Category: WebEx


Microsoft Playing Catch-Up With Live Mesh

Posted by thinkstrategies in Cisco, Dell, EMC, Microsoft, SaaS, Salesforce.com, Software-as-a-Service, WebEx. Comments Off on Microsoft Playing Catch-Up With Live Mesh

23rd April

Microsoft is finally recognizing the fundamental ways in which people’s lives and work-styles are changing, and it as a company and its technologies must respond to these changes.

Welcome to the world of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)!

Live Mesh is Microsoft’s attempt to catch up to the Web 2.0 movement which has quickly evolved into an Enterprise 2.0 migration process in which a rapidly growing number of companies of all sizes are shifting their IT strategies from on-premise products to on-demand services.

This trend is being led by Salesforce.com and Google, and being supported by hundreds of other start-ups and established vendors, including Cisco Systems, Dell and EMC.

Salesforce.com and Google’s alliance which produced a new set of integrated services last week is the most recent challenge to Microsoft’s dominance in the workplace.

Cisco Systems has been talking about the melding together of network-centric business processes for … Read More »


Sights and Sounds at the SIIA On-Demand Conference

Posted by thinkstrategies in Adobe, Aria Systems, Cisco, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, Microsoft, Oracle, SaaS, Salesforce.com, SAP, SIIA, Software-as-a-Service, WebEx, Xactly. Comments Off on Sights and Sounds at the SIIA On-Demand Conference

12th November

Last week’s second annual SIIA On-Demand Conference was a bellwether for the state of the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) industry. Rather than being composed of the usual suspects of SaaS speakers—Salesforce.com, Microsoft, etc.—the event included an interesting mix of prominent players and start-ups who clearly demonstrated that we are well beyond the ‘why SaaS’ stage and deeply into the ‘how’ phase of this important movement.

The event opened with a packed house of over 300 attendees, many with senior executive titles, and a relatively new name to the SaaS market presenting. Donald Proctor, the Senior Vice President of Cisco Systems’ Collaboration Software Group kicked off the event promoting its vision of the next wave of inter-office SaaS solutions based on WebEx’s collaboration platform which Cisco acquired in March 2007.

Although I might suggest that this wave of inter-office SaaS solutions is well underway and … Read More »


What SAP Can Learn From Salesforce.com

21st May

In its continuing effort to outpace its competition, Salesforce.com unveiled a new “SOA as a service” strategy today.

This is the company’s latest attempt to extend its footprint across the software landscape and increase its relevance to a wider population of users, developers and partners. This move also offers another clue for how established independent (read: incumbent) software vendors (ISVs) can better position themselves in the rapidly evolving Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) market.

(By coincidence, IBM kicked off its IMPACT 2007 user conference today by spotlighting its software and services aimed at the $160 billion SOA opportunity.)

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) has become a popular software development framework aimed at making applications more responsive to business requirements. Although the hype regarding the benefits and market acceptance of SOA far exceeds the reality, there is little debate that the proper implementation of SOA can generate meaningful returns … Read More »


Why Oracle Will Buy Salesforce.com?

Posted by thinkstrategies in Cisco, Google, SaaS, Salesforce.com, WebEx. 5 comments

21st March

With the recent acquisition of WebEx by Cisco Systems, speculation has been rising that Salesforce.com may be the next major Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company to be bought. You can tell folks that you heard it from me first that the purchase will be made by Oracle within the next 18 months.

No, I don’t have any inside information. But, I can read the tea leafs and they tell me that Salesforce.com is too attractive for an even bigger player not to buy it. The software services company has over 650,000 subscribers and added 90,000 new subscribers during the most recent fiscal quarter ending in January 31.

While profits have slipped due to the company’s investments in new offerings and service infrastructure, the outlook for Salesforce.com’s services has never been better. Not only is customer receptivity growing rapidly, but Salesforce.com’s ability to penetrate new … Read More »





The Latest from THINK IT Services Blog

THINK IT Services Blog examines the business implications of the latest developments in the technology services market ranging from Cloud Computing and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) to Managed Services and other forms of 'On-Demand' services.

Tercera eBook and Webinar Identify Key Characteristics of Third Wave Cloud Consulting Leaders

Earlier this month, I had the privilege of presenting the key findings of a new ebook that I produced with Chris Barbin, the CEO/Founder...

Tercera Launches to Fund Third Wave of Cloud Consultancies

I’m pleased to be one of the initial advisors of a new venture capital and advisory services firm focused on the ‘third wave’ of...

Reshaping the Software and Services Marketplace – A Guest Commentary in E-Commerce Times

In the old information technology (IT) world, systems integration and consulting companies flourished, helping enterprises of all sizes across nearly every industry pull together...