Data privacy should be paramount in the minds of today’s consumer. According to the Cloud Industry Forum 55 per cent of businesses cite privacy as a major concern when it comes to Cloud deployments. One would therefore think that this would be uppermost in the minds of solution providers.

But according to Simon Bain, CTO of Simplexo, Google like most of its competitors within the ‘cloud storage’ market, seems to believe that it has a right to, at the very least, use its customers’ files for its own benefit.

"Google has followed its competitors in using a clause which shows total disregard for its customers. It is about time that service companies such as Google and Dropbox started to respect their users and not treat them with such a cavalier attitude,” he stated.

Google terms state: "When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes that we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content."

Simon continued: “These words are not very different to those of Dropbox, Box.Net, Microsoft and Apple. So why do we use these services?”

“Well as an individual there is not too much to worry about. In most cases there is no problem with one of these companies creating a derivative work from your own. However, as corporate life becomes much more complicated and people access and share documents in a more distributed and mobile manner, this is simply not an option.”

“If you pass files across to a service which has terms similar to this from Google then you may well be breaking national or state laws covering data privacy and data protection. At the very least you are opening up your company to information theft and copying of corporate data. Worst still you are potentially passing your customers’ data and information across to an insecure third party.”

"Cloud storage services have a real part to play in today’s working environment. However users need to be aware of all of the terms and conditions and also the security aspect of where they are housing their files. This clause is used, not because Google or Dropbox want to copy the files – although they can – but because they cannot be sued if they have a data breach and your files are stolen,” he added.

“And let’s not forget that Dropbox changed its terms of use soon after a major security breach late in 2011 so perhaps other suppliers should follow that route!” he concluded.

About Simplexo Ltd

Simplexo Ltd is focused on delivering a new experience in federated search, and is founded on a solid history in electronic document management and retrieval. Today, Simplexo technology is delivering value to individuals and organisations in many industry sectors, including financial services, healthcare and local government.

49 companies from 17 countries represented

London - The finalists for the European IT Excellence Awards 2012 – the leading pan-European awards event for Solution Provider and Systems Integrator channels – were announced today by IT Europa. A total of 49 companies from 17 European countries have made the finals. The winners will be announced at the European IT Excellence 2012 Awards Dinner at the Sheraton Park Lane Hotel, London on 30th May 2012.

The European IT Excellence Awards are the only pan-European awards which recognise the crucial role that Solution Providers and Systems Integrators play in the delivery of real world solutions, and attracted entries from 23 countries. Entries were submitted by the Solution Providers and Systems Integrators describing the solution provided. Each entry had to be supported by an endorsement by the client.

“The quality of entries was extremely high and demonstrated the depth of talent in the European IT channel,” stated Alan Norman, Managing Director of IT Europa. “Finalists have come from right across Europe with Central and Eastern European countries well represented.”

“The judges were impressed with the quality of all the entries and the obvious work that had gone into preparing them,” stated John Chapman, Editorial Director at IT Europa. “Each year we are encouraged by the tremendous enthusiasm from the channel for such an awards event. We were inundated with enquiries, ranging from requests for advice on how to make a good entry to emails of support for what we were doing with the event. What is so exciting and uplifting is the real skill and ingenuity shown by the companies in many of the solutions. Our judges have a lot of experience in the IT industry and sitting on such judging panels, so to have such comments as ‘superb’ and ‘incredible’ from them was great to hear.”

There were 12 categories for Solution Provider solutions from SMB to major enterprise and Government to Managed Service provision. As well as the Solution Provider categories, there are four supplier categories for which Solution Providers nominate their distributor, service provider or hardware and software supplier for the support they provide through their partner programs.

“The entries in the categories for suppliers showed that these companies have been putting a tremendous amount of effort into their channel development activities, particularly in helping partners accelerate their businesses through the recovering economic climate experienced in 2011,” commented John Chapman. “The entries detailed the sales and marketing activities undertaken in partnership with the supplier and showed the results as far as new business development and market penetration.”

Solution Provider Categories – Finalists

SMB

Transformation Solution of the Year

• Green Fields Technology
• Lease-Desk
• Northdoor plc

Technology Solution of the Year

• Avangate
• Blue Rock Systems
• Greenwall Systems
• KoçSistem Bilgi ve Iletisim Hizmetleri A.S.
• PureNet

Enterprise

Transformation Solution of the Year

• Azzurri Communications
• Cisilion Limited
• Combis
• Datapolis
• HCL AXON

Technology Innovation of the Year

• Atlas Products International
• Azzurri Communications
• Critical Software, SA
• Isotrak Ltd
• Unicorn Systems a.s.

Datacentre Solution of the Year

• ACP IT Solutions GmbH
• Backup Technology
• EACS Limited

Vertical Solution of the Year

• ACE enterprise Slovakia
• Comtact Ltd
• m-hance
• Sigma Consultancy
• Unicorn Systems a.s.

Mobility

Mobility Solution of the Year

• ACE enterprise Slovakia
• Cisilion Limited
• EACS Limited

Government

Citizen Engagement Solution of the Year

• Berkley, part of The Livvy’s Group
• COMP-2000 d.o.o.
• SIVECO Romania

Information Management Solution of the Year

• COMP-2000 d.o.o.
• INSOFT Development & Consulting
• SIVECO Romania

IT Innovation Solution of the Year

• ACP IT Solutions GmbH
• Cisilion Limited
• SIVECO Romania

Managed Service

Managed Support Service

• 360 Solutions
• Azzurri Communications
• Berkley (part of The Livvy’s Group)
• Custard Technical Services

Hosted / Cloud Solution of the Year Atlanta Technology

• Azzurri Communications
• Backup Technology
• Green Fields Technology

Supplier Categories – Finalists

Distributor of the Year

• Avnet
• Hammer
• Info Quest Technologies S.A.
• Marvel Distribution
• VIP Computers Ltd
• Wick Hill

Service Provider of the Year

• intY
• Rise
• Unicorn Universe a.s.

Hardware Vendor of the Year

• Dell
• EMC
• Quantum

Software Vendor of the Year

• AvePoint
• Ipswitch Network Management Division
• Microsoft
• nlyte Software
• Red Hat

The European IT Excellence 2012 Awards Dinner, at which the winners will be announced, will be held on 30th May 2012 at the Sheraton Park Lane Hotel, London. For further information visit: www.iteawards-it.com

About IT Europa

IT Europa is the leading provider of strategic business intelligence, news and analysis on the European IT marketplace and the primary channels that serve it. It publishes European channel publications such as the IT Europa Newsletter, markets a range of database reports and organises European conferences and events for the IT and Telecoms sectors. For further details visit: www.iteuropa.com

For further information contact:

Alan Norman

Tel: +44 (0) 1895 454 604

Email: alan.norman@iteuropa.com

Copyright ® 2011 by CRM HELP DESK Software .com. All Rights Reserved.

There are two common misconceptions about online banking security which are holding financial institutions back from offering their customers the best services possible. This is according to Hilding Arrehed, Director Worldwide Professional Services at ActivIdentity®, and its parent company HID Global, trusted leader in solutions for the delivery of secure identity.

Arrehed comments: “Having had the pleasure to work with banks around the world to help them design and implement security solutions for their online banking systems, my colleagues and I have learned a few things about what to do to deliver secure yet user friendly solutions.”

“For starters, as long as it makes customers feel secure and enables them to access more (preferably all) banking services online, it’s okay to trade off a small amount of convenience in the user login experience.”

Arrehed provides suggestions on how to use advanced security technologies of today to build an online banking system that offers strong security, whilst maintaining high convenience and access to as many services as you want to make available:

1. At the time of log in, let customers choose which authentication method to use based on what they intend to use the service for.
2. Give customers the option to configure their own security levels.
3. Let customers decide which type of device to connect from.
4. Integrate the online banking system and its security with your other operations to give customers a consistent sense of your approach to security.
5. Let customers use the same security credential as they use for online banking when they access other bank services.
6. Give customers good support the way they want it. Through FAQ on the website, online chat, telephone, email, face to face or by letter.

One typical misconception in online banking is that security begins and ends with securely authenticating account access.

“That’s not the way I have learnt to look at it. The real risk for online banking customers is that someone steals money from their accounts. It therefore makes a lot of sense to focus more on ways to secure the actual money transfers than just the access to the service,” continues Arrehed.

Based on his experience with successful online banks, Arrehed says banks have done just that and he shares a few recommendations they gave:

1. Make it as easy as possible. Only ask for transaction signing when money is transferred to accounts other than the customers’ own accounts and allow transactions to be batched.
   
2. Use a secure but risk-appropriate technology to carry out the transaction signing. Smart cards, tokens, soft tokens and SMS text messages are all good ways to provide electronic transaction signing.
   
3. Make sure that it is clear to the user what is being electronically signed. This is to prevent the risk of man-in-the-middle attacks which is particularly important now given the recent attacks on trusted Certificate Authority providers and hacks of the session security protocol mechanisms (SSL/TLS) used by our web browsers.
   
4. Store the transaction data including the customer’s electronic signature in a secure tamper-evident audit database for archiving purposes. It can be very useful to be able to prove that a money transfer was correctly carried out and approved many years after it happened.
   

Arrehed concludes: “Every bank obviously has its own advantages, challenges and security needs. Your security solution, including authentication and money transfer approval mechanisms, therefore needs to be specifically defined to meet those needs.”

About ActivIdentity

ActivIdentity, a global leader in identity assurance, enables customers to prove and establish trust in a person’s identity when accessing resources on the network. The business’s strong authentication and smart card solutions are relied upon by more agencies, including the U.S. Department of Defense, than any other provider, and has issued more than 100 million credentials to enterprise, government and commerce customers. ActivIdentity is headquartered in Silicon Valley, California. ActivIdentity is part of HID Global, an ASSA ABLOY Group brand. For more information, visit www.actividentity.com.

Copyright ® 2011 by CRM HELP DESK Software .com. All Rights Reserved.

WHEN: Feb 5-8, 2012

eXtremeCRM is ALL about building technical capacity so you can keep driving phenomenal CRM growth!

eXtremeCRM 2012 Berlin will deliver 300 – 400 level technical content in our Deploy and Extend tracks geared towards the technical people in your organization.  Here are just a few of the highlights!

We have a great line up of speakers from the Microsoft Dynamics CRM product team in Redmond!

Mike Ehrenberg, Microsoft Technical Fellow and Chief Architect for Microsoft Dynamics will deliver a technical vision keynote giving insights to the future of Microsoft technologies.

Craig Dewar, Director, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Product Management and Eric Boocock, Sr. Technical Product Manager will to go deep on the recent fall release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 (R7) and the future roadmap of Microsoft Dynamics CRM!

Murat Ozturan, Principal Program Manager Lead, will also be in Berlin to deliver technical sessions.

Marco Amoedo and Fadi El-Hennawy, both expert Technology Specialists from Microsoft EMEA will be presenting as well.

We also have a superior group of technical experts from within the Microsoft Dynamics community, who will be speaking including Ramon Tebar Bueno (Barclays), Sebastian Waksmundzki (AlfaPeople), Giorgio Garcia-Agreda (Crionet) Matt Parks (Avanade), Shan McArthur (ADXStudio), Jakub (Kuba) Skalbania (Netwise Sp. z.o.o.) and Dino Esposito, well know author and .Net expert. And the list keeps growing…

There is a fully packed agenda that can benefit partners and customers alike – here are just a few of the highlights:

• Fall release (R7) plus a look ahead at R8 and beyond
• Azure & Microsoft Dynamics CRM Better Together
• Web Services & Code Generation Deep Dive
• Advanced SharePoint Integration
• Agile Project Management with SureStep
• Software Development Lifecycle with Microsoft Dynamics CRM
• Silverlight & Microsoft Dynamics CRM Development Tips & Tricks
• JavaScript Best Practices
• Outlook Client: Deployment, Performance & Security
• Patterns & Practices

There is not a better opportunity to go eXtreme in building your technical capacity! Don’t miss this once a year chance to build your skills.

For more information: http://extremecrm.com/eXtremeCRM2012BerlinH.aspx

Copyright ® 2011 by CRM HELP DESK Software .com. All Rights Reserved.

3M, ASG Software, CA Technologies, Capgemini, Cisco, Citrix, EMC, Gale Technologies, IBM, Jericho Systems, Morphlabs, Red Hat, SAP, Software AG, TELUS, and Others Collaborate on Standard for Deploying Interoperable Cloud Applications

The OASIS international consortium has launched a new open standards initiative to enhance the portability of cloud applications and services. The OASIS Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications (TOSCA) Technical Committee will advance an interoperability standard that will make it easier to deploy cloud applications without vendor lock-in, while maintaining application requirements for security, governance, and compliance.

"IDC’s research shows cloud initiatives are top priorities for many enterprise IT teams," says Mary Johnston Turner, IDC Research Vice President, Enterprise Systems Management Software. "The goal of these cloud programs is to reduce costs and improve business agility by creating highly flexible IT environments that can quickly respond to changing business priorities. To date, however, most cloud implementations have been unable to easily migrate applications across heterogeneous public and private infrastructure resources. TOSCA’s aim is to enable broad cloud portability by providing an open standard to describe a complex application running on a complex environment. This is a critical missing link for customers that want to take full advantage of hybrid cloud architectures and the full range of available cloud services."

TOSCA will enable the interoperable description of application and infrastructure cloud services, the relationships between parts of the service, and the operational behavior of these services (e.g., deploy, patch, shutdown)–independent of the supplier creating the service, and any particular cloud provider or hosting technology. TOSCA will also make it possible for higher-level operational behavior to be associated with cloud infrastructure management.

"By improving service and application portability in a vendor-neutral ecosystem, TOSCA will streamline the migration of existing applications to the cloud as well as cloud-bursting," said Paul Lipton of CA Technologies, co-chair of the OASIS TOSCA Technical Committee. "It could also facilitate the evolution towards more dynamic, multi-cloud provider applications."

"TOSCA will be the first standard to describe IT services that go beyond infrastructure as a service. It will define service templates across *aaS layers, connecting them to the resource abstraction layer," added Simon Moser of IBM, who also co-chairs the TOSCA Committee.

An initial draft specification for TOSCA was jointly authored by Capgemini, CA Technologies, Cisco, Citrix, EMC, IBM, NetApp, PwC, Red Hat, SAP AG, Software AG, Virtunomic, and WSO2. This specification will be contributed to the OASIS TOSCA Technical Committee for further development and advancement within the open standards process.

"Similar to the advent of the World Wide Web, cloud computing is creating new possibilities and enabling more efficient, flexible, open and collaborative computing models," said Laurent Liscia, executive director, OASIS. "Having open standards around cloud will help achieve an IT environment with fewer boundaries, increase the speed of adoption and add a new level of flexibility. The beneficiaries of TOSCA will be consumers, developers and providers of cloud-based solutions."

Support for TOSCA

ASG
"Freedom of choice is part of ASG DNA. Being able to participate in the elaboration of the TOSCA standard is for us a fantastic opportunity to ensure our current and future customers take advantage of seamless interoperability of Cloud environments." –Pascal Vitoux, Senior VP, Development

CA Technologies
"With this effort, OASIS is breaking new ground with the first significant standard focused on the lifecycle of cloud applications and services across a wide range of infrastructure platforms. TOSCA shows great potential to facilitate higher levels of cloud application and service portability without vendor lock-in, which is what our customers need to achieve the full benefits of cloud computing." –Adam Famularo, General Manager, Enterprise and Cloud Solutions

Capgemini
"As one of the market leaders in SaaS and cloud computing, Capgemini is well versed in the chal-lenges of cloud computing. We are delighted to see the industry coming together to help drive standardisation and interoperability in the provisioning and management of next generation envi-ronments."–Steve Jones, Global Head of Master Data Management

Gale Technologies
"Gale Technologies applauds the creation of the TOSCA Technical Committee and looks forward to working with fellow committee members to advance the open standards that will facilitate out-of-the-box interoperability between cloud technologies. We fully expect that TOSCA will enable complex automation and orchestration between cloud applications, services, and infrastructure, and will ultimately accelerate the adoption of cloud technologies, which has been hampered thus far by the lack of open standards for interoperability." –James Thomason, CTO

IBM
"This effort is about helping organizations to extend their business leveraging model-driven Cloud Service Management – using open standards – to get the greatest benefits from cloud. TOSCA ena-bles standardized development, deployment and management of Cloud Services across develop-ment-, test-, acceptance- and production environments hosted on a single Cloud or multiple Clouds." –Gerd Breiter, IBM Distinguished Engineer

Morphlabs
"Cloud users today are making large investments migrating their businesses to the cloud, and, given our history and commitment to removing barriers to efficient computing, it’s exciting for Morphlabs to contribute expertise to the development of standards that will help extend our customer’s investment into the future." –Lee Thompson, CTO

Red Hat
"Red Hat’s ongoing work in the cloud is focused around providing powerful open cloud technolo-gies and enabling an ecosystem of developers, tools, scripts and applications that can interoperate across public and private clouds. TOSCA’s efforts to contribute to an open approach for cloud environments align well with our cloud goals, and we feel this organization will provide benefits for many enterprises looking to deploy open clouds today." –Scott Crenshaw, VP, Cloud Business Unit

SAP AG
"As one of the initial co-authors of the TOSCA input specification, SAP is pleased to see it advance towards industry standardization. SAP is committed to helping its customers run enterprise software on cloud infrastructures, and the TOSCA specification will enable customers to enjoy more cloud choices through easier portability between clouds." –Claus von Riegen, Program Director, Industry Standards and Open Source

Software AG
"Software AG has been closely involved at the forefront of leading industry standards, recognizing the need for interoperable and portable solutions for our customers. A standard and interoperable way to describe cloud applications, portable across disparate cloud providers, is essential for the success of cloud applications of the next generation and for smoother migration of existing applications to the cloud. As a co-author and co-submitter of the TOSCA specification to OASIS, we are happy to see the TC work launched successfully." –Hans-Christoph Rohland, Senior VP, R&D

TELUS
"With the ongoing propagation of ‘Cloud Computing’ and expected ubiquity of this paradigm, a standard mechanism for customers to avoid vendor lock-in and to be enabled to churn is in their best interest. A day may come when governments mandate ‘Cloud Portability’ in a similar fashion as telephone number portability of decades past. TELUS intends to take a proactive stance in pre-paring for the projected future mode of operations in this area." –Shane Logan, Director, Services Enablement

About OASIS:

OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit, international consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of open standards for the global information society. OASIS promotes industry consensus and produces worldwide standards for cloud computing, business transactions, security, privacy, SOA, the Smart Grid, content technologies, emergency management, and other applications. OASIS open standards offer the potential to lower cost, stimulate innovation, grow global markets, and protect the right of free choice of technology. OASIS members broadly represent the marketplace of public and private sector technology leaders, users, and influencers. The consortium has more than 5,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries.
http://www.oasis-open.org

Copyright ® 2011 by CRM HELP DESK Software .com. All Rights Reserved.

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.

Copyright ® 2011 by CRM HELP DESK Software .com. All Rights Reserved.

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced it has launched a new mobile app on salesforce.com’s AppExchange Mobile, extending the marketplace built for the social enterprise.

FinancialForce Timecards for the iPhone is among the first apps to leverage AppExchange Mobile, tapping into the power of the proven Force.com platform, salesforce.com’s social enterprise platform for employee social apps.

San Mateo, CA — FinancialForce Timecards for the iPhone helps professional services organizations stay connected no matter where they work.

Completely integrated with FinancialForce PSA and Salesforce Chatter, FinancialForce Timecards taps into the social, mobile and open capabilities of cloud computing, helping customers transform into social enterprises.

FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company, today announced it has launched a new mobile app on salesforce.com’s AppExchange Mobile, extending the marketplace built for the social enterprise. FinancialForce Timecards for the iPhone is among the first apps to leverage AppExchange Mobile, tapping into the power of the proven Force.com platform, salesforce.com’s social enterprise platform for employee social apps. FinancialForce Timecards for the iPhone is currently available for test drive on AppExchange Mobile to all users of FinancialForce Professional Services Automation (PSA), FinancialForce.com’s leading services management application based on Force.com.

FinancialForce Timecards for the iPhone leverages the form factor of the iPhone and unique capabilities of iOS allowing professional services organizations to stay connected while on the road or at a customer’s site. With FinancialForce Timecards for the iPhone, consultants can quickly and easily enter their time, view the status of timecards, match time to each assignment and post to project walls enabled by Salesforce Chatter. Because timecards are collected more quickly, the downstream activities become more efficient including billing, project reporting and resource management. Additionally, consultants utilizing Chatter on the project replace emails, voice mails and conference calls with Chatter streams that become part of the audit trail for each project. This increases awareness of all the team members involved with the project, making the team more efficient and able to provide a higher level of service to clients.

FinancialForce Timecards for the iPhone is free to all FinancialForce PSA customers and requires the latest release, FinancialForce PSA Summer ’11.

About the Force.com Platform and AppExchange

Force.com is the trusted social enterprise platform for building and running any employee app in the cloud. Force.com powers the Salesforce CRM apps, the more than 250,000 custom apps used by salesforce.com customers such as Japan Post, Kaiser Permanente, KONE, and Sprint Nextel and the more than 1,300 ISV apps built by partners such as BMC, FinancialForce.com and Fujitsu.

About FinancialForce.com

FinancialForce.com is the cloud applications company. We focus 100% on building business applications for Force.com, the world’s leading cloud computing platform from salesforce.com. Our applications include Accounting, Billing, Professional Services Automation (PSA) and Services Resource Planning (SRP). We serve fast-growing organizations and dynamic enterprises, helping them to align Finance, Sales and Service in a way that enables profitable growth. We are backed by two of the biggest and best players in the business, UNIT4 and salesforce.com.

Copyright ® 2011 by CRM HELP DESK Software .com. All Rights Reserved.

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.

Copyright ® 2011 by CRM HELP DESK Software .com. All Rights Reserved.

The top 10 IT trends and technologies that are going to be most important for you in 2012, include:

(click image to download larger chart)

STRATEGIC IT Technologies – in Detail

1. Media Tablets and Beyond. Choose between various form factors when it comes to mobile computing. No single platform, form factor or technology will dominate and companies should expect to manage a diverse environment with two to four intelligent clients through 2015. So, you and other IT leaders need a managed diversity program to address multiple form factors, employees bringing their own smartphones and tablet devices into the workplace. You and other companies will have to come up with two mobile strategies: one strategy to address the business to employee (B2E) scenario and another strategy to address the business to consumer (B2C) scenario. On the B2E front, your IT must consider social goals, business goals, financial goals, and risk management goals. On the B2C front, which includes business to business (B2B) activities to support consumers, your IT needs to address a number of additional issues such as surfacing and managing APIs to access enterprise information and systems, integration with third-party applications, integration with various partners for capabilities such as search and social networking, and delivery through app stores.
2. Mobile-Centric Applications and Interfaces.   The user interface (IU) paradigm in place for more than 20 years is changing. UIs with windows, icons, menus, and pointers will be replaced by mobile-centric interfaces emphasizing touch, gesture, search, voice and video. Applications themselves are likely to shift to more focused and simple apps that can be assembled into more complex solutions. These changes will drive the need for new user interface design skills. Building application user interfaces that span a variety of device types, potentially from many vendors, requires an understanding of fragmented building blocks and an adaptable programming structure that assembles them into optimized content for each device. Mobile consumer application platform tools and mobile enterprise platform tools are emerging to make it easier to develop in this cross-platform environment. HTML5 will also provide a long term model to address some of the cross-platform issues. By 2015, mobile Web technologies will have advanced sufficiently, so that half the applications that would be written as native apps in 2011 will instead be delivered as Web apps.
3. Contextual and Social User Experience. Context-aware computing uses information about an end-user or objects environment, activities, connections and preferences to improve the quality of interaction with that end-user or object. A contextually aware system anticipates the user’s needs and proactively serves up the most appropriate and customized content, product or service. Context can be used to link mobile, social, location, payment and commerce. It can help build skills in augmented reality, model-driven security and ensemble applications. Through 2013, context aware applications will appear in targeted areas such as location-based services, augmented reality on mobile devices, and mobile commerce. On the social front, the interfaces for applications are taking on the characteristics of social networks. Social information is also becoming a key source of contextual information to enhance delivery of search results or the operation of applications.
4. Internet of Things. The Internet of Things (IoT) is a concept that describes how the Internet will expand as sensors and intelligence are added to physical items such as consumer devices or physical assets and these objects are connected to the Internet. The vision and concept have existed for years, however, there has been an acceleration in the number and types of things that are being connected and in the technologies for identifying, sensing and communicating. These technologies are reaching critical mass and an economic tipping point over the next few years. Key elements of the IoT include: – Embedded sensors: Sensors that detect and communicate changes are being embedded, not just in mobile devices, but in an increasing number of places and objects. – Image Recognition: Image recognition technologies strive to identify objects, people, buildings, places logos, and anything else that has value to consumers and enterprises. Smartphones and tablets equipped with cameras have pushed this technology from mainly industrial applications to broad consumer and enterprise applications. – Near Field Communication (NFC) payment: NFC allows users to make payments by waving their mobile phone in front of a compatible reader. Once NFC is embedded in a critical mass of phones for payment, industries such as public transportation, airlines, retail and healthcare can explore other areas in which NFC technology can improve efficiency and customer service.
5. App Stores and Marketplaces. Application stores by Apple and Android provide marketplaces where hundreds of thousands of applications are available to mobile users. Gartner forecasts that by 2014, there will be more than 70 billion mobile application downloads from app stores every year. This will grow from a consumer-only phenomena to an enterprise focus. With enterprise app stores, the role of IT shifts from that of a centralized planner to a market manager providing governance and brokerage services to users and potentially an ecosystem to support entrepreneurs. What this means that you should use a managed diversity approach to focus on app store efforts and segment apps by risk and value.
6. Next-Generation Analytics. Analytics is growing along three key dimensions: 1. From traditional offline analytics to in-line embedded analytics. This has been the focus for many efforts in the past and will continue to be an important focus for analytics. 2. From analyzing historical data to explain what happened to analyzing historical and real-time data from multiple systems to simulate and predict the future. 3. Over the next three years, analytics will mature along a third dimension, from structured and simple data analyzed by individuals to analysis of complex information of many types (text, video, etc…) from many systems supporting a collaborative decision process that brings multiple people together to analyze, brainstorm and make decisions. Analytics is also beginning to shift to the cloud and exploit cloud resources for high performance and grid computing. In 2011 and 2012, analytics will increasingly focus on decisions and collaboration. The new step is to provide simulation, prediction, optimization and other analytics, not simply information, to empower even more decision flexibility at the time and place of every business process action.
7. Big Data. The size, complexity of formats and speed of delivery exceeds the capabilities of traditional data management technologies; it requires the use of new or exotic technologies simply to manage the volume alone. Many new technologies are emerging, with the potential to be disruptive (e.g., in-memory DBMS). Analytics has become a major driving application for data warehousing, with the use of MapReduce outside and inside the DBMS, and the use of self-service data marts. One major implication of big data is that in the future users will not be able to put all useful information into a single data warehouse. Logical data warehouses bringing together information from multiple sources as needed will replace the single data warehouse model.
8. In-Memory Computing. Gartner sees huge use of flash memory in consumer devices, entertainment equipment and other embedded IT systems. In addition, it offers a new layer of the memory hierarchy in servers that has key advantages — space, heat, performance and ruggedness among them. Besides delivering a new storage tier, the availability of large amounts of memory is driving new application models. In-memory applications platforms include in-memory analytics, event processing platforms, in-memory application servers, in-memory data management and in-memory messaging. Running existing applications in-memory or refactoring these applications to exploit in-memory approaches can result in improved transactional application performance and scalability, lower latency (less than one microsecond) application messaging, dramatically faster batch execution and faster response time in analytical applications. As cost and availability of memory intensive hardware platforms reach tipping points in 2012 and 2013, the in-memory approach will enter the mainstream.
9. Extreme Low-Energy Servers. The adoption of low-energy servers — the radical new systems being proposed, announced and marketed by mostly new entrants to the server business –will take the buyer on a trip backward in time. These systems are built on low-power processors typically used in mobile devices. The potential advantage is delivering 30 times or more processors in a particular server unit with lower power consumption vs. current server approaches. The new approach is well suited for certain non-compute intensive tasks such as map/reduce workloads or delivery of static objects to a website. However, most applications will require more processing power, and the low-energy server model potentially increases management costs, undercutting broader use of the approach.
10. Cloud Computing. Cloud is a disruptive force and has the potential for broad long-term impact in most industries. While the market remains in its early stages in 2011 and 2012, it will see the full range of large enterprise providers fully engaged in delivering a range of offerings to build cloud environments and deliver cloud services. Oracle, IBM and SAP all have major initiatives to deliver a broader range of cloud services over the next two years. As Microsoft continues to expand its cloud offering, and these traditional enterprise players expand offerings, users will see competition heat up and enterprise-level cloud services increase. Enterprises are moving from trying to understand the cloud to making decisions on selected workloads to implement on cloud services and where they need to build out private clouds. Hybrid cloud computing which brings together external public cloud services and internal private cloud services, as well as the capabilities to secure, manage and govern the entire cloud spectrum will be a major focus for 2012. From a security perspective new certification programs including FedRAMP and CAMM will be ready for initial trial, setting the stage for more secure cloud computing. On the private cloud front, IT will be challenged to bring operations and development groups closer together using "DevOps" concepts in order to approach the speed and efficiencies of public cloud service providers.

Definition of Strategic Technology

Strategic technology = "a technology with “the potential for significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years. Factors that denote significant impact include a high potential for disruption to IT or the business, the need for a major dollar investment, or the risk of being late to adopt. “

“A strategic technology may be an existing technology that has matured and/or become suitable for a wider range of uses. It may also be an emerging technology that offers an opportunity for strategic business advantage for early adopters or with potential for significant market disruption in the next five years. These technologies impact the organization’s long-term plans, programs and initiatives.”

 

source: gartner.com, press release

Copyright ® 2011 by CRM HELP DESK Software .com. All Rights Reserved.

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.

Copyright ® 2011 by CRM HELP DESK Software .com. All Rights Reserved.