iDashboards, the global leader in business intelligence (BI) dashboard software, today announced the availability of iDashboards v7.5.  This product release redefines the dashboard experience, providing users with stunning presentation options, an expanded chart library, interface enhancements and new development features.

“Organizations around the world are adopting business intelligence and taking charge of their data,” said Shadan Malik, CEO of iDashboards. “We have seen a growing market need for an enterprise dashboard platform that provides engaging visuals, intuitive navigation, low complexity and quick implementation.  iDashboards v7.5 meets this demand, providing users with an interactive and visually rich dashboard solution. “

New features available in iDashboards v7.5 include:

• Presentation Chart Library: Image Gallery and Slideshow Charts provide users with a variety of image display options that function intuitively with iDashboards’ patented interactive intelligence.  The creation of the ViFrame enables users to implement visually interactive text data.
• Updated and New Chart Types: The iDashboards Chart Library has been expanded to include several new charts and chart formatting options.  New chart types include: Multi-needle Speedometer, Metrics Target, Metrics Bar Target and new country maps.  Additionally, chart properties have been created to enhance the overall esthetic of both dashboards and charts.
• New Dashboard Development Features: Development enhancements include the introduction of dynamic picklists, drilldown data diagnostic functionality, HTML panel, pre-defined date formats, and background images and transparency charts.

The availability of iDashboards v7.5 sets a new benchmark in the business intelligence dashboard space, driving innovative dashboard design and fostering an evolving end-user experience.

About iDashboards

Through its award-winning engineering and patented technology, iDashboards helps companies leverage information assets through visually rich, real-time and personalized business intelligence dashboards to analyze, track, and drilldown through a wealth of information. iDashboards’ global customer base consists of organizations ranging from large, Fortune 500 companies to small and medium-sized businesses, all of which are making quicker, and better, decisions with the help of iDashboards.

Applications include: executive dashboards, business dashboards and excel dashboards.  The company is privately held and headquartered in Troy, Michigan. To find out more about iDashboards’ solutions, please call 248-528-7160 or visit www.iDashboards.com.

Even second-, third-, and fourth-generation investments in CRM yields significant returns

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications continue to deliver high return on investment (ROI), with an average benefit of $5.60 returned for every dollar spent, according to a Nucleus Research analysis.

Where other software areas show smaller incremental returns after reaping the greatest benefits in initial deployments, CRM was found to deliver significant ROI throughout its lifecycle, often enhanced by further investment. Organizations effectively deploying secondary applications, such mobile, social, marketing optimization and sales analytics can see triple-digit ROI while greatly increasing employee productivity. By deploying applications that run on top of existing CRM, companies have also seen an improvement in business forecasting and an increase in sales.

"With a return of $5.60 for every dollar spent, investing in CRM is a no-brainer. Further, that investment has significant staying power. As vendors add social, marketing, analytics, and mobile access capabilities to their offerings, organizations have an opportunity to gain even more returns from CRM," said Rebecca Wettemann, vice president of research, Nucleus Research.

With reductions in the cost of deployment via the cloud, a focus on end user productivity, and a push towards social and mobile applications, there have been fundamental shifts in the goals of the CRM market that contribute to maintaining a high ROI. This has driven vendors to produce more rapid deployments that are developed through continued innovation in this space.

The full research note is available at NucleusResearch.com.

About Nucleus Research

Nucleus Research is a global provider of investigative, case-based technology research and advisory services that provide real-world insight into maximizing technology value. For more information, visit NucleusResearch.com.

AbiResearch today released new research findings today, in a report called

“Media Tablets Cannibalizing Netbook Spend with 75% Share of US Ultra-Mobile Device* Shipments in 2011”

Ultra-mobile devices (UMD) are mobile computing devices on a continuum, bordered by laptop PCs and smart phones.  This market has 4 segments:

1. ultra-mobile PCs (UMPCs),
2. mobile Internet devices (MIDs),
3. netbooks, and
4. media tablets.

Findings Summary:

* 2011: Estimated 37 m ultra-mobile devices will be shipped (US)

* 2011: 75% of which are expected to be media tablets (in particular Apple’s iPad 2s).

* 2015: Forecasted UMD revenue to top $24 billion.

Research Commentary:

“While the near-term opportunity is all about media tablets, no UMD segment type has ever sustained a lead for longer than 36 months in any part of the world,” says ABI Research group director Jeff Orr.  “Is the next device trend beyond media tablets just around the corner?”

NETBOOKS: shift out

Netbooks continue to be an important segment, though US volumes will steadily decline over the next five years from all-time highs of 9.9 million units shipped in 2010.  Netbook value will shift from highly competitive computing and mobile broadband markets, including the US, to countries where low computing and home broadband penetration offers the greatest potential for mobile computing.

ULTRA-MOBILE DEVICES: shift in ?

UMDs are well-positioned inside the edges of the mobile device landscape, though end-user audiences are driven to newer form-factors on emotion and promises and less on consumer needs and business roles.  “For UMDs in the US to take the PC or smartphone markets head-on, there needs to be a fundamental shift in buying behavior driven by lifestyle enhancements and workplace requirements,” says Orr.

ABI Research’s new study, “Ultra Mobile Devices in the US Market,” examines the market and technology issues facing ultra-mobile devices (UMDs) in the US, including device segment definitions, sales channels, average selling price, application processors, operating system software, and connectivity.  UMD segments covered include media tablets, netbooks, UMPCs, and MIDs.

Here is something your IT department should think about.

With the London 2012 Olympics around the corner, it dawned on me that Enterprise software for some companies resemble the Olympic logo.  That is, 5 independent islands of databases connected to each other like a Venn diagram.

Each circle represented a single business application.

Their ERP, financials and HR were one software package (one ring), their CRM was another ring, and their Service Desk for external customer support was the 3rd ring.

As well, they had an internal ITIL Help Desk software package (4th ring), and finally the last ring was a Bug Tracking database (for those in the software industry).

In a perfect world of Oracle Exadata, you would rewrite your complete applications suite having all your data in one database.  There is some merit to this as the data is shared among several applications.  (i.e. HR should have an inventory of your IT devices.  i.e. customers calling in with a bug to a software package should be relayed to Development team.)

When picking cloud applications, it is important to ensure compatibility and integration.

Salesforce.com doesn’t want to get into the full blown ERP industry, but there are smaller apps like FinancialForce that can do the job for a small to mid size company.

Like the Exadata model, there are a lot of advantages in using a shared schema with standard objects.  As long as you have the custom ability to add additional objects like tables, the integration between apps should be seamless.  So when it comes down to custom reports across all objects (i.e. both the standard CRM, your other apps, and your custom apps), that too should be seamless.   Double entry is not allowed!

Here is an example for 5 critical apps from small to large sized organizations:

1. ERP
2. CRM
3. External Service Desk for Customers
4. Internal ITIL Help Desk for Employees
5. Bug Tracking / Defect tracking database (for those in the SW industry)

(This is only an example.  There are more applications such as Marketing Automation that can be added.)

A sample configuration using the Salesforce model would be using FianancialForce, CRM, Service Cloud, RemedyForce, and a custom app for Bug tracking.  (I haven’t had a chance to add up the approximate costs) 

There is a lot of parallel between any two given applications and having a shared schema makes sense to prevent the double entry nightmare.

Collaboration

There is one element that wraps the entire rings, and that is collaboration.  (email, forums, and/or social network feed-type application such as Facebook, Twitter, Yammer or Chatter)

Email attachments are a thing of the past and having a global collaboration tool will increase your productivity. 

This model, with all the applications housed under a central collaboration tool, is the new way of doing business.  Unless, of course, you are still using shrink-wrapped business application software from different vendors and using email as your primary source of communication.

New research from Mimecast finds that organizations face growing pressure to keep BlackBerry services up and running

Mimecast®, a leading supplier of cloud-based email security, continuity and archiving, has today announced the results from a new report on BlackBerry continuity, highlighting the increasing importance of keeping business BlackBerry users fully connected at all times. The report, entitled Keeping the Enterprise Agile and Mobile (link below), examines the growing pressure on IT teams to keep BlackBerry services up and running at all times and finds that IT departments are struggling to respond to user demands.

Based on research conducted by Incisive Media, the report finds that expectations of BlackBerry users are extremely high, with two thirds (66 percent) saying that as little as one hour of downtime per month is unacceptable and 22 percent demanding no break in service at all. These high expectations reflect the growing importance of BlackBerry services, with many users seeing the ability to access email from any location as essential to their business. A third (33 percent) of users admitted that the inability to access mobile services had either damaged their organization’s reputation or had caused them to lose business.

BlackBerry downtime is also one of the biggest headaches for the IT team; 58 percent of respondents say that an interruption in service causes complaints from board level and 39 percent say that it causes their helpdesk to be inundated with calls. However, 35 percent of IT teams admit that their organization has experienced a BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) outage in the past 12 months, with 34 percent suffering a Microsoft Exchange Server outage.

Despite this, many IT teams are still not taking steps to reduce the impact of BlackBerry service downtime on their organizations. 41 percent of organizations have no provisions in place to ensure high availability of the service. Furthermore, 59 percent of those IT departments questioned admitted that they did not have an effective BlackBerry continuity solution in place and 61 percent had no internal Service Level Agreement (SLA) for BlackBerry email availability.

Barry Gill, Product Marketing Manager at Mimecast, commented; “BlackBerry smartphones bring huge benefits in terms of increased productivity and agility, but they are also presenting IT teams with new challenges, not least of which is making sure that ‘always on’ services really are always on. Companies should weigh up the benefits of native BlackBerry Enterprise Server high availability with its associated costs against those offered in the SLA of a third-party provider, which should guarantee email delivery to smartphones during a BES or Exchange outage.”

Mimecast provides a 100 percent SLA-backed continuity service for BlackBerry users, keeping emailing flowing even when the BlackBerry Enterprise Server or associated network infrastructure fails. Mimecast BlackBerry Continuity, launched in April 2010, removes the need for standby servers, maximising organisations’ investment in the BlackBerry wireless solution and supporting user productivity with an uninterrupted email service.

To download a copy of the full report, please click on the link below (registration required)

http://www.mimecast.com/Keeping-the-enterprise-agile-and-mobile

About Mimecast

Mimecast (www.mimecast.com) delivers SaaS-based enterprise email management including security, continuity and archiving. By unifying disparate and fragmented email environments into one holistic solution that is always available from the cloud, Mimecast minimizes risk and reduces cost and complexity, while providing total end-to-end control of email. Founded in the United Kingdom in 2003, Mimecast serves approximately 3,500 customers worldwide and has offices in Europe, North America, Africa and the Channel Islands.

Enterprise software is evolving.

In this past few months, I’ve had an increase on consultations with clients’ Facebook Fan Page strategies, optimizing Twitter and its potential, and even Facebook advertising over Google Adwords!  So it is obvious to me that Sales and Marketing teams are seriously looking at Social Media.

However, I am seeing 3 trends in enterprise software in the CRM space to improve productivity and ultimately increase sales.

They are:

1. Engagement: feed updates in real-time where people have conversations and publish messages
2. Reputation: caring about what people are saying about you in social media
3. Connections: who you know, and who you might know

The first point, Engagement, is what the Yammer CEO calls “Yammer copycats”, and he is referring specifically to Salesforce’s Chatter.   User engagement is the driving force behind Facebook and Twitter.

The second point, Reputation, refers to the social media frenzy including the recent Radian6 acquisition.  If your brand is important to you, then you should be concerned about what people think of you, your product and your company.  Radian6 was the clear winner in this department at Dreamforce 2010 and it’s no surprise they were acquired.

But the third point is Connections:

Why focus on people you don’t know?  Why not focus on who you should know. The old cliché “it’s who you know” still holds true today.

If you’ve used LinkedIn, you know the power of connections… because that’s the power of centralizing your contacts (in this case, it’s LinkedIn’s database)

BranchIt for Chatter

If you already use Chatter, then BranchIt for Chatter makes it even more “social” by bridging the gap between corporate email and CRM.  You can connect today’s social media with the traditional social media on who you know.  BranchIt for Chatter won the 2010 Salesforce.com’s AppQuest competition (covered here)

When you consider:

• over 80% of a company’s relationships don’t get captured into the CRM
• the average employee has over 1,500 relationships
• thus a 1,000 person company has the potential of 1.5 million relationships
• and a 10,000 person company has the potential of 15 million relationships

The core feature of BranchIt for Chatter uncovers relationships held by employees, but it also includes contact syncing, relationship strength scoring, and contact & account following.  You may never have to make a cold call again as you obtain personal introductions to contacts from colleagues.

In the last quarter, BranchIt has more than doubled their its base by signing on over 20,000 new business users including Bell Aliant, Penske, Enterasys Networks, Freeman, and William Blair.  While it is common to see industries that rely heavily on relationships use this software,  it should be no surprise that other industries and markets are using this service as well.

Unlike LinkedIn, Gist and Xobni, which provide similar versions of relationship management technology intended for the single user to manage his or her own contacts, BranchIt is sold only to businesses, as it harnesses the power of your company’s relationships.  There are some shortcomings, for example,  the need to capture phone calls into your CRM, but with VoIP and conference calling integrated into your CRM and Chatter in the future, it will only be a matter of time.  Then it just becomes more powerful.

I hate to say this again, but it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.

Study shows IGEL thin clients and VMware View™ or Citrix XenApp™ / XenDesktop™ lowers global warming potential[1] by up to 63% compared to traditional PCs

Reading, UK – A new study shows that IGEL thin clients in a virtual desktop environment can be up to 63% less harmful to the environment than a traditional PC deployment. The independent study, conducted by the renowned Fraunhofer Institute in Germany, analyzed two scenarios with virtual desktop infrastructures (VDIs) across their entire lifecycle.

In the first scenario at a Dutch healthcare organization, the combination of IGEL thin clients and virtual desktops based on VMware View™ proved to be 47% less harmful to the climate than a PC workstation with locally installed applications put to equivalent use. This research covered the entire lifecycle of the device: from its production, over a five-year period of operation, all the way to its ultimate disposal.

In the second installation at Fraunhofer, using Citrix XenApp™ and Citrix XenDesktop™ virtualization software, the global warming potential[1] (GWP) calculated over the entire lifecycle, with a service life of three years, was 30% to 63% that of the PC workstation control scenario, depending on the type of user involved.

For medium-level users, the combination of an IGEL thin client and a shared desktop provisioned via Citrix XenApp™ (terminal server) is currently the best solution from an ecological and energy-efficiency perspective. Compared to the control scenario with a conventional PC workstation, this configuration decreases the global warming potential (GWP) over its entire lifecycle by 63%. For a medium-level user, the GWP, measured in kilograms of CO2-equivalent (kg CO2eq), is 417 kg CO2eq for a conventional PC workstation and just 156 kg CO2eq for an IGEL thin client, including its terminal server share.

The study also showed that most of the climate-relevant advantages of thin client/VDI solutions are accounted for by savings during their operational phase. Depending on the application scenario and user type, 61% to 77% of the greenhouse gases emitted throughout the lifecycle are from operation, followed by 17% to 28% during production.

IGEL Thin Clients: Universally Deployable End-User Devices

In both of the installations examined, thin clients from IGEL Technology were used. The lean, non-proprietary thin clients (model used: IGEL Universal Desktop UD3 LX) support traditional terminal server environments running Citrix or Microsoft, as well as desktop virtualization solutions from VMware®, Citrix®, Microsoft®, Red Hat® and other providers. In direct comparison to a typical PC workstation, the compact thin client with a service life of three years causes just 122 kg CO2eq, while a desktop PC used for the same amount of time causes between 417 and 692 kg CO2eq (ranging from medium-level user to power user).

Conclusion: Thin Clients a Definite Alternative to PCs

“Our conclusion from the study is that thin clients are definitely more environmentally-friendly and cost effective than the desktop PC,” declared Christian Knermann, Project Manager of the environmental impact study and Deputy Head of the IT Management department at Fraunhofer UMSICHT. “From an IT point of view, desktop virtualization is a prudent extension of the terminal server model, which provides for particularly demanding user scenarios in an efficient and environmentally conscious way. The integration of both technologies ultimately allows us optimal capacity utilization of our server hardware.”

“We are delighted with this informative study because it offers our customers further guidance and motivation to centralize their IT infrastructures in the interests of sustained cost savings,” added Simon Richards, UK General Manager at IGEL Technology. “We’re also pleased that both scenarios show how IGEL thin clients contribute to climate protection and to reduction of electricity costs.”

A full copy of the report can be found at: http://it.umsicht.fraunhofer.de/TC2011/index_en.html

[1] The global warming potential (GWP): The global warming potential (GWP) or CO2-equivalent specifies the extent to which a defined quantity of a greenhouse gas contributes to the greenhouse effect. The reference value is given in terms of carbon dioxide; the abbreviation is CO2eq (for equivalent). The value represents the average warming effect over a defined length of time; often, this time period is 100 years.

About IGEL Technology

IGEL Technology is one of the world’s largest thin client vendors and is market leader in its home country of Germany. The company produces one of the industry’s widest range of thin clients, based on Linux and Microsoft Windows, giving customers access to almost any form of server-based infrastructure and application including virtual desktops from VMware®, Citrix® Xen, RedHat or Microsoft®, terminal services, legacy applications via Ericom® PowerTerm® terminal emulation, web, Java, SAP and VoIP. Form factors include traditional desktops and integrated LCD units as well as the world’s leading software for PC to TC conversion. IGEL Thin Clients come bundled at no extra cost with a remote management suite called UMS that guarantees hassle free and secure remote configuration and administration of thin clients as well as migrated PCs.

‘Generation Gmail’ heading for office culture clash reveals new research from Mimecast

London, UK — Results launched today from an international research project commissioned by Mimecast® have revealed that offices are being compromised by an emerging ‘Generation Gmail’ of corporate email users. A new cohort of social media savvy employees, Generation Gmail, displays a particular frustration with corporate email restrictions, complaining that mailbox sizes are too constrained and that they will readily “work around” using personal email to be as productive and flexible as possible.

The findings have revealed that corporate email users under the age of 25 are putting businesses at risk with a slapdash attitude to company intellectual property (IP) flowing outside the organisation and being stored on public servers. Use of personal email for work purposes is pervasive, with 85% of under 25s admitting that they send work related emails or documents to or from personal email accounts, the highest of all age groups.

“With social networks and personal email a ubiquitous part of their life, the way email is used by this demographic is bleeding into the workplace. So it is not surprising that expectations for workplace technology are shifting accordingly,” commented Nathaniel Borenstein, Chief Scientist at Mimecast. “The results find workers frustrated with corporate restrictions and working around these using personal email accounts in order not to affect their productivity or flexibility.”

In tandem with Generation Gmail’s appetite for technology – and instinctive desire to share and collaborate – comes a frustration with traditional workplace tools and behaviours. Over half (51%) of under 25s say if they had an unlimited work mailbox they would be less likely to send work emails to personal accounts – 11 per cent higher than other age groups.

The Generation Gmail report also found that:

• More than a third (36%) of incoming email to work inboxes is NOT work related

• Over 300 work-related emails are sent per person via personal accounts each year

• Typically around half of these emails contain attachments, meaning that the average employee under 25 will send approximately three emails a week containing corporate IP and potentially sensitive information outside of their corporate environment

• Generation Gmail is particularly predisposed to personal email; 52 per cent rated it as better than work email in terms of mailbox size, compared to just 29 per cent of over 55s

Borenstein, one of the creators of the MIME standard, which makes modern email delivery possible, continued, “Email is a vital channel, indeed the preferred choice, of communications within companies today. Although more fanciful headlines would have us believe that email is on the verge of extinction – the reality is that email is embedded within company culture and will remain a core communication channel for some time to come.

“However, unprecedented change is afoot as a new generation of people who have had lifelong exposure to technology enter the workforce, bringing with them unique challenges in the provision and management of email and other technologies for companies. The proliferation of social networks and mobile devices has transformed the communications landscape within companies; employees increasingly mix and match technologies, using devices and platforms interchangeably to find workarounds that maximise their flexibility and productivity. Employers need to work out what they are going to do in the face of this cultural shift,” concluded Borenstein.

Supplier of cloud-based email security, continuity and archiving software Mimecast commissioned Loudhouse, an independent marketing research consultancy, to conduct a survey to investigate how attitudes to work email use are evolving and how progressive employers are managing this core communication channel. The research comprised a total of more than 2,400 online interviews with corporate email users in the UK (1,080 interviews), the US (805), Canada (272) and South Africa (300).

About Mimecast

Mimecast (www.mimecast.com) delivers SaaS-based enterprise email management including security, continuity and archiving. By unifying disparate and fragmented email environments into one holistic solution that is always available from the cloud, Mimecast minimizes risk and reduces cost and complexity, while providing total end-to-end control of email. Founded in the United Kingdom in 2003, Mimecast serves approximately 3,500 customers worldwide and has offices in Europe, North America, Africa and the Channel Islands.

We live in a world of a giant construction zone.

Take a look outside, and you’ll see new house being built, as well as older homes being renovated.

It’s the same for the CRM industry.

You have new companies diving head first into a new CRM package, whether the entire staff likes it or not.

Then you have larger companies unhappy with one vendor and switching to another. 

Ah, yes, good ol’ migration projects.  The word “migration” means dollar signs to consultants around the world.

But you never hear about the horror stories.  I wish more companies could blog about the possible headaches in a migration, and the lessons learned.

At Shopzilla Tech Blog, they wrote a nice piece on their migration from an Oracle database into Salesforce.com.

It wasn’t perfect, and no migration ever is, but it’s a good read.

In this example, Informatica Cloud Services was migrating from Dev to QA to Production.  You start the migration by logging into the target organization, then from there log into the source organization and pull the desired tasks and connections into the target organization.  You will need accounts for both organizations.

They listed 4 errors during the migration:

• Rounding Errors in Large Numbers

• Trailing Zeros in Smaller Numbers

• Oracle Views vs. Informatica Transformations

• Informatica Log Files Rollover

Read their full report here. A good lesson.

The 3 golden rules for a real estate agent is “location, location, location” but in the world of migrations, it’s “test, test, test”.

And documentation, which is always sorely lacking in IT shops.

Remember Analog TV Transmission?  A thing of the past?

I grew up with an analog B&W television.  Rabbit ears and all.  Hey, it worked.  But it was sad to see analog transmission come to an end.

The moral of the story:  Technology has changed, and we must move ahead.

And that includes the conventional IPv4.

What’s the difference between IPv4 and IPv6?

IPv4 has a 32-bit address space which has up to 4.3 billion addresses (some are reserved).   With over 6 billion people on this planet, and as many computers, servers, network devices, and mobile devices out there, there is currently less than six per cent of the IPv4 address block remaining free.  (Heh heh, I am hogging a few myself!)

The use of NAT (Network Address Translation) technology has delayed the IPv4 crunch for several years but the increased use of smartphone devices has changed that, especially in emerging markets.

IPv6 offers 128-bit addresses.  So 2¹²⁸  (or 2 to the power of 128) ends up being 340,282,366,920,938,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 unique IP addresses!  That’s a lot more than 4.3 billion.

Since IPv4 and the Internet “started” with the US Military, it’s only natural that they will be the first to upgrade.

A directive from Vivek Kundra, the US Chief Information Officer states:

• Upgrade public/external facing servers and services (e.g. web, email, DNS, ISP services, etc) to operationally use native IPv6 by the end of FY 2012*
• Upgrade internal client applications that communicate with public Internet servers and supporting enterprise networks to operationally use native IPv6 by the end of FY 2014

* Also stated was:

To ensure interoperability, it is expected that agencies will also continue running IPv4 into the foreseeable future

The end of 2012 for external addresses?  The end of 2014 for internal servers and PCs?

That’s a pretty aggressive schedule.

It’s not as simple as adding a telephone area code overlay in North America.

All I can say is Good Luck to everyone, and let the Consultants earn the big bucks!