“Which ERP is suitable for companies with x million dollars?” Revenues size is one of the most common factors in ERP selection. It is a common question facing a manager looking to find a replacement system for their current ERP solution. The question comes down to “How large are you?” and “how scalable is the ERP software?” Let’s look at the first question of how large are you as a company? Are you “10 Million dollars in annual revenue?” or, do you have “50 Million dollars” in revenue, or 100 Million”, or “500 Million?” All of these companies may require a different level of software capabilities. This is because of a few factors. First, smaller companies tend to have fewer numbers of users. So the solutions at the lower tier usually can support up to a set number of users, be it 20 or 100 users. As database and network technologies are improving, these limits are ... (more)

Layoffs Expected at Yahoo

Yahoo's self-inflicted agony is supposed to result in a terminations announcement tomorrow when the company posts its presumably weak Q3 results, according to multiple reports. It's got around 14,300 employees. Expectations are that it will lose at least 1,000-1,500 of them before the end of the year to match its cost-cutting targets. Many people hope CEO Jerry Yang and the board are among them. The Wall Street Journal says some managers have been told to cut their operating budgets by 15% and hiring is reportedly glacier. Last week Valleywag speculated Yahoo would cut 3,000-3,500... (more)

Perhaps SOA is More Strategy Than Architecture

On Thursday, September 10th, 2009, I moderated a panel at the 1105 Group’s Enterprise Architecture Conference in Washington, DC entitled, “SOA Goes Mainstream – An Industry and Government Roadmap.”  On the panel we had two Federal government agency representatives and two industry representatives, with one of the industry representatives providing a FedEx case study as the basis for their SOA experiences. As expected, each of the panelists’ SOA experiences was varied, with no two taking an identical approach.  However, the interesting tidbit of information I garnered from modera... (more)

Berlin Is The Place To Be in February - at iStrategy 2010

New Media on Ulitzer With ever-changing media consumption patterns and the rapid growth of mobile web, social networking, behavioral targeting, vodcasting, email marketing, and viral marketing it can be tough for any company to stay ahead of the competition. Which is why the organizers of iStrategy 2010, to be held 9-10th February 2010 in Berlin, have created the event as an annual gathering for business, marketing, business development, IT and creative professionals involved in all aspects of online media and strategic management positions. Topics covered at the event, which offer... (more)

The Top 250 Players in the Cloud Computing Ecosystem

In the run-up to the next Cloud Expo, 7th Cloud Expo (November 1–4, 2010) being held at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Silicon Valley, it's time to give my earlier list a complete overhaul. Here, accordingly, is an expanded list of the most active players in the Cloud Ecosystem. I have increased it from the 'mere' 150 I identified back in January of this year, to 250, testimony – as if any were needed! – to the fierce and continuing growth of the "Elastic IT" paradigm throughout the world of enterprise computing. Editorial note: The words in quotation marks used to describe ... (more)

Court Orders Oracle and Google into Third Day of Settlement Talks

After two days of apparently futile settlement talks, Oracle and Google have been ordered to give up their Saturday and on October 1 take one more stab at resolving Oracle's claims that Google's Android operating system treads on Oracle's Java patents. Meanwhile, Oracle has been told to review its patents claims by September 29. The judge is hoping against hope it'll abandon some of its 21 claims (seven patents, three claims per patent) simply to make the case more manageable. Therefore, it's still not clear whether the trial, set to start October 31, will actually come off or be... (more)