Joshua Greenbaum

The process-oriented enterprise – where work is accomplished not by using large monolithic applications like CRM but by moving through focused “processes” like order to cash – is turning into the next battleground in the never-ending struggle to define, redefine, and define yet again the role of the CIO. Pity the CIO, whose job security […]

Spring is in the air, and that means it’s time for my annual IBM column, in which I state that IBM needs to figure out what role it really wants to play in the enterprise software market. Is IBM a counter-revolutionary force, turning back the clock to the glorious days when all software was custom-built […]

“I am not an interim CEO.” Thus spoke Siebel’s new chief executive, George Shaheen, the former head of integration powerhouse Anderson Consulting and dotcom Kool-Aid maker Webvan. Of course, this was Mike Lawrie’s position when he took over as the head of the embattled CRM vendor last year, a position that looked at the time […]

Every once in a while, even hardened cynics like me have to wipe the sneer from our faces and admit that some hapless vendor might be getting something right. In this case, the vendor is Microsoft, and the thing they may be getting a little more right is the subject of last month’s column: Microsoft […]

Did you read in the January Microsoft earnings press release about how well the company’s enterprise applications business is doing? Neither did I. That’s because there wasn’t a peep about Microsoft Business Solutions in the entire document. It’s as if the home of Axapta, Great Plains, Navision, and Solomon, among others, was no longer part […]

Now that Oracle owns PeopleSoft, and all signs point to a reinvigorated push by Oracle into the enterprise applications space, it’s worth wondering who Larry has in his crosshairs. I don’t mean from an acquisitions standpoint (heaven forbid Oracle engages in another 18-month hostile acquisition any time soon) but from a competitive standpoint. Remember, this […]

One of the axioms of the software industry, and all of high-tech for that matter, is that the bigger the company, the worse it is at partnering. In the classic model, interactions between large and small partners are more dictatorial than collaborative, more monologue than dialogue. In most cases the best a small partner could […]

Now that the Oracle/PeopleSoft battle royale is drawing to a close, adrenalin junkies and rubberneckers across the industry are wondering where the next fix is going to come from. Rest assured, fellow schadenfreude lovers, the standards for drama and excitement recently set by Larry Ellison will likely continue, albeit in a slightly less spectacular fashion. […]

In the interest of full disclosure, I’m something of a fan of Craig Conway, the former CEO of PeopleSoft. His ability to take a moribund PeopleSoft, largely rudderless at the close of the 20th century, and return it to quasi-greatness was a monumental achievement. I will also confess that at the time he took over […]

I have to admit, the threshold on my hype-meter is tuned very low these days (don’t even get me started on Google), which means I’m more hard-boiled than most when looking at the business value of so-called free Internet services. So when it comes to Plaxo and its “free” on-line contact management service, I’m hearing […]

Sometimes it seems that a week doesn’t go by without a shareholder suit against a software company. One that almost slipped by unnoticed involves Siebel and its claims of near universal customer satisfaction, a position that was first challenged in this column two years ago. As one of those articles was cited in the suit, […]

You have to give SAP credit: It doesn’t get mad, it gets even. Scarcely four months after IBM took a swing at SAP by buying Trigo, SAP has swung back by acquiring Trigo competitor A2i. And in doing so the battle lines have shifted again in what is proving to be one of the most […]