Renee Boucher Ferguson

BOSTON-Gone is the term “hybrid” to describe SAP’s deployment model for its CRM on-demand software unveiled in February 2006. In its place is an upgraded version, CRM 2007, which has had any signs of the h-word carefully stricken from the myriad descriptive materials. SAP announced CRM 2007 Dec. 4 at its Influencer Summit here. While […]

Salesforce.com became a full-fledged Web 2.0 enterprise with the introduction on Dec. 5 of its new Facebook-like information-sharing service. With the less than handy name of Salesforce to Salesforce, the service lets users “click, connect and share data with their partners on demand,” according to company executives. The offering is essentially a portal programmed on […]

Boston—To sell its new Business ByDesign on-demand ERP suite to the midmarket, SAP envisions building what it considers the first working on-demand model for partners—a rare commodity in a world where many traditional software partners are trying to figure out the revenue and opportunities in reselling on-demand services. The downside for partners: They’ve got to […]

Business Objects may be in the process of being bought by enterprise software giant SAP, but that’s not keeping the company from pushing forward. The company is moving ahead with plans to make business intelligence capabilities ubiquitous through the enterprise, moving beyond the typical 15 percent of BI users in IT to reach business users. […]

In 1998, Dorothy Njobvu Kanjautso, a 35-year-old mother of three from the village of Lilongwe in Malawi, Africa, found herself widowed when her husband died of AIDS. She had no job and few prospects. But she had a dream. That dream came true with the loan of $133 from Opportunity International. Njobvu Kanjautso used the […]

VeriChip, along with its parent company Digital Angel and partner Receptors, is developing a bio-sensing device that would be included in a subdermal RFID chip that could lead to diabetics no longer having to stick themselves with a needle to monitor glucose levels. The companies will host an event in New York Dec. 5 to […]

Microsoft to Craft Titan as On-Demand Platform”> With Microsofts long-awaited CRM 4.0 release, better known as Titan, expected in December, Salesforce.com may finally end its designation as a party of one in the on-demand development platform category. The question is, How long will it take Microsoft, a slow-moving technology behemoth if previous releases are any […]

Oracle raised more questions about the viability of third-party application support when it released on Nov. 26 a system that enables customers to tap Oracles own computer systems to manage their installed software configurations. Unveiled at Oracles massive OpenWorld conference earlier this month, the Software Configuration Manager collects and integrates detailed and dynamic system configuration […]

SAP has had a big year. Early on in 2007 the company announced that it completed its Enterprise Services Architecture roadmap, which began in 2003 with the development of its NetWeaver integration platform and the service enablement of its applications. Then in September 2007 SAP announced Business ByDesign, a multi-year development effort that culminated in […]

Embattled SAP subsidiary TomorrowNow is ending its current customer support program as of Nov. 21, a move that could mean an interruption in service for customers that have yet to set up an alternative. TomorrowNow, which offers third-party application support, is shutting down the service that it offered on its own computers and on its […]