As an analyst that’s covered the software-as-service (SaaS) market since 1999, I am briefed by vendors introducing new subscription services into the market on a regular basis. Many of these solutions provide small businesses with real solutions to real problems—whether helping you market your business, keep your books, manage projects or pay your bills (just to mention few). In many ways, SaaS...
Tag: Small Business
What is a Thin Client, and Why Should You Care?
(Originally published in Small Business Computing, August 27, 2009) Technology insiders tend to throw around technical terms and business jargon, assuming people outside the industry understand what it all means. By its nature, technology vocabulary is often confusing and complicated, and insiders often add to...
What is Unified Communications, and Why Should You Care?
(Originally published in Small Business Computing, July 27, 2009) Technology insiders tend to throw around technical terms and business jargon, assuming people outside the industry understand what it all means. By its nature, technology vocabulary is often confusing and complicated, and ins...
What’s a Business App Appliance, and Why Should You Care?
(Originally published June 18, 2009 in Small Business Computing) Technology insiders tend to throw around technical terms and business jargon, assuming people outside the industry understand what it all means. By its nature, technology vocabulary is often confusing and complicated, and insiders often add to the confusion by over...
What is Virtualization, and Why Should You Care?
What is Virtualization, and Why Should You Care? By Laurie McCabe May 7, 2009
What is Cloud Computing, and Why Should You Care?
Whais Cloud Computing — and Why Should You Care? By Laurie McCabe March 11, 2009
Boomi Widgets–Another Step Towards Simplifying Application Integration
Over the past few years, the SaaS subscription model has given small and medium businesses (SMBs) a much easier, more affordable and manageable route to deploy and use business applications. But integrating these applications isn’t always as easy as deploying them. Although things such as Web services and service-oriented-architecture (SOA) technologies promised to alleviate the situation, th...
Intuit Partner Platform: Changing the Rules of Cloud Platforms with Federated Applications
Cloud platforms, or “platforms-as-a-service” (PaaS) are quickly becoming a key channel for application developers. By writing and publishing their applications to integrate with those of a major PaaS provider, such as Salesforce.com or Microsoft, smaller developers can gain instant access to a large installed base of customers. With so many vendors creating their own clouds, however, it’s easy...
IBM Lotus Foundations: A Real Choice for Small Businesses and Partners
As I mentioned in a blog I posted after Lotusphere 2009, IBM Lotus has been reluctant to go head to head with obvious rivals, particularly Microsoft. At Lotusphere, however, the company came out swinging, declaring intentions “shatter Windows” and “change desktop economics” with Symphony, the free Lotus desktop suite, and compete aggressively against Microsoft Small Business Server (SBS) with t...
Impressions from Sage Insights 2009
Last week, I attended Insights, Sage North America’s annual partner event. I’ve attended this event for several years now, watching the company’s attempts to create a cohesive brand and strategy across its many small and medium business (SMB) solutions. At last year’s Insights, Sage had just hired Sue Swenson