The CRM Watchlist Part II: The Usual Suspects
I have to imagine that Kevin Spacey is getting sick and tired of the use of his movie’s title for pretty much everything related to a regular event. So this “Sigh” is for him. Sigh. In the first CRM Watchlist 2011 (long) post I covered the Big 4. In round 2, we’re going to look [...]
Next year is a strategic opportunity
Recessions are always a good time to rebuild your competitive infrastructure and the slow growth/recession of the last couple of years has been no exception. On the stock market, the technology sector seems to be doing quite well. After bottoming in the middle of the summer the software companies especially seem to be rebounding. Microsoft, [...]
Oracle’s Exadata Refresh Ups Ante on Technology and Selling Strategy
The Exadata marketing story is unrelenting, and Oracle backed it with plenty of happy customers for analysts to query at Open World this year. The stories were compelling; I’ll mention a few below. In the analyst pitch, we were shown a couple of dozen logos – good for a still relatively new high-end, long sales [...]
Analytics Is the Social CRM Secret Sauce
A lot of information is coming together this quarter that begins to put new spin on Social CRM. While we’ve all been busy getting networked in our personal lives and professionally, a huge mountain of data has been accumulating that will make our work in social technology more valuable. Last week Harvard Business Review released [...]
SAS Bucks the Trade Show Trend
Trade shows have been dying for many years to the point that they have been all but totally supplanted by vendor sponsored conferences. The vendors have become adept at the logistics of hosting large numbers of people for upwards of a week in cities like San Francisco, Orlando, Chicago and Las Vegas to name a [...]
SAS Unveils New Analytics Apps
It’s often hard to maintain high visibility in the marketplace if you happen to be a private company and for good reason. Private companies tend to be small and they often do not attract the attention of the financial press precisely because the financial press thrives on the transparency and numbers that small companies prefer [...]
IBM Acquires Netezza – ADBMS Consolidation Heats Up
IBM’s bid to acquire Netezza makes it official; the insurgents are at the gates. A pioneering and leading ADBMS player, Netezza is in play for approximately $1.7 billion or 6 times earnings. When it entered the market in 2001, it catalyzed an economic and architectural shift with an appliance form factor at a dramatically different [...]
Decoding BI Market Share Numbers – Play Sudoku With Analysts
In a recent post I discussed Oracle’s market share in BI, based on a press-published chart taken from IDC data – showing Oracle coming in second. As often happens in such discussions, I got quite a few direct emails and twitter messages – some in no uncertain terms – about why the particular metric I [...]
Oracle’s High BI Bar: Managed, Multifaceted and Actionable
Oracle’s newest BI release is massive, spans multiple product categories, and raises the bar for competitors in dramatic fashion. In my prior post I focused on its rollout and competitive posture. The market has waited a long time as the reconciliation of many moving parts was accomplished – most notably the convergence of the Hyperion [...]
Oracle Sets Sights on BI Leadership. Has it Picked the Right Target?
Oracle is not first in BI, and wants to change that – that was the clear message of a well executed, multi-site “real plus virtual” event with top executives showing off the result of a multi-year effort to rationalize and integrate a set of leading but overlapping components into a seamless suite. Oracle Business Intelligence [...]
