Dell mini desktop set to save energy

Techworld.com, By Agam Shah, IDG News Service 

Small laptops have been hogging most of the limelight lately, but Dell's tiny new PC could bring attention back to desktops.

 

Dell CEO Michael Dell has previewed what he called "the company's smallest and most environmentally-responsible consumer desktop PC." Dell previewed the desktop as part of Earth Day at the Fortune Brainstorm conference being held in Pasadena, California.

The small form-factor desktop is 81 percent smaller and uses up to 70 percent less energy than a typical desktop mini-tower, said Anne Camden, a Dell spokeswoman.

She declined comment on hardware specifications, brand name or pricing. Details will be released later this year when the desktop is released.

The desktop, which stands on a holder, will come in recycled and recyclable packaging, Camden said.

It will most likely compete with Apple's Mac Mini and Everex's MyMiniPC, mini desktops with full computing capabilities designed to save desk space.

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Open-source ERP grows up

Open source is picking up momentum in the ERP market because of its flexibility and relatively low cost

Infoworld.com, By Robert Lemos, CIO.com, April 22, 2008 

Can open-source software find a home in mission-critical systems? Based on momentum in the open-source ERP (enterprise resource planning ) market, it's starting to look that way, particularly for IT leaders at midmarket and smaller enterprises.

While ERP systems are the heart and soul of the modern business, they've also been an IT bogeyman for the past decade. The software requires long and expensive customizations to fit the business processes of specific industries and companies. Tales of late, costly rollouts haunt IT managers looking to upgrade the way their companies currently do business. Recently, garbage-hauling giant Waste Management filed a lawsuit against enterprise-software maker SAP for $100 million to cover the cost of its failed ERP implementation.

The problem has lingered since the 1990s: In 1997, Nestle USA embarked on an ERP project that took more than six years and $200 million; the company originally intended to spend the same amount on rolling out the system to all offices internationally.

Even when rollouts are done, enterprises find themselves locked into costly licensing and maintenance agreements in a market without much price pressure dominated by two main vendors, Oracle and SAP.

Enter open-source software. Popularized by the growth of the Linux operating system, open-source software allows anyone to view and audit the source code and customize the software. ERP systems require a great deal of customization, making open source a seemingly ideal approach. Companies also appreciate the ability to audit the code that runs their critical systems.

In 2007, former CIO of Capital One Gregor Bailar told attendees at CIO's CIO-08 The Year Ahead conference that he was excited by the potential of open-source ERP systems: "I'd love to have an open-source ERP system that would just wail on what we have," Bailar said.

For small- and medium-sized businesses, the lower cost of open-source ERP systems is often the major selling point, initially. This was the case for frozen food maker Cedarlane. Going with an ERP system created by xTuple (formerly OpenMFG) saved the company "a couple of hundred thousands dollars" from the get-go, says IT director Daniel Baroco. To convince the company's owner to move the company to an ERP system, there needed to be little up front cost for the then-$40-million business, he says.

"You couldn't even put on the table that we were going to invest a million dollars in technology," Baroco said. "For emotional reasons, more than anything."

The impact of the system is obvious today, he says. The company has grown its revenues to $600 million, from $40 million, and the amount of paperwork created to fulfill orders has dropped significantly. In 2004, workers typically had to fill out 1,000 invoices per day, sometimes creating three invoices for the same order. Today, the company has reduced that number to 400 and can track food wastage; that's data it didn't have in 2004.

"I was really undereducated in the open-source thing at the time," Baroco said. "I became a fan of open-source because of this."

Small and midmarket businesses, such as Cedarlane, are the best prospects for open-source ERP implementations, says Ned Lilly, CEO of xTuple.

"The sweet spot for us is the $20 million to $50 million company that is hitting their head on the ceiling of trying to work on QuickBooks," Lilly says.

Lilly does not expect to convert many customers of traditional leaders such as SAP and Oracle, but for smaller companies that are worried about cost and the complexity of traditional implementations, open-source solutions are becoming a clear choice, he says.

Read more ....

Web 2.0 is set for spending boom

By Maggie Shiels, BBC News, San Francisco

Web 2.0 is set to be embraced by Enterprise 2.0 as businesses prepare to spend nearly $5 billion by 2013 on social networking tools.

Over half of the companies in North America and Europe see Web 2.0 as a priority for next year, a report says.

The news comes as San Francisco plays host to the Web 2.0 conference on next generation of the web.

"This is where we see the future of the web," said conference co-chair Jennifer Pahlka.

"The companies making announcements here are building that future."

Forrester, the research company which carried out the Web 2.0 survey, believes the technologies being developed and unveiled over the coming days represent "a fundamentally new way" for businesses to communicate with employees and customers.

Priority

The report found that consumer giants such as General Motors, McDonald's, Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance and Wells Fargo Bank will drive much of this growth and have already embraced tools like blogs, RSS feeds, podcasting and social networking.

Analyst Oliver Young estimates that another 56% of North American and European companies regard Web 2.0 to be a priority in 2008.

"If I wanted to be anywhere in the Web 2.0 economy, I'd want to be on the enterprise side," says Mr Young.

Forrester analysed seven Web 2.0 categories: blogs, mashups, podcasting, RSS, social networking, widgets and wikis. Of these, social networks will attract the greatest levels of investment but even then that will be dwarfed by the multi million dollar revenues the software industry commands.

Mr Young says "Advertising revenue has been hard to come by with even sites such as Facebook finding it hard to monetise their high volumes of traffic.

"Companies are now looking over their shoulder to the business market where even revenues of $50 (£25) per user per month are looking increasingly appealing"

He also points out that there will come a saturation point and investment will start to slow down as Web 2.0 applications become increasingly prevalent and absorbed into collaborative software packages.

'Disneyland for web nerds'

In the meantime, the world of business will get to see what is on offer in the Web 2.0 world as vendors take the wraps off a raft of products, services and applications during this week's conference in San Francisco.

Everything from the latest in cloud computing to blogging software and from mobile technology to rich media applications will be on show.

With around 7,000 people expected to attend, some bloggers have already nicknamed the conference a "five-day retreat to the Disneyland for grown-up web nerds".

Also taking part is a Web Mission from the UK which consists of more than 20 entrepreneurs looking to forge useful business connections and showcase British internet companies.

The businesses, which were selected from over 100 applicants, were chosen because they have the potential to expand into the US.

Microsoft Partners Wary Of Salesforce-Google CRM

By Kevin McLaughlin, ChannelWeb

5:05 PM EDT Mon. Apr. 14, 2008

Salesforce.com and Google (NSDQ:GOOG) on Monday unveiled a new offering that marries office productivity apps with CRM and looks like a pre-emptive strike against Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT)'s upcoming Dynamics CRM Live service.

The imaginatively named Salesforce for Google Apps service blends Salesforce CRM with Gmail, Google Docs, Google Talk, and Google Calendar. Salesforce is offering the service to subscribers free of charge, and this summer will introduce a $10-a-month supported version that includes end user phone support, unified billing, enhanced APIs, and wider access to third party applications.

Clarence So, chief marketing officer at Salesforce.com, San Francisco, says the deep integration between Salesforce and Google is the result of the two companies' similar approaches to delivering applications and services over the Internet.

"The real value is that now you can run your entire business in the cloud," said So.

Microsoft by June plans to roll out Dynamics CRM Live, an on-demand version of its Dynamics CRM software that will see the vendor employ its time-tested strategy of pricing competitors out of the market. Microsoft, which raised hackles last year by revealing plans to sell CRM Live directly to end users, will give partners a recurring 10 percent margin on subscription fees for all customers they refer.

Microsoft CRM partners told ChannelWeb they're not overly concerned by Salesforce for Google Apps, but some admitted they plan to keep an eye on the offerings that emerge from the relationship between the two companies.

The prevalence of Outlook and the overall difficulty of CRM implementations give Microsoft a solid position in the CRM space, but solution providers would be wise not to underestimate the Google-Salesforce collboration, says Jerry Weinstock, President and CEO at Internet Business Initiatives, Lenexa, Kans.

"The Google-Salesforce pairing is potentially powerful, and could eventually become a formidable competitor to CRM Live," said Weinstock.

But Mike Ritsema, president of i3 Business Solutions LLC, a Grand Rapids, Mich.-based solution provider, says that while the 'Googleization' of various business applications is a logical step, it's not likely to catch on with businesses that require advanced functionality.

"I'm sure that there's a ready market for the Google/SalesForce integration of technology. [But] I also believe that the there is another substantial customer set that will find the rudimentary functionality of Google Apps to be inadequate for their business requirements," said Ritsema.

Yacov Wrocherinsky, CEO of Infinity Solutions, New York, says the announcement helps create more awareness for the CRM industry as a whole, but he doesn't believe the Google-Salesforce partnership will ever threaten Microsoft's position in the market.

"Microsoft still owns the stack, and they're not going away. I don't see a lot of people using Google Apps for business and commercial tasks, and I don't envision that everyone is going to trust Google to do those things."

Daniel Duffy, CEO of Valley Network Solutions, a Microsoft Gold partner in Fresno, Calif., agrees with the idea that some businesses won't feel comfortable entrusting Google with their email, calendar or business documents.

"The industry likes to beat on Microsoft, but honestly, Google has their own challenges with customer privacy and data retention issues," said Duffy. "I believe that as more people embrace these sorts of services, we're setting ourselves up for an eventual nasty surprise when this data is compromised or abused."

The Google-Saleforce partnership is likely to continue to raise the level of competition in the CRM market, but is less of a near term threat to Microsoft, says Frank Lee, president of Microsoft CRM specialist Workopia, San Francisco.

"Salesforce and Google haven't reached critical mass yet, and they've got a long way to go," said Lee.

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IBM Recognized as "A Leader" in Service Desk Management Tools by Independent Research Firm

Tivoli Service Request Manager Cited as a Leader for Both Large Complex Organizations and Smaller Firms

Yahoo Finance, Thursday April 10, 9:00 am ET 

ARMONK, NY--(MARKET WIRE)--Apr 10, 2008 -- IBM (NYSE:IBM - News) today announced that its Tivoli Service Request Manager has been named as a Leader in Forrester's March 2008 report entitled "The Forrester Wave(TM): Service Desk Management Tools, Q1 2008."

In this comprehensive assessment, Forrester analyst Chip Gliedman evaluated 13 large and small service desk vendors across 96 criteria, with IBM being named a leader for both large complex organizations and smaller firms. 

The results of the Forrester report reflect the resources and commitment IBM has made to the Service Desk market. Tivoli's Service Request Manager tool suite has been enhanced and expanded via acquired technology and dedicated development resources, resulting in a solution that can meet the varying requirements of both large and small organizations. 

"We're extremely pleased with Tivoli's most recent positioning in Forrester's Wave report on Service Desk Management Tools," said Al Zollar, general manager, Tivoli Software. "The ease of configuration, lower migrations costs, ability to upgrade without impacting investments in personalization, as well as the modern architecture gives this solution suite the unique ability to meet a wide variety of requirements based on the challenges our customers face. With the resources we've been able to add to our development and implementations teams, we are confident Tivoli will continue to be a leading solution for the Service Desk Management market." 

Forrester evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of top service desk management tools. The evaluation focused on Product Capabilities, ITSM Road Map and Market Traction. The report summarized its evaluation of IBM Tivoli's Service Request Manager as "... an impressive ITIL-based service management solution, ... [it] is on its way to becoming a formidable competitor at the high end." 

The criteria for the Service Desk Management Tools for Large or Complex Organizations included: ability to handle large call volume; able to model large and complex workflows; integration with common systems and asset management tools; able to support the installation and support needs of large, global enterprises. 

IBM Tivoli's solution was cited in the report as being among those that offered "industrial-strength tool suites with proven track records in many global organizations of 10,000 plus employees. All have comprehensive suites of tools covering a full range of service management requirements tied to robust workflow engines and overlaying top-tier CMDB architectures." 

The criteria for Service Desk Management Tools for Smaller Firms with Less Complex Needs were different, but again IBM Tivoli's solution was named as a "leader" for this category. 

For smaller organizations, the service desk environment was characterized by: lower platform demands; greater emphasis on incident and problem management; lower requirements for training and expert resources; desk-top life cycle capabilities. IBM Tivoli's service desk tool solution scored in the report's top of the pack by its "shear breadth of functionality and capabilities."

US man gets $2.6m for domain name

BBC News

A US man has sold the domain name pizza.com for $2.6m (£1.3m) - after maintaining the site for just $20 a year since 1994.

Chris Clark, 43, accepted the offer from an anonymous bidder after a week-long online auction.

"It's crazy, it's just crazy," Mr Clark, who lives in North Potomac, Maryland, was quoted as saying by the Baltimore Sun newspaper.

"It will make a significant difference in my life, for sure," he added.

Regret 

Mr Clark registered the domain name in 1994, when the world wide web was just starting.

He had hoped that pizza.com would help to get a contract with a pizza firm for his consulting company.

He sold his business in 2000, but kept paying the $20 annual fees for maintaining the domain, which he also used to sell advertisements.

In January, Mr Clark decided to sell it after hearing that another domain - Vodka.com - was sold for $3m in 2006.

"I thought, 'Why don't I just try to see what the level of interest is?'" Mr Clark said.

"If someone's willing to pay that much for Vodka.com, maybe there's more interest in pizza.com."

The online auction was launched on 27 March. The first bid was $100, jumping to $2.6m a week later.

Having accepted the latter offer, Mr Clark hopes to get his windfall in a few days' time when the transaction is completed.

He said he now regretted not buying more domain names in the 1990s.