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Microsoft: We have services, too Microsoft has taken another baby step into on-demand services, with a bundle of small announcements that amount to a little rebranding here, and a couple of new services there. The new offerings are Office Live Workspace -- a free, personal, Web-based document storage and collaboration space hosted by Microsoft -- and a fresh edition of the company's Dynamics Live CRM product. Developer expectations run high for Google Gears Developers have big plans for Gears, the Google Inc. browser plug-in designed to provide offline access to Web-hosted applications. June 16, 11:28 a.m. PDT Google Apps manager: Google hearts IT managers With the launch of the Google Apps suite last year, Google became a provider of hosted collaboration and communication software for small and medium-size organizations, and it made clear its aspirations to lure large-company IT managers and CIOs with the suite's Premier Edition, introduced in February. This move, which puts it in direct competition with software heavyweights like Microsoft, builds on Google's first steps as an enterprise vendor years ago when it launched its first enterprise search product. May 24, 3:39 p.m. PDT Google e-mail confuses paying Apps customers Google recently confused administrators of Google Apps Premier Edition with an e-mail that misstated the number of accounts they will be billed for. May 22, 2:47 p.m. PDT Desperately seeking JotSpot Google's continued silence about JotSpot has diminished this lauded wiki product's market visibility and risks alienating existing customers at a time when interest in wikis from corporate IT buyers has hit an all-time high, analysts, users, and developers warn. May 17, 12:46 p.m. PDT Google mulls tighter link between Gmail and Docs Brains are working overtime at Google to explore ways of further integrating its e-mail and instant messaging services with its hosted productivity applications. May 16, 10:51 a.m. PDT Google scratches controversial Calendar maintenance Google has scrapped a planned 13-hour maintenance of Google Calendar that had some users confused and worried about potentially significant disruptions of the online calendaring service. April 25, 3:33 p.m. PDT SAP demonstrates A1S to select groups SAP is demonstrating a beta version of its new hosted midmarket application to select groups at the CeBIT trade show in Hanover, Germany. March 15, 2:35 p.m. PST HP, SAP further cement ties around SOA Hewlett-Packard is offering more services supporting application vendor SAP's SOA (service-oriented architecture) approach to IT as part of the companies' increasingly close relationship. January 29, 8:11 a.m. PST Oracle: On-demand world the future When it comes to Oracle Corp.'s on-demand software business, the normally outspoken vendor has tended to be somewhat reticent about how it defines both the scope and focus of its operation. Recently, however, the company has begun to talk more openly about software-as-a-service (SaaS), an approach that it sees as applicable to all Oracle offerings. November 30, 1:20 p.m. PST 2006 InfoWorld 100 Awards: Services Accenturewww.accenture.com Global ERP Implementation/Business Process Transformation Project Lead: Daniel Kirner, Senior Director, SAP Program Finance Capability Project Description: Accenture completed one of the largest and fastest SAP implementations in the services sector, replacing 450 widely distributed legacy systems inherited from former owner Andersen Worldwide with a global, single-instance SAP ERP solution. The solution integrates finance, sales, and HR systems and reporting capabilities, interfaces with 175 downstream systems such as recruiting, scheduling, payroll, and others. The radical transformation of back-office business processes saves money, improves efficiency, and allows information to flow seamlessly across global organizational boundaries. Leveraging SAP modules R/3, Business Warehouse, BCS, Portal, Human Capital Management, and CRM, Accenture deployed finance, then HR, and finally sales -- each time using an aggressive, all-at-once approach without interrupting business. Accenture implemented the SAP applications on Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition with Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition.  November 13, 3:00 a.m. PST IBM Global Services introduces packaged model IBM’s yen for using its prodigious Global Services organization to solve any and all manner of IT problems for customers is well-established. But for many enterprises — especially those without bottomless IT coffers — those Global Services contracts can be terrifyingly complicated and potentially expensive affairs. November 6, 3:00 a.m. PST Skirting Microsoft's Maginot Line As Microsoft’s Vista operating system slouches toward completion, there’s been a rising chorus of criticism from independent software vendors about Vista’s supposed strong suit: security. PatchGuard, a kernel-protection technology, is a favorite target. Aside from blocking access to the kernel for third-party products, some security firms are raising questions about whether the kernel-protection feature will even work. Latest among them is Authentium, a provider of security SaaS (software as a service) products, which said recently that a new product, VirtualATM, can shut off PatchGuard so the company could secure online banking transactions, even on infected PCs. InfoWorld Senior Editor Paul F. Roberts caught up with Authentium CEO John Sharp last week to talk about the controversy. November 6, 3:00 a.m. PST IT consultant addiction The 12-step program has become a fixture of American life. In fact, there are now so many recognized addictions — with 12-step programs to match — that you’d think we’d run out of new ones to treat. August 28, 3:00 a.m. PDT Salesforce adds Google Adword Integration Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff used a dinner presentation to Boston-area customers, analysts and members of the press Monday evening to announce a new search marketing service that will allow companies to manage Google AdWords marketing campaigns directly from Salesforce's CRM software. August 21, 10:30 p.m. PDT What keeps IT up at night? Look in the mirror: those bags under your eyes, that sallow skin, the haunted look. You must work in IT. Between keeping the network running and dealing with hackers, slackers, and clueless managers, it's a wonder you get any rest at all. July 17, 3:00 a.m. PDT InfoWorld CTO 25: Frank Modruson Business needs always change, but it’s hard to focus on meeting them when you’re distracted by operations. Accenture CIO Frank Modruson came up with a novel solution: He moved his operations staff -- about 80 percent of the IT headcount -- into its own subsidiary, leaving the remaining 20 percent (including him) to focus on engineering and new development directly connected to business requirements. “Projects and planning are very different kinds of work than operations,” he says. June 5, 3:00 a.m. PDT Outsourcing vs. shared services There are two current trends in IT with diametrically opposed points of view that are worth looking at. The first is shared services, wherein the IT organization becomes the internal service provider to the rest of the company. The second is combined business process and IT outsourcing all done under one roof -- although, of course, that roof is somewhere other than at the company. May 30, 3:00 a.m. PDT SAP adds on-demand to CRM module Business software maker SAP AG will unveil a module for its hosted CRM offering at its Sapphire customer event next week. May 10, 12:26 p.m. PDT Are your software services compliant? In case you haven’t noticed, just about every part of the IT infrastructure must comply with some regulation or other. April 25, 3:00 a.m. PDT Is extreme outsourcing and consolidation worth it? Last week, Accenture signed a seven-year applications outsourcing deal with Unilever to run all of Unilever’s application development, implementation, and support. Unilever believes it can save approximately $700,000 in the first year. April 18, 3:00 a.m. PDT Turning outsourcing into a plus takes time and skill I made my annual trip to Florida’s Walt Disney World last week. I’d been there as a kid, but funny how it wasn’t till 30 years later that Disney’s “small world” theme really sank in -- at the Gartner Outsourcing Summit. April 14, 3:00 a.m. PDT Accenture profit dives on UK health system woes IT services giant Accenture reported a steep drop in its second-quarter profit due to a charge to cover expected losses from its contracts to upgrade the U.K. National Health Service (NHS) IT infrastructure. March 29, 6:42 a.m. PST Edge Dynamics puts SaaS on a critical mission Edge Dynamics, a company that analyzes transactional data for the pharmaceutical industry, is planting its flag as the first SaaS (software as a service) provider to offer a mission-critical capability in a hosted model. March 28, 3:00 a.m. PST > Professional services > Hosted services |
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