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Markets grow at the margins. This bit of sage advice was given to me at the start of my analyst career, and it has kept me in good nick for nearly two decades. Of course the focus has drifted over time but that's the point: The CRM market has evolved, and the job of an analyst is to make sense of the evolution Oracle OpenWorld 2018 held in San Fran...

Just when the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, was about to go into effect, the United States Congress created the CLOUD Act (Clarifying Overseas Use of Data). Without any public hearings, review or public comment, Congress passed the legislation as part of the US$1.3 trillion government spending bill. The CLOUD Act ch...

From big companies to small-town mom-and-pop shops to "mompreneurs" working from home, e-commerce is the key to keeping revenue streams flowing and businesses afloat. In fact, e-commerce is really the only way for you to ensure your business' longevity these days, especially if you are a small retailer. Why? Because your customers don't always liv...

Where does the discipline of CRM begin? We have a good idea where the software fits, but where does its impact end? With a sale? With a customer saying good things about your company to other customers? With a repeat purchase? And does CRM contribute to these events alone, or is there a web of other activities that help drive these relationships -- and do we ever consider these things to be CRM?...

When we write the history of the IT era, the big factor that has played an important but not well recognized role will be hardware -- specifically, the Oracle Exadata appliance that puts databases into memory for fast access and updates. All of the cloud software starting with the autonomous database on view this week at OpenWorld -- like security...

There could be as much as a 22 percent increase in holiday sales this season, based on industry analyst predictions. The 2018 U.S. retail e-commerce season will reach US$123.4 billion, up from $106.14 billion in 2017, according to Statista's estimates If you are a small business retailer, these numbers no doubt will bring a twinkle to your eye. How...

In recent years, video has become a crucial part of any marketing campaign. It is recognized as the optimum medium for elevating brand awareness and sharing a company's latest product buzz with an increasingly diverse and sophisticated audience. Video is also easy to work with, as platforms are readily available, simple to learn, and highly affordable...

Things have been changing at an almost unprecedented rate with regard to power structures. The last time I saw this happen was in the 1970s, when the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission took off. Suddenly a lot of the off-color, sexist and racist jokes that many executives regularly told could get them fired. A surprisingly large number of people got reassigned, fired, demoted, or otherwise punished for the same behavior that previously had made them "one of the guys." ...

The 2018 Open Source Technology Jobs Report shows rapid growth in the demand for open source technical talent, with Linux skills a must-have requirement for entry-level positions The seventh annual report from The Linux Foundation and Dice, released Wednesday, identifies Linux coding as the most sought-after open source skill. Linux-based container...

For the last 20 years, CRM has occupied a preeminent niche in enterprise software. It has been the hip, up-and-coming solution in the front office, brimming with innovation and new approaches to some difficult problems that go back a long way CRM applied basic database technology to a business' chaotic collection of customer data, streamlining busi...

Are you a retailer trying to get ready for the 2018 holiday season? Well, I'm afraid I can't help you. Just kidding. Sort of.

Think about planning for a natural disaster emergency that might affect your home. You'd likely store some water, flashlights, food, blankets and other essentials. The key element of your planning would be proactivity. You'd do all of the work before an emergency occurred, not during the actual crisis. If your supplies were used up after the emergency passed, then you quickly would restock before the next flood, fire, landslide, hurricane or lightning strike.

The MakuluLinux Flash distro is splashy and fast with a spiffy new look and new features MakuluLinux developer Jacque Montague Raymer on Thursday announced the second of this year's three major releases in the Series 15 distro family. The Flash edition follows last month's LinDoz edition release. The much-awaited innovative Core edition will debut ...

As of this writing, I haven't been prebriefed on what Oracle will be announcing at OpenWorld regarding CRM -- or as it refers to it, "CX" -- so this is a good time to express my own opinions Oracle's direction in the last few years increasingly has been toward cloud computing and the autonomous database, and each has several flavors or divisions. T...

While online shopping has exploded over the last decade and innovation around e-commerce has skyrocketed, there has been very little development around quality improvements in product search, navigation or discovery, notwithstanding the success of generic and open source search solutions, such as Elastic. That is ironic, as great search can make all the difference for an etailer's bottom line.

"Customer experience" is the great watchword of 2018 -- and it was a great watchword in 2017 and 2016, too Eighty-five percent of executives stated that customer experience (CX) was important to their companies' strategic priorities, according to an Accenture survey....

In spite of all the high-profile breaches that seem to sweep the headlines with greater frequency, companies slowly but surely have been getting a handle on internal security practices. At this point, it's hard to imagine any employee, in or out of the tech sector, who hasn't been run through antiphishing training. However, security is only as str...

When it comes to e-commerce, it seems like one day, you are in, and the next, you are out. With online shopping now more accessible than ever, customers steadily are becoming harder to please, and they are considering it a given that their rising expectations be met every time Just having an online version of a physical store isn't enough anymore, ...

Just five years ago, mobile e-commerce was a minor part of the e-commerce landscape Today, most online searches are carried out from mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, and 40 percent of all e-commerce is carried out from smartphones.

For much of this year, technology companies have been showcased in a very poor light. There was the coverage of Facebook's adverse impact on the 2016 U.S. elections (and other elections worldwide); there was Intel's security scandal and the firing of its CEO following reports suggestive of insider trading; there was the Google+ breach and coverup;...