Another day at Interop under our belts, and more opportunities to wander through the exhibit floor and talk to quite a few vendors. This Interop conference has been, perhaps not surprisingly, all about the data center, cloud computing, network management and security, desktop and server virtualization, unified communications, and wireless / mobile strategy, with more minor focuses on WANs and WAN optimization, social media, voice and video, backup and storage. This diversity is seen on the exhibit floor as well, and is both Interop’s attraction as well as a challenge.
Day “1″ of Interop New York 2011
October 5, 2011
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On our Day 1 at Interop New York 2011 (actually the 3rd day of the conference), SMB Research arrived to find the event well in swing, with a lot of enthusiastic attendees, and the exhibit hall of more than 150 exhibitors very full, and very busy.
Living it up at SPTechCon Boston 2011
June 2, 2011
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[This post has been updated June 5, 2011 to correct some errors that an alert reader has pointed out to me.]
OK, granted, it was my own fault for coming to this, a mistake I am not likely to repeat. You go to enough conferences, and sooner or later you make the mistake of thinking that everyone knows how to put on an event that isn’t lame.
Epicor Software and Activant Solutions to be Acquired and Merged into….Epicor Software
April 7, 2011
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In an announcement following by barely 3 weeks the disclosure that Lawson Software had received an unsolicited bid from Infor Global Solutions , private equity firm Apax Partners has announced plans to acquire and merge Activant Solutions and Epicor Software into a new privately-held company, to be called Epicor Software. The new entity will have some 30,000 customers and $825M in revenues. This clearly indicates continuing interest by the investment community in the lucrative ERP marketplace, and an opportunity for larger players in the marketplace other than the two giants, SAP and Oracle .
5 Ways SMBs Can Better Influence Technology Vendors
February 24, 2011
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It has been a year since SMB Research posted “ SMBs: Get Influence Working with Large Vendors; 7 Guidelines to Ease the Process ”. As we have been working with a number of end users in 2010 and in early 2011, we are updating and refreshing this with some new insights and recommendations.
While it is undoubtedly true that small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) cannot avail themselves of all of the price breaks and other advantages of larger enterprises who have bigger IT and capex budgets, there are steps you can take to “look” big and be treated with the respect and amount of attention that you deserve: [Read more...]
Around the Horn with IBM Cognos Express, and Business Intelligence
February 4, 2011
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There were several pieces of interesting news this week in the Business Intelligence world:
- Tableau seemed to take some delight in announcing their revenues for 2010, and claiming that their growth rate outpaced that of a close competitor
- SAP announced some renaming of its BusinessObjects solutions.
- IBM announced release of Cognos Express v9.5 .
SMB Research listened in closely to IBM this past week on their announcement of IBM’s Cognos Express v9.5.
Virtual Server Backup – A Conversation with Lois Paul’s Don Jennings
August 30, 2010
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SMB Research is working with the Data Center Infrastructure Group ’s Jerome Wendt to produce a Virtual Server Backup Software Buyer’s Guide.
Talking to Jerome and other folks, it has become apparent that the virtual server backup area is rapidly growing and evolving, and there is a lot of resulting end-user interest (and confusion).
So DCIG and SMB Research are jumping into the breach, as it were, and working on a Buyer’s Guide that should be the best source yet of information on this market segment.
[Read more...]
2010 IT Planning for Small-to-Medium Business
April 23, 2010
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