Michael Hickins

Facing challenges from free business services offered by Google (Quote) and, to a lesser extent, online office tools maker Zoho, Microsoft (Quote) is adding more goodies to its menu of offerings to small business owners. The Redmond, Wash,-based software vendor is striking deals with leading chain retailers in order to build a more personalized approach to landing […]

As part of the spring 2007 release of its flagship Salesforce Automation (SFA) customer relationship management application, Salesforce.com (Quote) is rolling out what it calls “an enterprise-quality MySpace” application. AppSpace, which allows businesses to create customer-facing portals on demand, will be available in limited release beginning in April. The software, the latest in Salesforce.com’s rapid software-as-a-service […]

Walldorf, Germany-based enterprise software vendor SAP (Quote) stuck close to its supply-chain roots today and announced a series of products to help companies track and authenticate their products. The company introduced a product tracking and authentication (PTA) application and object event repository (OER) that companies can use to aggregate data from RFID or other electronic tagging […]

Business intelligence relies on clean data and a single version of the truth. On-demand sales compensation management software vendor Xactly believes that kind of valuable information can be extrapolated from sales data. The company has thus turned to new partners, including business intelligence software vendor Cognos (Quote) and enterprise data integration specialist Informatica (Quote), to roll […]

The software-as-a-service (SaaS) ship has sailed with a boatload of customers, while many traditional vendors of on-premise software have been left behind. According to Gartner, the market for SaaS applications grew by 26 percent last year, from $5 billion in 2005 to $6.3 billion in 2006. The consulting firm expects demand for SaaS to continue […]

The open source software vendor has produced a translator, available for download on its site, that allows users of OpenOffice, Novell’s version of ODF, to read and edit documents produced using Microsoft Word 2007. ODF is the OpenDocument format, which is supported by OpenOffice.org, and Open XML is the default file format for Microsoft Office […]

The consumerization of the enterprise is in full swing. What began in 2006 as a trickle of consumer-oriented web applications like podcasts and gadgets making their way into the enterprise, has today become a veritable torrent. In what may be the signature moment of this consumer-enterprise mashup (define) in 2007, IBM (Quote) announced a deal with Google […]

REDMOND, Wash. — Microsoft (Quote) CEO Steve Ballmer tried to temper expectations for enterprise sales of Vista last week, but that doesn’t mean the company isn’t trying to push its new operating system (OS) all the same. The software giant today introduced a set of tools intended to help IT administrators sniff out compatibility problems between […]

NEW YORK — IBM (Quote) thinks that speech technology has evolved from the first rudimentary dictation products it introduced 10 years ago to mainstream and, in some cases, life-altering applications. To prove the point, the company introduced a sampling of everyday applications at its Speech Technology Innovation Conference here. These include in-car products using voice recognition […]

Citrix Systems (Quote), known primarily for connecting remote workers to their corporate networks, is now offering a way to free them from the network. The company is releasing Presentation Server 4.5, which includes a new streaming feature that lets customers access desktop applications as an on-demand service, much in the same way as music or […]

The small- and medium-sized business (SMB) market has been an elusive target for technology vendors. The market is worth $404 billion, according to research firm IDC’s numbers, and that makes it a tempting one to tap. The problem is that SMBs, companies with fewer than 1,000 employees, defy typical marketing strategies; they exist in every […]

Microsoft (Quote) is introducing Windows Mobile 6 in the hopes of making inroads in the enterprise handset market. The new platform now allows users to edit Microsoft Office applications on their handheld devices. The company said this and other enhancements to its mobile client will help it gain traction in a market that has been dominated […]