Interesting read on competing clouds Max Effgen, March 13, 2009 Amazon, Microsoft improve their cloud computing game Interesting read on AWS and Azure offerings. No surprise that Microsoft is offering SQL Server. One thought though is how many less sophisticated organizations run much of their business on Excel or Access. Is this really going to attract those customers? The AWS… Continue Reading
Amazon AWS getting serious about the enterprise? Max Effgen, March 12, 2009 Amazon EC2 Introduces Reserved Instances This is a great pricing model for budgets that have the “use it or lose it” money. It might entice enterprises to try the service without the recurring payments and unexpected fees that many “As A Service” providers use. Full disclosure: The wife works at… Continue Reading
Enterprise computing channels Max Effgen, March 3, 2009 The reality of enterprise computing today is not just the migration to the cloud. Rather, it is a range of IT options: First is within the enterprise’s data center, second is in a partner hosting data center, and third is in the cloud. What option is best? Not to sound… Continue Reading
Integration requirements for CRM, Challenges and opportunities Max Effgen, March 2, 2009 Challenges and opportunities Integration outside the enterprise firewall needs to encompass the capabilities of the organization. Larger enterprises have investments in SOA and ESB providing them with new capabilities that can be utilized. Many organizations without these capabilities will find that standard point to point integration will more than meet… Continue Reading
Integration requirements for CRM, CRM to BI Max Effgen, February 27, 2009 From CRM to Business Intelligence/Analytics While the two previous requirements focused on the sales force automation areas of CRM, integration with business intelligence and analytics tools could and often cover the spectrum of CRM applications: Sales, marketing, customer service, etc. Each department has their own tools and key performance indicators…. Continue Reading
Integration requirements for CRM, ERP to CRM Max Effgen, February 26, 2009 From ERP to CRM Product and Price List data from ERP to CRM is always a complex integration. Technical configurations can be complex. The volume and frequency of updated data can also be complex. Most large contracts are negotiated with customer specific pricing, terms and conditions. For many organizations negotiated… Continue Reading
Integration requirements for CRM, CRM to ERP Max Effgen, February 25, 2009 From CRM to ERP Pipeline and Forecast data are the most common and most important data from CRM into an ERP system. Business process determines the complexity of the integration. Examples of complex integration requirements can be found with just in time manufacturers (e.g., Dell). These organizations will integrate forecast… Continue Reading
Integration requirements for CRM, intro Max Effgen, February 25, 2009 Anyone who knows me professionally, knows that I am a CRM guy. Most of my career has been implementing and making CRM systems usable and actually show real ROI. One of the biggest challenges that CRM systems have is integration with back end systems. In the cloud with hosted CRM,… Continue Reading
Thoughts on the enterprise cloud Max Effgen, February 24, 2009 Computing is moving to the cloud. The names may change and the technology may be different; however, this idea is not new. See Martin Greenberger’s Essay dated 1964. Recall mainframe timeshares, application service providers, “on demand” or more recently the “as a Service” marketing tags. The current iteration, Cloud Computing… Continue Reading