Brian Sommer

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If Brian likes it, it's gotta be good

My Irregular colleague Brian Sommer waxes lyrical about the OpenAir/NetSuite deal. Brian has more years' experience implementing and analyzing business applications than most others I know. If he says something is good, then that's high praise and well worth a buyer's attention. Condensing Brian's analysis: We believe this deal...

Tags: NetSuite Inc., OpenAir Inc., Back-office, Brian Sommer, Operational Accounting, Product Development, Finance, Research & Development, Business Operations, Dennis Howlett

Blog posts 2008-06-02

Business ByDesign: the Irregular verdict

I've hung back on posting my thoughts on Business ByDesign for several reasons. When I wrote my pre-Sapphire08 conference story, it was clear this would dominate the Irregulars' questions. I needed to get through meeting with all the key executives and view the latest iteration of the product to gain...

Tags: SAP AG, Brian Sommer, Design Effort, EDI, Roi/Tco, Operational Planning, Sales Channel, Financial Accounting, Marketing Research, Enterprise Software, Software, Finance, Managerial Accounting, Business Operations, Sales, Marketing, Dennis Howlett

Blog posts 2008-05-07

Software Selection Blues

Brian Sommer has an excellent round-up of resources dedicated to helping ERP software buyers navigate the software selection process. Although the focus is on ERP, the issues are applicable to any major enterprise software purchase. From his article: Selections are a technical, functional, human and...

Tags: Selection, ERP, Brian Sommer, Brian, Tools & Techniques, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Enterprise Software, Management, Software, Michael Krigsman

Blog posts 2007-05-22

Additional Resources

Facebook gets serious about app quality

Facebook at its F8 developer powwow had a bevy of announcements that garnered interest, but among the most notable were its efforts to improve the quality of applications on the social networking site. First, the brief recap of Facebook's news (statement, Steve O'Hear's takeaways, Webware and Techmeme...

Tags: Facebook, Larry Dignan

Blog posts 2008-07-24

The evolution of search over traditional BI

The evolution of search over traditional BIIT / Operations Search and BIAh yes, the "democratization" of IT and data analysis. I think that it’s clear that the borders between search and BI are blurring and that business decision makers across every organization want instant access to the data that they...

Tags: Pricing, Tools & Techniques, Databases, SEARCH, cloud computing, business intelligence

Discussion threads 2008-07-22

Open Source VoIP: Asterisk or FreeSwitch?

Open Source VoIP: Asterisk or FreeSwitch?FreeSWITCH is a great choiceBrian's experience is not an isolated one. FS is starting to gain momentum as people realize just how much it can do and how well it can do it. Prior to the 1.0.0 release we saw a trickle of new users,...

Tags: Telephony, VOIP, open source, Asterisk, FreeSwitch

Discussion threads 2008-07-22

Open Source VoIP: Asterisk or FreeSwitch?

When the time came for a new PBX, Brian Snipes chose to do something a bit unconventional. The IT manager at law firm Hare, Wynn, Newell, and Newton LLP didn't purchase a commercial PBX, nor did he settle on the open source market leader,...

Tags: Phone, PBX, Attorney, FreeSwitch, Asterisk, Telephony, VOIP, Open Source, Telecom & Utilities, Networking, Telecommunications, Dave Greenfield

Blog posts 2008-07-22

What's Crave-worthy at E3 2008?

It's a special off-site edition of Crave, where Brian checks out the latest games on the E3 show floor.

Tags: Floor, Edition, Games, Personal Technology, News

Videos 2008-07-21

Activating the iPhone 3G

CNET.com's Brian Tong heads to the Palo Alto, Calif., Apple store to check out the crowds and see what's involved in the activation process.

Tags: Apple iPhone, 3G, Cellular Phones, Wireless, Consumer Electronics, Personal Technology, News, brian tong, iphone 3G, apple, steve jobs, itunes, ipod

Videos 2008-07-11

Ticking bombs in enterprise land

I believe the enterprise software industry is heading for major problems. It started when I read Francine McKenna  where she talks about what she sees as a doomsday scenario for at least one of the Big Four audit businesses. Francine's focus is on questioning the effectiveness of current methods for...

Tags: Software, Audit, Francine, Tools & Techniques, Financial Accounting, Management, Finance, Dennis Howlett

Blog posts 2008-07-07

Apple caught neglecting iPhone security

If you're waiting on iPhone 2 to standardize your business on the awesome new device (yeah, I'll be on line to buy one), you might want to pay attention to the conspicuous absence of iPhone security patches over the last four months. As WaPo's Brian Krebs reports,...

Tags: Apple iPhone, Apple Inc., Krebs, Apple Mac OS X, Operating Systems, Security, Software, Apple Mac OS, Ryan Naraine

Blog posts 2008-07-03

News to know: Searching Silverlight; IE 8; Dell; Google vs. YouTube

Notable headlines: Mary Jo Foley: Microsoft: Silverlight content searchable, too Ryan Stewart: Brian Goldfarb talks about Silverlight 2 and Deep Zoom with Michael Cot LineRider releases a Silverlight 2 version Microsoft steps up self-policing of its OSI-approved source licenses ...

Tags: Apple iPhone, Security, Google Inc., Dell Computer Corp., Microsoft Silverlight, Mobile, YouTube Inc., Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Corp., Linux, UNIX, Keyboards, Operating Systems, Advertising & Promotion, Open Source, Software, Hardware, Peripherals, Marketing, Larry Dignan

Blog posts 2008-07-03

Brian Goldfarb talks about Silverlight 2 and Deep Zoom with Michael Coté

Coté just published a video of he and James interviewing Brian Goldfarb, Product Manager in Microsoft Developer division, about Silverlight 2 and the Deep Zoom functionality. Coté got the interview while at TechEd and there's some good stuff inside about possible use cases for the Deep Zoom technology. ...

Tags: Microsoft Silverlight, Corporate Communications, Marketing, Ryan Stewart

Blog posts 2008-07-02

Study: 637 million Google users surfing with insecure browser

According to a new study from researchers at Google, IBM and ETH Zurich, there are about 637 million Google users surfing the Internet with a vulnerable Web browser. Using data from Google search queries and security vulnerability aggregator Secunia, the study HTML or PDF found that a...

Tags: Google Inc., Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Web Browser, Web Browsers, Internet, Ryan Naraine

Blog posts 2008-07-01

Tech, telecom join up to beat back trolls

Seeing as how patent reform has died on the vine, several tech and telecom companies are taking matters into their own hands, the Wall Street Journal reports. Scared by the NTP v Research in Motion case, in which the BlackBerry maker came perilously close to folding...

Tags: Patent, Troll, NTP, Telephony, Telecommunications, Networking, Richard Koman

Blog posts 2008-06-30

Debut of Hyper-V, departure of Gates usher in new era for Microsoft

Debut of Hyper-V, departure of Gates usher in new era for MicrosoftNot even Bill gates is happy with MicrosoftStrange that you should incessantly spin them as compelling..... or are you being adequately compensated (free money, not software)?Bill Gates Sends Angry Email to Microsoft http://www.lockergnome.com/digged/2008/06/25/bill-gates-sends-angry-email-to-microsoft/Wednesday, June 25th,...

Tags: Microsoft Windows, E-mail, Virtualization, cloud computing, Microsoft Corp., Hyper-V

Discussion threads 2008-06-27

Microsoft's geeks might miss Gates the most

Microsoft's geeks might miss Gates the mostBrilliance = Techie + Financial ManagerialI think one of the reasons Microsoft has been so succesful is that Bill Gates was adept not necessarily the best at both spectrums: the techie and the business side. Witness General Motors under the "Smith" bean counter tenure:...

Tags: Microsoft Windows, Recruitment & Selection, Mergers & Acquisitions, Microsoft Corp., Bill Gates

Discussion threads 2008-06-26

Time to blow up the software industry

Time to blow up the software industrySoftware is designed for Libraries and Charter or Municiple School systems.Big competition in the Linux vs Windowes Enterprise software her; Unix and Novell for Agencies and Police Departments. The Court House use Proliant-Linux I heard.BBD - old wine in new bottleBBD is just old...

Tags: Software as a Service (SaaS), Tools & Techniques, E-mail providers, ROI/TCO, cloud computing, SaaS Model, SaaS IS, enterprise software, software, Google Gmail, BBd

Discussion threads 2008-06-24

Time to blow up the software industry

Vinnie Mirchandani's post, Call to Steve Jobs: Please reshape the enterprise software market was bound to get a reaction out of my Irregular chums. 70 reactions to be precise as at the time of writing this post. That's the number of posts to our Google Group on the topic with...

Tags: Software-as-a-service, Financial, Software Company, SAP AG, Vinnie Mirchandani, Software As A Service (SaaS), Tools & Techniques, Cloud Computing, Enterprise Software, Emerging Technologies, Management, Software, Dennis Howlett

Blog posts 2008-06-24

Geek Squad: Best Buy's secret sauce?

Best Buy last week reported solid fiscal first quarter results, but did dish out enough detail to bring out a few worries. Home office gear is selling, but the consumer is winded. But the big takeaway is that Best Buy's services business--specifically Geek Squad--is posting twice the growth of the...

Tags: Best Buy Co. Inc., Taxes, Free Trade, Retail, Sales Strategy, Financial Planning, Finance, Sales, Larry Dignan

Blog posts 2008-06-23