Yesterday Cisco announced that it will lay off 6,500 employees and sell a manufacturing plant in Juarez, Mexico to Foxconn to shave off an additional 5,000 employees. This follows Cisco's decision to discontinue its Flip camera products and its Eos video/social platform.It wasn't long ago that Cisco was expanding into...
One of the issues facing social business and social CRM strategies is the issue of whether customers want to use social media as means for getting customer support. As of now, the phone is still the most common way to provide support. But would customers be willing to engage in...
For small and medium-sized businesses, there's no shortage of Web-based software out there designed to help them collaborate, market themselves and get things done. In fact, the selection can be a little overwhelming. This comparison chart on Wikipedia, for example, breaks down 132 project management software options for businesses. And...
One comment I hear regularly from Salesforce.com users (or potential users) are the concerns around the price, and lack of flexibility around pricing, of the Salesforce.com solution. It's an issue that I predicted would see some movement at Dreamforce last year, but one that Salesforce.com has been mostly resisting. Part...
Microsoft Office 365, the cloud-based service from Microsoft (read our take on it here), already supports Outlook/Exchange, SharePoint, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Lync. We've reported that BlackBerry Enterprise Server is coming to 365 as well. What else can you expect to see in Microsoft's cloud in the future?According to Mary...
Earlier this week Avaya announced new contact center products that integrate with social media. Avaya, one of the descendants from Ma Bell, supplies telephony hardware and software to some of the largest enterprises and telecommunications companies in the world, and they are getting seriously Facebook'd. It isn't all that surprising,...
CMOs have been chomping at the bit for a way to access Facebook content. And Gateway for Facebook, a cloud-based service from Microstrategy Inc. might just be the ticket.Jacquelyn Gavron is a Brooklyn, NY-based freelancer who specializes in usability and content for mobile and online apps. Previously, she was Content...
Amazon announced a major coup with pricing for Windows Servers on AWS today. Now you can move your licenses from a physical machine to AWS' cloud, including all Microsoft server apps, such as server versions of Exchange, SharePoint, SQL Server and Dynamics CRM.You can either purchase a new license or...
I had hoped I could be done writing and thinking about Google Plus for the week and maybe indulge in some retro-computing nostalgia for the rest of the day (among the ReadWriteWeb staff I seem to be the least excited about Plus). Instead I just read this post by Dennis...
When I started professionally covering the enterprise 2.0/social business space just over a year ago it was all very exciting. I had personally witnessed how valuable a workplace microblog/activity stream could be, and I loved learning about all the different companies and the ideas floating around.But it's easy to get...
WatchDox is extending its services to the private cloud. We've written about them in the past. They have an iPad app for document control and tracking, and have added Android and soon Blackberry versions as well.The idea is whenever you share a document, you lose control over it - anyone...
Turning live chats with your customers into actionable leads just got a tad easier thanks to Olark's intgration with SaaS CRM Salesforce.com. Olark is a customer service live chat app that plugs into your preferred chat client and lets you engage visitors to your company's Website in real time. Rather...
Yesterday the news about Oracle acquiring Fatwire motivated me to reconnect with Fatwire's CEO, Yogesh Gupta. Gupta is an interesting guy on several levels. First, he has been around tech for quite some time and can play in the major leagues. This is the second time that a company of...
Last week at Salesforce's Boston Cloudforce event, CEO Marc Benioff is moving on beyond the cloud and called it passé. Really?Yes, social and mobile networking has more buzz, and more business practice and applications these days. But hasn't the cloud enabled all these social apps to begin with? And isn't...
Want to do a better job of working together but don't want to run some desktop-oriented software? Then consider a new suite of mobile social apps available for your smartphone from DoubleDutch Software called HYVE Enterprise Suite. The suite includes seven different mobile social apps intended to be used by...
During today's roundtable, we had four Microsoft BizSpark Startup India Challenge grant finalists present. Two of them, Freshdesk and Bizosys (10Screens), are 1M/1M premium members, and we have already been working on their strategies for a few weeks.FreshdeskFirst, Girish Mathrubootham from Chennai, India, pitched Freshdesk, a SaaS company that provides...
It's been almost three years since Doc Searls posted his ten principles of VRM. Now that a few VRM project in development, he's added a new list: that give characteristics of VRM.Here's Searls' list:VRM tools are personal. As with hammers, wallets and mobile phones, people use them as individuals. They...
Tired of dealing with Salesforce.com and want a less expensive alternative? Then consider Rollbase's Automated Force.com Migration solution and associated cloud services, available now. The tool takes whatever you have stored on Force.com and transfers it, with the application logic intact, to your own datacenter or on to Rollbase's cloud....
Late last month Google launched a Gmail plug-in that looked an awful lot like popular startup service Rapportive's sidebar CRM app - but with additional functionality from Google services like Calendar. What's a little startup to do? Rapportive's plan is apparently to move faster and adds more on top of...
Atlassian, New Relic, OTRS, Pivotal Labs, Service Now, SugarCRM, and Zendesk have agreed to support a common JSON API specification for customer service applications called NetworkedHelpDesk.org.The idea is to make it possible for all applications related to a customer's experience to talk to each other, from help desk to bug...
Explore the latest in tech with our Tech News. We cut through the noise for concise, relevant updates, keeping you informed about the rapidly evolving tech landscape with curated content that separates signal from noise.
Explore tech impact in In-Depth Stories. Narrative data journalism offers comprehensive analyses, revealing stories behind data. Understand industry trends for a deeper perspective on tech's intricate relationships with society.
Empower decisions with Expert Reviews, merging industry expertise and insightful analysis. Delve into tech intricacies, get the best deals, and stay ahead with our trustworthy guide to navigating the ever-changing tech market.
