IDC: very soon, a third of all software delivered via cloud
– ZDNet, August 9, 2010 A new IDC study shows that the Software as a Service (SaaS) market had worldwide revenues of $13.1 billion in 2009. IDC forecasts the market to reach $40.5 billion by 2014, representing a compound annual growth rate of 25.3%.

Gartner: Quarter of CRM revenues now via on-demand delivery
– MYCustomer.com, July 26, 2010 Gartner predicts that the global software-as-a-service market will grow by 14.1% this year to $8.5 billion, with the delivery model taking a 26% share of total CRM sector revenues. SaaS accounted for 24% of total CRM sales last year, with penetration levels ranging from between 11% and nearly 40% depending on the sub-segment.

Free E-Book: An Industry Insider's survival guide to everything you should know about buying and implementing CRM software
– Mareeba, July 20, 2010 While CRM software can transform an organization’s performance, it’s not as easy to do as many would have you believe. Industry insider and independent CRM consultant, Richard Boardman, walks you step by step through the process of buying and implementing CRM software, and explains how to do it quickly, effectively, at less cost and with less risk.

Forgotten Features Could Squeeze Out More CRM Value
– CRMBuyer, July 15, 2010 Instead of seeing CRM as a constantly evolving discipline, too many companies and users see it as a set-and-forget tool. Once it's running, and once managers are happy with the reports it generates, people stop thinking about it. The thought may be "we've successfully implemented CRM." What the thought should be is "we've successfully implemented CRM -- for now."

New global SaaS adoption data shows emerging geographies embracing the deployment model
– ZDNet/Forrester, June 21, 2010 Forrester recently surveyed nearly 3,000 technology decision makers worldwide and found that emerging geographies — Latin America, China, India, Russia — are heavy adopters of software-as-a-service. [Source: Forrester's Global IT Budgets, Priorities, And Emerging Technology Tracking Survey, Q2 2010.]

Five ways that mobilizing your workforce with CRM extends business value
– ZDNet, June 19, 2010 With nearly all businesses operating in a 24/7 global environment these days, a mobilized workforce is now a critical requirement to remain competitive and efficient. But does a productive, successful mobilized workforce mean simply arming employees with technology and devices? Not really.

Gartner reveals framework for "CRM success"
– MYCustomer.com, April 15, 2010 Following Gartner’s recent warnings about the challenges facing CRM initiatives, the research and advisory firm has outlined a blueprint for what it believes will deliver CRM success. At last month’s CRM Summit in London, Gartner identified several issues that were placing CRM in a precarious state that according to Gartner VP Steve Prentice “is probably a lot worse than we think it is."

The Next Wave Of SaaS
– Forbes, March 23, 2010 Right now if you think about the way software-as-a-service is delivered, Salesforce.com, NetSuite and Google are the most commonly cited examples. All these companies deliver their software using what is known as the multitenant model. Just as multitenant software knocked on-premise vendors for a loop, new distributed, open-source models for delivery of SaaS software will have a powerful impact.

Selling Your Sales Staff: Five Ways You Can Boost CRM Adoption in your Sales Organization
– Forecasting Clouds, March 19, 2010 When you implement any new system that can have a significant impact on your business, you want to make sure the investment pays off. With a CRM tool, you are talking about the very core of your business: your list of customers and your key information about them.

Six ways CRM projects go wrong
- ZDNet, March 9, 2010 The first generation of CRM saw many failed projects. Some analysts reported failure rates as high as 60%. Since then, as an industry, we have learned much about the causes of CRM failure and while most projects are still tough, success rates have soared.

RightNow promises an end to SaaS shelfware
- ZDNet, March 9, 2010 RighNow’s CEO Greg Gianforte is challenging SaaS and software vendors to emulate a proposition that, to me, always should have been on the table from every reputable SaaS vendor. Essentially, RightNow is promising not to take advantage of a buyer-vendor relationship where the provider, to be frank, has the customer’s most sensitive parts in a vise.

The social Web in 2010: The emerging standards and technologies to watch
– ZDNet, January 20, 2010 The emergence of Facebook, Twitter, and the rest of the social Web as a global force in the last several years has done a great deal to highlight their potential to fundamentally alter the way we communicate and collaborate both at home and in business. However, despite the movement of social computing into our daily lives we’re all clearly on a long journey together as the technologies themselves emerge from infancy.

Why freemium is bad for business
– ZDNet, January 15, 2010 I’ve never been comfortable with free products for business use, even though it’s difficult to avoid using them if you’re a small or one-person business (web analytics, for example, has been all but wiped out as a low-end paid service by Google’s free offering). As a long-term observer of the scene, my worry is that the track record over the past decade isn’t encouraging; many more free services have failed or faded away than have continued successfully.

Do companies have too much CRM and not enough common sense?
- ZDNet, November 30, 2010 Is it possible that companies are so fixated on automating their customer relationship management that they lose their common sense? All too often, executives think if they throw enough technology at a problem, it will somehow turn their organizations into shining beacons of success.