Linking this market to business success can help HR professionals convince corporate bean counters to bankroll the crunching of human-capital data. Read more »
Marketing automation SaaS vendors remain hot properties. Oracle bought Eloqua for $871 million, Hubspot nabbed a $35 million mezzanine round, and now Infusionsoft has $54M in fresh cash from Goldman Sachs and others to attack the small business audience. Read more »
Startups and enterprises alike face barriers when it comes to cloud adoption. This includes security, speed of access to cloud resources, and runaway network costs. However, multiple solutions for direct access are being provided to address this issue for companies big and small. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Cloud computing’s increased performance cannot be sustained if the corresponding cost to the service provider (SP) for delivering this performance also increases. What service providers need is a way of delivering low latency, fast response, and increasing performance while minimizing the cost of the network. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Besides the skyrocketing growth of data itself, there are several key technology trends we will be watching in 2013. That list includes a renaissance in the database market, next-generation SaaS-based BI and visualization tools, and data warehousing as a service. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The way the industry will use cloud-computing technology in 2013 will require following the existing adoption patterns and trends into the New Year. Those trends include the rise of standards, big data’s role in the cloud, industry-specific clouds, security, and more. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The hypergrowth that the SaaS category saw last year has leveled off, but these companies are still outperforming traditional software rivals and legacy IT providers who are mired in a hardware-oriented world, according to new research from martinwolf Global M&A Advisors. Read more »
Company says payroll for small and medium companies is an area ripe for innovation. Current leaders ADP and Paychex are too pricey and many companies have yet to automate the process at all, says ZenPayroll CEO Joshua Reeves. Read more »
Many factors have driven the recent high demand for IT products and services. However, relentless global economic weakness and uncertainty have resulted in a deterioration of worldwide IT spending through the third quarter and will continue to be an anchor in the fourth quarter. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
India’s major tech firms have become competitive enterprise outsourcers and systems integrators on a global scale. Firms such as Cognizant and Tata Consultancy Services are looking for technology to provide the next competitive advantages in the market. The cloud provides that opportunity on several levels. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Crowd labor is outsourced information work that can be provisioned automatically. It’s ideally, inexpensive, on demand, and elastic. Platforms providing such services are on the rise in 2012, promising customers lower labor costs in the short term and higher-quality output in the long term. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Encouraged by Workday’s splashy initial public offering, SugarCRM a provider of open-source customer relationship management software-as-a-service, is gearing up for an IPO of its own next year, according to CEO Larry Augustin. It looks like enterprise SaaS is the place to be for IPOs. Read more »
Devops is an industry buzzword that arose to describe the collaboration of development and operations teams. Continuous delivery is the automated implementation of the build, deploy, test, and release processes. As more teams embrace these ideas, more platforms and services will move toward a self-service model. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The usual suspects Amazon and VMware made significant announcements in cloud in the third quarter, while Hadoop remained the talk of the town in big data. Emerging trends in software-defined networking and flash storage stirred up lots of M&A and venture investment in the quarter. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Cloud Sherpas has seen revenue from both its Google Apps and Salesforce.com businesses double in the past year. That seams to indicate that third-party VARs and integrators can make a living off low-cost SaaS applications — and that Google gets that it needs an ecosystem. Read more »
Thanks to the rise of online business, companies must now get their products and services to market as fast as they can, and releasing software now means small releases that occur very frequently. Enter devops, which is disrupting traditional assumptions about the roles of development and operations. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Welcome to the fast-growing world of work media, a class of social tools oriented toward the needs of enterprises. Their emergence is due to the shifting expectations of an increasingly social workforce and the sense that older approaches to work like email are arguably approaching obsolescence. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
We’re three weeks away from our inaugural Structure: Europe event, but before we head across the pond we wanted to introduce our readers to our five Structure:Europe LaunchPad finalists. The companies, who come from across the EU will present on Oct. 16 in Amsterdam. Read more »
Listening platforms — or social media monitoring, analysis, and engagement tools — are bringing massive amounts of new information to businesses’ marketing departments. These tools are also leading the way in the growth of social media information and access throughout organizations so that customers’ wants and needs can be better understood and, presumably, satisfied. This report analyzes how the adoption of listening platforms is transforming marketing departments, their relationships with central IT, and the core systems that run the enterprise. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
While cloud, mobility, social, and analytics have been driving demand for IT products and services in 2012, the worldwide IT spending picture has become dimmer as the year has progressed: We’re looking at 5.1 percent worldwide IT spending growth in 2012. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
In cloud and big data, the second quarter of 2012 featured several high-profile deals and product launches that could reshape the marketplace for everyone. Google and Microsoft launched Infrastructure-as-a-Service offerings, software-defined networking took off, and all eyes stayed fixed on the continuing promise of data analytics. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Software as a service is a great for deploying applications across a company. The flip side is that it ends up creating data silos across vendors. Roger Sippl’s Cloud Connection aims to bridge those silos so users can use their data as they see fit. Read more »
A major limitation of big data is that the technologies used to analyze it are not easy to learn. It doesn’t have to be that way, and technologies like data visualization and cloud-based tools target less-sophisticated users — from business users to receptionists to high school students. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Asana, the startup that wants to help workgroups collaborate easily, is adding a new feature to its SaaS to attack what it calls a huge productivity suck: email. And it’s doing so with a new feature ironically called Inbox. Read more »
According to 451 Research, the enterprise PaaS market will grow to be worth more than $3 billion by 2015. For businesses, it’s important to know the developments that are critical to properly deploying a PaaS solution that save time and development costs. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Discussions about the cloud now involve more than just the IT department. New developments in hardware architectures, more-energy-efficient data centers, regulatory concerns and simplifying analytics are all discussions currently circling through the industry. Here’s what to consider when thinking about your business in the cloud. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
