Cloud Tech News

During 2012 the enterprise resource planning (ERP) market experienced sluggish growth of just 2.2%, yet software as a service (SaaS), financial management and human capital management (HCM) applications showed potential for breakout growth. Through the challenging times of the previous year, however, SAP still retained worldwide market share leadership.

Evangelising development on any cloud computing or enterprise platform is challenging, costly and takes a unique skill set that can educate, persuade, sell and serve developers at the same time.

The best manufacturers I've visited this year all share a common attribute: they are obsessed with making themselves as easy as possible to work with from a supply chain, distribution and services standpoint. Many are evaluating cloud-based manufacturing applications including enterprise resource planning (ERP), and several have adopted cloud-based applications across their companies.

Last year, four out of every 10 CRM systems sold were SaaS-based, and the trend is accelerating. In the recent Gartner report Market Share Analysis: Customer Relationship Software, Worldwide, 2012 published April 18 2013 the authors provide insights into why the worldwide CRM market experienced 12% growth in 2012, three times the average of all enterprise software categories.

Transforming time into dollars matters far more to many CEOs I've spoken with versus what platform their applications are running on. What matters most is getting all they can out of every hour their business is operating. They are all focused on getting beyond the constraints that held their growth back in the past - everyone wants a growth accelerator today.

Relying on cloud computing strategies to free up dollars and time that can quickly be re-invested in product and service innovation emerged as the highest priority for respondents in a recent Rackspace survey. While cost reductions were significant, the greatest contributions were seen in investments in innovation (48%), new product & service development (45%), and boosting sale efforts (38%).

The accuracy, speed and precision of IT systems means the difference between winning or losing customers, keeping supply chains profitable, and solidly translating new concepts into revenue-producing products and services. The world’s best-run services businesses have customer-driven IT as part of their DNA; it is very much who these companies are internally.

Kirill Tatarinov’s keynote this morning at Microsoft’s Convergence 2013 marks a subtle, yet very significant shift in how this technology leader is marketing itself to partners and the outside world. They are humanizing their marketing, messaging and products.